Weird, loud electronic music blends into thunder on the balcony from which Julian (stereotypically villainous Walter Rhodes) steps into the tasteful hotel suite parlor. He opens the door to another loud phenomenon, Phoebe, a.k.a. Poopay, a dominatrix he's hired as a "sexual consultant" to his old friend. "Old" also depicts dying Reece (convincingly aged and feeble, despite Erik R. Uppling's actual youth), who wants her to witness his sworn responsibility for the death of his two wives. The danger is that Julian, who did the killings to advance their business, will return to destroy Reece's confession -- and Phoebe too. Her attempt to escape that by hiding in a closet leads her to another door. Not to an adjoining room but to the same one, twenty years earlier. There she meets Reece's second wife, Ruella (matronly Carolyn Michel, smart at having smarts and not boring being ethical). Together they figure out the communicating nature of the doors and set about trying to use Phoebe's knowledge of past history to change it. That includes Ruella making her way back to Jessica (flibberty-gibbet Sharon Spelman, looking as young and cuddly as one could wish) on her and Reece's wedding night.
Menace mixes with mirth, especially when Phoebe as Poopay has to return to retrieve Reece's hidden confession, leading to a terrifying confrontation with Julian. She and Ruella also run a race against time, since the latter is near to being murdered on her side of the door. Or she may be picked up on Jessica's side and jailed by the obsequious house detective (Douglas Jones, in a farcical variation on his Poirot of several years back). Still, it is Poopay/Phoebe who has to change most. In doing so almost as if passively, Millman shows more skill than the actress I saw in London, nicely but more obviously becoming a different woman.
Most of the farcical elements in Communicating Doors are as inevitable as Ayckbourn's explanations of the communicative limits of his doors seem contrived. Thanks be, they still make for a most fun experience, with special effects that are indeed effective.
