This is Alan Ayckbourn's 52nd full-length play in four decades of writing for the theater. Sir Alan has always shown a special interest in clever manipulations of time and space. In Things We Do For Love, we see the sitting room of fortyish Barbara Trapes (Jane Asher), who owns the building. She temporarily rents her upstairs to an old schoolmate, Nikki (Serena Evans), and her fiance Hamish (Steven Pacey), while a widowered postman, Gilbert (Barry McCarthy), occupies the basement, where he spends leisure time painting a ceiling mural.
The gimmick here is that we see only the bottom few feet of the upstairs bedroom and only the top couple of feet of the basement. In this play, Ayckbourn shows that love and hate are closer than we like to think, and that hate and lust aren't far apart either. Although the author calls this a "new comedy," it turns quite serious as it proceeds and results in both physical violence and psychic cruelty. All four players are skillful -- especially Asher as she moves from an icy demeanor to uncontrollable seductiveness. The work doesn't rise to the level of Ayckbourn's finest farces, like How The Other Half Loves and Taking Steps, or his more complex efforts like The Norman Conquests trilogy, Absent Friends, Woman In Mind, and Time Of My Life, but it is most welcome after his recent and utterly forgettable Communicating Doors.
