Ben Lambert, Richard Stacey and Marc Small as the Andrews Sisters in A Trip to Scarborough at the Theatre Royal Bath this week
It's convoluted, brilliantly crafted, and with the Ayckbourn hallmark, very funny.
Ayckbourn took a play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan - who had adapted it from work of John Vanbrugh - and made a triple-layered production out of it.
The action takes place just before Christmas in the foyer of the Royal Hotel, Scarborough in 1800, 1942 and this year. Ayckbourn wrote it in 1982 and has now updated it.
There are almost parallel plots which merge and separate with the smoothness of a photographic slide show.
There is skulduggery, romance, heroism, tragedy and bawdiness, which involves most of the cast playing three different roles.
The logistics are mind-boggling and the performances, without exception, outstanding.
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It's a host of stories; the 1800s mostly foppish fun with fortune hunters; the 1940s imbued with the angst of wartime and the present day peopled with young men talking on mobile phones rather than to each other, and some big money shady deals going on.
A Trip to Scarborough By Alan Ayckbourn
Theatre Royal Bath
One of the highlights was an impression of the Andrews Sisters from three drunken servicemen, Ben Lambert, Richard Stacey and Marc Small.
The on-stage three-piece band - which had a place in each era - was led by Denis King who also wrote original music for the play. Peter F Gardiner and Alexander King completed the band.
Holding all the threads together were the hall porter Gander (Adrian McLoughlin) and his young assistant Pestle (Dominic Hecht).
Like the staff in the best hotels, they held a watching brief for all their charges. They were a great double act with a choice selection of dry one-liners.
They shared another glorious bit of farce as Gander pretended to be the whole of the War Office on the telephone to an Army guest they needed to distract for reasons too complicated to go into.
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