Bedroom Farce and Inception

Amongst our search for a house to pur­chase, in Brighton or Hay­wards Heath, we’ve been out a cou­ple of nights this week to relax. Firstly, at last, to see the new Chris Nolan movie, “Incep­tion” at the old school Dukes of York cin­ema in Brighton. And sec­ondly, to Brighton’s The­atre Royal for Alan Ayckbourn’s “Bed­room Farce” star­ring Maxwell Caulfield.

I’d been lucky enough to not know any­thing about “Incep­tion” before step­ping in, beyond that it was sup­pos­edly weird and con­fus­ing and starred some of my favourite actors–namely Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page. I’ve embed­ded the trailer below and highly rec­om­mend see­ing it. If you’ve seen Exis­tenZ it might be a bit deja-vu in places. Many of the con­cepts were sim­i­lar to Alex Garland’s book, “The Coma”, which you could prob­a­bly read in an hour or so (or ten min­utes if read­ing whilst asleep, or one minute if you’re asleep whilst asleep).

We’d hoped to see “Leav­ing” at the Dukes as well, but the film sup­plier cocked up and it’s only run­ning for a week.

Last night’s “Bed­room Farce” was a very sim­i­lar affair to the “Nor­man Con­quests” we caught at the Old Vic. All action tak­ing place in one room (sort of), and catch­ing only the impor­tant and hilar­i­ous snip­pets of a big­ger story. As the com­edy pro­gressed, the hilar­ity ensued, peo­ple walk­ing into other’s bed­rooms unex­pect­edly, and all the tra­di­tional Ayck­bourn comic setups–that kiss no one should see, the inno­cent com­ment that starts an avalanche, etc.

I couldn’t help but repeat “Rex Man­ning day” in my head when­ever Maxwell was per­form­ing (watch Empire Records if you haven’t already), though Sam was more elated by his prior appear­ance in Grease 2.

Syn­op­sis

Bed­room farce is cen­tred on three dou­ble beds and four cou­ples. An oppor­tu­nity for a bit of bed hop­ping you might think but not in that sense. The mature cou­ple expertly por­trayed by Juliet Mills (sound­ing for all the world like the age­ing Kather­ine Hep­burn) and Bruce Mon­tague were cruis­ing through their lat­ter bed­room years when inter­rupted by the spec­tre of “bed issues” suf­fered by their intense son Trevor (Oliver Boot,) and his neu­rotic wife Saman­tha played by Natasha Alderslade.

This cou­ple on the verge of a com­i­cally vio­lent break up man­aged to dis­rupt the love nest of Kate, (the impres­sive Julia Mal­lam) and Mal­colm, played by Ayden Callaghan and the ten­sion behind the rela­tion­ship of Jan (Clare Wilkie) and Nick (Maxwell Caulfield.)

Walk­ing back from the local the­atre was a wel­come break to the tube and train from Vic­to­ria, and usual post-theatre post-midnight home time. It’s a shame they’re not show­ing any­thing else we want to see until at least 2011.