Tea cools as tensions boil

Grae Burton, Katherine Kennard, Paul Lewis, David Mackie, Ingrid Park and Jennifer Matter.

Playing one of the most conniving characters on a New Zealand television drama was a piece of cake compared to her latest theatre role, says actor Katherine Kennard. Kennard, most recently seen on Nothing Trivial as Jo Delany, an ex-wife not ready to farewell her former husband, is one of the leads in Absent Friends. Written by Sir Alan Ayckbourn and first staged in 1974, it's a wry look at the British suburban middle class and its attitudes toward death and relationships; some critics say the death of love. Absent Friends has been recently revived for a London season and is on this year's programme at Sydney Ensemble Theatre.

It offers a window back to the 1970s as Colin (David Mackie) joins his circle of friends at a tea party thrown by Diana (Ingrid Park) some weeks after witnessing his beloved fiancee drown.

His friends want to ensure he's coping, but they find themselves not knowing how to talk to a philosophical Colin who seems happier than they are.

The tea cools as tensions boil over, not helped by the arrival of Evelyn (Jennifer Matter), who may be having an affair with Diana's husband Paul (Grae Burton), and her husband John (Paul Lewis). Meanwhile, long-time friend Marge (Kennard) does her best to calm troubled waters but references to her sickly husband make it clear all is not well in her life.

"It's a real challenge to play someone like Marge because while we may have seen these characters before, to play it and make it genuine is tricky," says Kennard.

"Even the name Marge is a caricature, which has people instantly jumping to conclusions about what she's like so I have to find something of her in me to make it real."

The play takes place in real time with pauses in conversation, awkward asides and ill-thought out remarks; the "action" is confined to Diana and Paul's sitting room.

Park says if there was such a thing as a comedy of awkwardness, this is it. It's very much about social conventions. What people thought they should say compared to what they might have actually wanted to and skirting round issues. It's exhausting to live life like that. It's fantastic that it plays out in real time because it takes away all the other 'stuff' and lets us focus on what's going on and what it's really all about. You can embrace the silences that have been written into it."

Director Adey Ramsel says Absent Friends ushered in a new style of playwriting because it combines drama and comedy; the forerunner of the modern-day dramedy: "If you wanted comedy, you had Noel Coward and, for drama, there was John Osborne but then Alan Ayckbourn came along and said, 'why not do both?"'

Absent Friends opens the year's season for North Shore theatre company Tadpole.

Performance

What: Absent Friends

Where and when: The PumpHouse, Takapuna, May 8-18