© RLT 2006

Past performances: Communicating Doors

Communicating Doors
By Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Nora Berg
Show dates: February 11-14, 2004

Cast & Production Team
Synopsis
About the playwright
Production photos

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Cast			Production Team
Actor	Role		Team Member	Role
Dan Carr	Reece		Nora Berg	Director
Harlan Kennedy	Harold		Andrea McNeil	Stage Manager
Martin Krieser	Julian		Shanna-Marie Tice	ASM * /Crew
Sharon Medak	Jessica		Ran Sidaway	ASM/Crew
Bonnie Senger	Poopay		Jolaine Huber	ASM/Crew
Marianne Woods	Ruella		Linda Biasotto	Line Coach/Prompter
			Krystal Pisiak	Costumes
			Annetta Kuntz	Costumes
			Wendy Schoenroth	Costumes
			Set Design & Dec	Pat Wilson
			Jolie Engelbrecht	Makeup
			Melissa Mark	Hair Design
			Sherilyn Snider Sawatzky	Hair Stylist
			Lighting Design	Bernadette Tice
			Fred Gallagher	Set Construction
			Rick Harvey	Set Construction
			Rod McLeod	Set Construction
			Barry Uncles	Set Construction
			Harold Woodward	Set Construction

* ASM - Assistant Stage Manager

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Synopsis of play
The play starts in 2014, in a suite at the Regal Hotel.  Julian Goodman has procured a prostitute for seventy year-old Reece Welles.  The girl, Phoebe, is a dominatrix (the regular girl was unavailable) who goes by the name Poopay Dayseer.  As it turns out, Reece doesn't want her for what she usually gets paid for but instead he wants her to witness a confession and then deliver it to trusted hands.  Reece has been very successful in life, along with his business partner Julian, but it has come at a high cost.  Among the varied and horrible deeds Reece arranged, and which Julian carried out, are the murders of two of Reece's wives.
Julian gets wise to the fact that there is a confession revealing his crimes and that Poopay knows about it, and naturally he plans to get rid of her as well.  She escapes, sort of, through the infamous communicating door, which tosses her back twenty years into the same room in 1994.  Ruella, Reece's second wife, is there and as it happens, it's the night she is meant to die at Julian's hand.
It takes a while for the two to figure out that there has been some time-travel involved, but Ruella comes to believe Poopay.  Her own trip through the communicating door, which sends her to Reece's 1974 honeymoon night with his first wife, Jessica, helps to convince her.
Julian, meanwhile, is still after Poopay, as well as Ruella, of course.  There's lots of farcical door slamming through the madcap pace of the play along with lots of amusing confusion and some decent suspense.  All's well that ends well, and Ayckbourn does knot things up very nicely.

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About the playwright
Communicating Doors was first performed in Scarborough at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on February 2nd, 1994 in a production directed by Alan Ayckbourn.
"Like a magic conjurer, Alan Ayckbourn keeps pulling evermore rabbits out of the hat.  Communicating Doors, his 46th play, manages to take us by surprise by being a mixture of pastiche Psycho and time-warp comedy... Ayckbourn is at his most devilish ingenious" said Michael Billington of the Guardian.

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Production photos

Sharon Medak, Harlan Kennedy and Marianne Woods.

Harlan Kennedy.

Marianne Woods and Bonnie Senger.

Marty Krieser and Bonnie Senger.

Bonnie Senger and Marty Krieser.

Marty Krieser.

Pictures taken by Patrick Cherneski Copyright 2004

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