Review: A snake with a twist in its tail

Written for a cast of three female actors, the piece combines the genres of dark comedy and light horror.

Typically of Ayckbourn, the play is ­concerned with the travails of the well-heeled, and ­seemingly contented, people who constitute “middle England”. The action takes place in the garden of the grand house of the Chester family in the aftermath of the death of the formidable patriarch.

Annabel (Deirdre Davis), the elder of his two daughters, returns to the bucolic English village from a failed business and a broken marriage in Tasmania. There she is confronted by a very angry Alice Moody (Ann Louise Ross), former nurse to Mr Chester.

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The redoubtable care worker wants ­compensation for loss of earnings, and ­damage to her professional reputation, following her sacking by the younger daughter, Miriam (Emily Winter), shortly before the old man’s death.

For her part – having been confronted with a letter written by her father, and now in the nurse’s possession – Miriam has admitted to massively increasing the dosage of the old fella’s prescription drugs, before pushing him down the stairs to his demise.

Fear not, the synopsis above contains no spoilers. This scenario is merely the foundation of Ayckbourn’s densely structured play.

The drama that ensues – with its ­blackmail and mysterious goings-on – interweaves the conventions of the thriller and the ghost story. ­However, in Miriam and Annabel’s ­conversations about their father’s abuse of them (both historic and, in Miriam’s case, recent), we are introduced to what the late, great English playwright Harold Pinter is believed to have called “the weasel under the cocktail cabinet”.

(Image: FREE)

However, where Pinter created dramas of complex and unsettling uncertainty, Ayckbourn prefers to stick to the English realist tradition of playwrights like Noël Coward and Terence ­Rattigan.

The Scarborough writer’s oeuvre seems to be untouched by the modernism of Pinter or Caryl Churchill.

Ayckbourn’s theatre is the dramatic ­equivalent of a wine that is neither sweet nor dry, but sits assiduously in the middle of the taste ­spectrum. That said, he is a master at tweaking the ­conventions of his chosen genres.

This is certainly true of Snake In The Grass, in which a seemingly signposted twist ­operates as a clever decoy for a smartly constructed ­denouement. This being so, it would take a dreadful pedant to point out the production’s one continuity problem. So, here goes.

Miriam expects her sister to believe that a ­bottle of wine is left over from their father’s ­cellar. Begging the question, do wealthy wine collectors lay down bottles of recent vintages that have screwtops?

This minor blip notwithstanding, director Andrew Panton’s staging is admirably bold and faithful.

Likewise Jen McGinley’s assiduously realistic set and the universally strong performances of a fine cast.

Until October 5: dundeerep.co.uk