The Hampstead Authors' Society

Seven Characters in Search of Order

In Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn

Hampstead Theatre 50th Anniversary Revival.

Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn is the second revival of the 50th Anniversary programme by the Hampstead Theatre.

Frayn’s early comedy takes place at a small, provincial newspaper cuttings library, the kind of place where he himself used to work as a young journalist.

Cuttings libraries – and indeed newspapers themselves, at least in their traditional hardcopy version – have become or are on the verge of becoming something of a historical phenomenon. Does this make the play outdated? Is it less relevant because of that?

Quite the contrary.

If anything, I would argue, the dramatic changes over the past fifty years in how newspapers are made actually add to the intrinsic interest value of the play.

It can offer nostalgic interest for those who can vividly remember ‘the way we were’. On the other hand, it offers period value, insight into the recent past to those who have never experienced that particular reality.

Albeit the themes of Alphabetical Order are anchored in the particularity of the now extinct clippings library, the themes themselves are universal, and as relevant as ever.

How does chaos and order relate to each other – and how do we, paradigm-seeking animals such as we are, relate to both? To be precise, what kind of attitudes exists to chaos and order? How will different personalities relate to the one and the other? How will the power-play evolve and shift around this conflict? How is an outsider accepted in a group, and on whose terms? How will a new personality impact on the established group dynamics and its sub-culture?

Such questions are clearly engaging. They retain both spatial and temporal universality.

Why is it then that Alphabetical Order, at least in its current production, feels dated?

Some of the reasons include the arch of the play.

The first act feels too lumbering, slow to get going, especially for a farce such as this. On the other hand, the second act, which promises to be much more engaging, comes to an almost sudden halt: the wrap-up feels much too quick, and therefore unsatisfying.

The exploration of the implications of the newly imposed, yet superficial, order hardly gets started, when resolution is enforced. The play is over.

This sense of disengagement is not helped by the direction and the acting. The roles are already quite two-dimensional – grand but not whole – so the actors do not have full characters to be inspired by. The cheerful feels much too cheerful; the robotic too mechanical, and so on.

This overload of a single character trait within each character could have been made farcical or even symbolic. Unfortunately, this production has not reached fully either. It feels unreal but not surreal enough. And, ultimately, that is probably what makes it feel dated.