Review: RULES FOR LIVING, Rose Theatre

With the release of the Christmas advert from Marks And Spencer, we can all rest assured that the festive season is drawing ever near. Sam Holcroft's well received play, Rules For Living, gets its first revival at Kingston's Rose after a 2015 run at The National Theatre and serves as a timely reminder of just how stressful a traditional family Christmas can become.

Familial misery over Christmas is a subject ripe for exploration; the often toxic mix of enforced goodwill, barely suppressed resentments and families forced to spend time together is a an experience that most of us have had at some point.

Mother Edith is fretting about hosting a family Christmas, cooking for a week and wanting everything to be perfect, especially as her post-operative husband is due to come home for the day. Her two sons Matthew and Adam have returned home with their other halves: Carrie, a loud and over the top actress, and Nicole, a disillusioned and exacting mother with a burgeoning drink problem.

As a family gathers for Christmas, each member deploys individual survival strategies to get through the day; their own 'rules for living'. As flash card illuminate above the stage, we are informed of the rules for each character, such as that Matthew must sit down and eat to be able to tell a lie.

The cast has a great time in this production, as the comedy is as much physical as it is verbal, using every part of Lily Arnold's brilliantly crafted set. Jane Booker is a standout as mother Edith, who must obsessively clean and self medicate to stay calm. She wrings every laugh from her lines which brim with emotional blackmail and sharp asides.

Jolyon Coy is a joy as Matthew; charmingly camp and aching to please everyone, no matter how much he has to lie to do so. He constantly sprays mince pie around the stage, although his chomping down a bunch of thyme stretches this 'rule' a bit too much.

Laura Rogers plays Nicole, disenchanted wife of Adam. She is detached and icy, obsessed with her daughter's diet, despairing of the imminent collapse of her marriage.

Eldest son Adam is played with huge energy by Ed Hughes, who must put on various accents to be able to mock people. As he spends the majority of the play mocking others, he jumps with alarming regularity between a huge variety of voices and affectations. He pulls it off seemingly without effort, but the effect becomes grating by the second act.

Carlyss Peer has the hardest job as aspiring actress Carrie. She is very funny with her risqué jokes and overblown expressions, but her 'rule' of having to stand up and dance to be able to tell a joke also becomes wearing as the play goes on.

There is no doubt that the production is very funny but Holcroft relies a lot on clichés to gain laughs; Carrie is the girlfriend desperate to get a ring on her finger, Matthew and Adam are victims of a bullying and overbearing father and Nicole is the neurotic mother who hates her husband.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is not an obvious basis for a play, but Holcroft merges this psychological theory of behaviour with the everyday family life and twists it so as to expose modern society's own self-obsession. The twist in this satire is that the audience is confronted by their own foibles as neuroses are exposed. This is why much of the comedy works, although endless repetition of the characters' neuroses weakens the psychological theory behind the play's concept and ultimately reduces some of the comedic effect.

There is more than a small nod to the farce of Alan Ayckbourn in the play, but the comedy is sharper and more shrill. The discomfort of watching fuses with the recognition of so many familial tensions so create an uneasy, yet amusing production.

This is a biting and original comedy, although there are points where reality comes stretched. It's great entertainment and often more than a little uncomfortable to watch.

Rules For Living is at the Rose Theatre until 18 November

Photo Credit : Mark Douet

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