- Communicating Doors - Alan Ayckbourn
Communicating Doors is a two-act
play set in a sixth floor suite of a five-star London hotel room and takes
place over three distinct time periods of the room, namely; 1974, 1994 and
2014. The play is essentially a comedy
about redemption and putting right a past shaped by one man's greed and
another's amorality.
It is 2014 and Julian Goodman,
the business associate of Reece Welles, is alone in the suite waiting for a
prostitute who has been summoned by Reece.
Goodman casts an imposing figure in comparison to Reece, a rather frail
seventy year-old. The prostitute, ashamed
of her real name, Phoebe, goes by the name Poopay Dayseer (Poupée Désire),
arrives and once she and Reece are alone together, it is revealed that he wants
her to witness a signed confession. The
confession, which directly implicates Goodman in the murders of Reece's two
ex-wives, is then to be delivered by hand to Reece's solicitor; the one in the
firm that he still trusts at any rate.
However, before Poopay can deliver the confession, she is discovered by
Julian. Hiding the confession inside the
suite's bidet, she flees and discovers an 'intercommunicating door' which leads
to the same hotel suite, albeit twenty years earlier, in 1994.
Ruella, whom it is previously
established is Reece's second wife, is in her suite alone and looking forward
to a good night's sleep upon the younger Reece's return from a business trip to
Greece. Ruella finds Poopay and assumes that she is
either in shock or on some kind of drugs and calls for hotel security, a man
named Harold Palmer, to have her removed. It turns out that the night that Poopay/Phoebe
has returned is the very night that Julian has planned to
"accidentally" bundle Ruella out of the sixth floor window, a fact
specified in the confession. Ruella not
only absorbs the fact that Poopay is actually from the future, but emerges as
the driving force behind a plan to prevent her own death and that of Reece's
first wife, Jessica, in 1981, which is also revealed in the confession . Ruella is also able to travel back in time
through the communicating door, to 1974 where a much younger Reece is
honeymooning with the aforementioned Jessica.
Meanwhile, Julian from 2014 has also discovered the communicating door,
travelled back to 1994 and has Poopay cornered in the bathroom.
The confession has been relayed
back via Poopay and Ruella, and is now in the hands of Jessica in 1974, who is
extremely sceptical. However, it has
piqued her curiosity enough for her to allow Ruella to explain. Jessica herself is extremely understanding,
despite the unusual circumstances and assumes Ruella to be mad, although enough
of a doubt has been sown in her mind that she accepts and keeps another note,
written and handed to Jessica with some urgency by Ruella, with strict
instructions to be opened the following year.
This note is to be opened on the day following the birth of Jessica and
Reece's daughter Rachel, and correctly predicts the name and weight of the
child, thus going some way to proving Ruella's authenticity.
When Ruella returns to her
present, she finds the room in darkness and is instantly concerned for Poopay's
wellbeing. The latter emerges from the
bedroom, visibly distressed. It turns
out that in attempting to drown Poopay, Julian had slipped on a bar of soap and
cracked his head against the toilet killing him. In a panic, Poopay had dragged his body and
hidden it under the sofa. At this point,
Ruella enlists the help of the older Harold (hotel security), to make Julian's
death seem more of an accident. As
Harold and Poopay are placing Julian's body in another hotel room, the
realisation dawns to both her and Ruella that the Julian of 1994 is still alive
and well and about to descend.
At this point Jessica, having
been saved by the foreknowledge of her death at Julian's hand in 1981, emerges
from the communicating door to find Ruella wrapped in a bed sheet, with Julian
about to throw her out of the window.
However, Jessica has not come from another time, but from the empty room
next door. Pretending to be the ghost of
Julian's mother, whom he had also dispensed with, she shocks him enough that he
staggers back and falls off the balcony - the fate he had intended for Ruella. Much physical comedy ensues as Jessica
attempts to release Ruella, but
unfortunately Ruella is propelled backwards and over the balcony. It is at this point that Poopay returns from
the other room and quickly grabs the remaining end of the bed sheet with
Jessica, and the three women work together to heave Ruella back to safety.
As well as Jessica surviving and
going on to marry a count, Rachel is now studying at Cambridge
rather than in America,
as she was originally. The body of
Julian from 2014 has also vanished, as he has now perished in 1994. Ruella rewards Harold for all his help with
the promise of the yacht that he's always dreamed of. All seemingly well, and as Jessica leaves, so
Ruella and Poopay are left to ruminate on the future, Poopay reluctant to
return to it. Poopay, it seems, did not
have a pleasant upbringing. She was
brought up in a children's home with no knowledge of her parents or of a
'normal' life. An idea seems to occur to
Ruella as Poopay goes to leave and they agree, at Poopay's insistence, to meet
up the following day, in the future.
Upon returning to 2014, Poopay finds herself changed; her own voice
surprises her and she is now called Phoebe once again. It turns out that Ruella has been able to
dramatically alter her life by adopting her and therefore preventing her from
falling into the life she had before.
She now has a family of her own and also a good job. Reece is also a changed man freed from the
poisonous influence of Julian, he appears much healthier and is no longer
frail. Ruella, it emerges, unfortunately
died of an unnamed illness the previous year, but not before she was able to
'save' the lives of those around her, actually and metaphorically.
