Plays 52 - Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn

2. 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.