Review: (Toronto) Round and Round the Garden (The Norman Conquests)

Albert Schultz (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

In The Garden, Dark and Deep
by Ramya Jegatheesan

Welcome to the garden, where a weekend of depraved seduction takes a twisted turn outside, and Norman, our jubilant anti-hero, muses on his lovely pyjamas, irresistible animal magnetism and the raw pleasure of touching earthy things. 

Round and Round the Garden is the rousing and brilliant climax to The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn’s trio of plays about a librarian who fancies himself a gigolo and unleashes his amorous yearnings upon a dysfunctional family. 

This third instalment is a fitting end to Table Manners and Living Together (its predecessors), but even as Round and Round the Garden erupts with hilarity, it carries dark undercurrents of angst, loneliness and pain.  Norman is an overgrown, overeager shaggy dog who will mount anyone who rewards him with an encouraging glance. Yet his affable exterior disguises a deep well of insecurity as well as a libertine and cavalier attitude towards life and women.  It is a testament to the playwright’s genius that he can take pain and insight and infuse it with so much humour.  Ayckbourn takes characters who, at first glance, you might dismiss as hoary clichés, and elevates them to breathtakingly vulnerable and human individuals. The whole trilogy is a fascinating commentary on family and relationship dynamics, and with Soulpepper and director Ted Dykstra at the helm, it is a theatrical experience you will not want to miss.  

Review: (Toronto) Living Together (The Norman Conquests)

Laura Condlln, Albert Schultz, Fiona Reid (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

The Spoiled of War
by Ramya Jegatheesan

Norman’s sordid romantic adventures continue in Living Together, the second of Alan Ayckbourn’s triptych of comedic plays, The Norman Conquests, where a libidinous librarian’s sexual cravings are unleashed upon a squabbling family in a run-down English country home. Norman tells us he is a three-women-a-day man, and he is out to prove it. 

Here, we glimpse the cast of six as they move from dining room to living room, offering us another window into the once secret dirty weekend gone awry. 

Watching Soulpepper’s Living Together is like piecing together pieces of a larger mystery: even while the initial intrigue begins to wear off, the family’s dysfunction becomes ever more clear. Annie (Laura Condlln) is feistier and angrier; Tom (Oliver Dennis) more dim-witted; and Norman (Albert Schultz, Soulpepper’s artistic director), well, Norman is more of a scoundrel than you might ever imagine. And oh, the bearskin rug! Far too much happens on that rug. 

Review: (Toronto) Table Manners (The Norman Conquests)

Albert Schultz, Oliver Dennis (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

The Party of the Year
by Ramya Jegatheesan

Meet Norman (Albert Schultz), a bearish Lothario, who sets out to seduce the ladies of the house beginning with his lonely sister-in-law Annie. 

Stranded in Annie’s (Laura Condlln) country home when a dirty weekend away is foiled by nosy relatives and a put-upon wife, Norman re-jigs his plans for romantic conquest and throws the whole house into chaos. No one is safe. 

Reg (Derek Boyes) says the women hate Norman, but the truth is a much murkier creature than that. Norman may not look it, but he is an incorrigible charmer and every man’s id unleashed. He knows just the right words to whisper to soften even the most severe and nervous of women. This makes him unpredictable. It makes him dangerous.