Earth Angel review – Alan Ayckbourn’s 91st play is a plea for decency

Adrian Prosper is a no-nonsense kind of guy. A retired police officer, he has dealt with enough lowlifes to see the worst in everyone. Played with frightening humourlessness by Stuart Fox, he is all suspicion and mistrust. When his newly bereaved brother-in-law, Gerald (Russell Richardson), is befriended by Daniel (Iskandar Eaton), an enigmatic young man, he thinks only the worst of the relationship.

Neighbourhood on watch … Stuart Fox and Elizabeth Boag in Earth Angel by Alan Ayckbourn, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. Photograph: Tony Bartholomew

And he is not alone. In Alan Ayckbourn’s 91st play, he is joined in speculative plotting by Maxine (Liza Goddard), his misanthropic wife, as well as Gerald’s neighbours, the well-meaning Norah (Elizabeth Boag) and the online conspiracist Hugo (Hayden Wood). They are stoked by fear, small-mindedness and tribalism.

In our polarised times, it feels radical for Ayckbourn to propose that Daniel might simply be good. The stranger is seeking neither to rob the older man nor to turn his house into a drug den. The level-headed Gerald, a retired teacher, has too sharp a mind to tolerate the nay-saying neighbours. Their cynicism about Daniel, he says, is like the Pharisees saying of Jesus, “We don’t trust him, he’s altogether far too nice.”

He is not entirely right: there is another twist in store, albeit one that admits to messy humanity more than criminal intent. But the playwright would rather celebrate those who bring joy, such as Gerald’s late wife Amy, or comfort, such as Daniel, than those who sow only division.

Despite the play’s title, the many references to death and the allusions to Jesus, Ayckbourn’s plea for decency is secular not spiritual. Daniel’s evasiveness gives him an otherworldly air, but the play has less to do with the supernatural than with the 1954 doo-wop hit Earth Angel by the Penguins. It is a humane and, in the final scene, touching vision.

But it is also one that is slow in coming. On a heavy-handed set by Kevin Jenkins (we can understand the concept of an exterior wall without seeing the bricks), Ayckbourn proceeds at a stately pace, allowing baggy stretches of inactivity between the dramatic flashpoints, and taking his time to celebrate love in the face of grief, compassion in the face of hostility.