Fast-paced and funny - By Louise McCully - Friday, August 7, 2009  

THREE bedrooms unsurprisingly set the scene for Alan Ayckbourn’s 1970s comedy, Bedroom Farce, performed by The Red TIE Theatre Company.

The fast-paced comedy, directed by Steve Reading,  assisted by Joseph Plumb, was set in three separate bedrooms onstage, exploring the lives of four couples and how their intertwined lives converge and collide in their chaotic bedrooms.

From eating sardines on toast, hiding from party guests or convalescing, the use of the bedroom is explored in ways you wouldn’t expect. However, you would not find yourself nodding in agreement more than once.

Whether you relate to the conventional elderly couple, love’s young dream, or just having to put up with the neurotic nightmare couple that keep invading your privacy, you’ll never look at your bedroom in the same light again.

Quay Arts had an almost full house, who laughed incessantly at the talented cast of four couples, who were all having issues in their relationships, focusing on the disastrous duo, Susannah and Trevor, played by Alison Kent and Phil Burland. Alison Kent, who had perfect comic timing, had the audience in stitches with her lively bungling performance as the misguided Susannah.

Equally compelling in his acting debut was Matt Coles, as the bedbound Nick. With his sarcastic Basil Fawltyesque melancholy, Matt had the audience in the palm of his hand with the slightest change in facial expressions, caused by Nick’s "wrecked back" and exacerbations with other characters, namely his poor suffering wife Jan, played by Helen Reading.

The Red TIE Theatre Company, perhaps best known for issue-based theatre on social topics, showed they are able to equally excel in light-hearted comedy.