Relatively Speaking

Greg loves Ginny.

Unfortunately, so does Phillip.

Phillip and Ginny have had a fling, but as far as Ginny’s concerned, it’s over. And she goes over to his house to tell him so.

She tells Greg she’s going to visit her parents. Being a romantic kind of guy, Greg he thinks it’d be great to go along to meet them and ask them for Ginny’s hand in marriage. (This is England, 1967, after all.) So he does.

He manages to arrive before Ginny. Phillip’s wife, Sheila, answers the door.

A pleasant, but totally clueless woman, she has no idea her husband’s been having an affair with Ginny.

Greg thinks Sheila is Ginny’s mother.

Sheila has no idea who Greg is, but is welcoming and hospitable, nonetheless.

Phillip thinks Greg is asking for permission to marry Sheila, and keeps refusing.

And Phillip and Ginny are desperate to keep their partners from discovering their affair.

Jason Parrish and Kim Morgan Dean in “Relatively Speaking,” playing at the Rep. Who’s on first?

So begins “Relatively Speaking,” opening Friday, March 12, at Florida Repertory Theatre.

It’s an early Alan Ayckbourn play that starts with misunderstanding and adds misunderstanding upon misunderstanding, as characters try to make things better but only keep making make them worse.

It’s so convoluted that weeks into rehearsal, the actors are still working it out among themselves.

In part, says director Robert Cacioppo, the play mocks how the British will be pleasant no matter what you say to them.

Each character has his or her separate agenda. Conversations take place only to generate four wildly diverse interpretations of what was said.

“It’s almost like the classic ‘Who’s on First’ routine by Abbott and Costello, spread over two hours,” Mr. Cacioppo says. “The guy saying it knows what he’s saying, but you have four varieties of (interpretation).”

Mr. Ayckbourn’s seventh play, written in 1965, “Relatively Speaking” changed things for him overnight.

“He wrote it in a week,” says Mr. Cacioppo. “It’s his first hit, the show that put him on the map. Forty years after it opened, he directed it as his last show (in 2009) at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.”

The playwright’s previous work, “Mr. Whatnot,” had been so ill-received by the critics that Mr. Ayckbourn had considered abandoning playwriting, Mr. Cacioppo says. Then Stephen Joseph, artistic director of the Library Theatre in Scarborough, England, and Mr. Ayckbourn’s mentor, commissioned him to write a comedy.

Mr. Ayckbourn struggled with writer’s block, and the play underwent a number of revisions as well as various titles, including “Meet My Mother,” “Taken for Granted” and “Father’s Day.”

When it opened at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre, it was so successful that the Queen and Prince Phillip came to see it, and Noel Coward sent a congratulatory telegram.

“His mentor told him, ‘Before you start breaking the rules, write a play that’s a well-made play,’” Mr. Cacioppo says. After the success of “Relatively Speaking,” he adds, Mr. Ayckbourn progressively broke more and more rules with his plays.

“He’s famous for the brilliant breaking of all traditions of theater. ‘Taking Steps’ takes place in a three-story mansion, but it’s all on one stage. So a guy upstairs will stomp on the floor, and the guy living underneath will look up at the ceiling, but they’re standing right next to each other on the stage.

“He has a play where you go through a door and it’s a different time.

“And ‘The Norman Conquests,’ (a trilogy of Mr. Ayckbourn’s plays recently on Broadway) is three plays happening on the same weekend, so in one play a character goes off into the kitchen, and in another play you see him in the kitchen.”

Complicated circumstances

This is Mr. Cacioppo’s fourth time directing an Alan Ayckbourn play, and, “This one is the hardest for me,” he says.

In “Boeing-Boeing,” the farce that opened Florida Rep’s current season, the staging was complicated; in “Relatively Speaking,” he says, “You want to simplify. You want a much lighter hand. You want to take the brush and erase your steps.

“It’s a complicated process to make it really simple.”

It’s high comedy, and the humor is not the typical set-up, punch line kind of humor some playwrights use today.

“There are no jokes, per se,” Mr. Cacioppo says.

“There are these pauses,” says Chris Clavelli, who plays Phillip.

“There are, like a Pinter play, pauses written into the script as well as silences,” Mr. Cacioppo says. “You have 12 lines in a row without a pause, and then there’s a pause. The character is thinking: ‘What’s he thinking? Did he catch on to me?’”

Trust the material

Jason Parrish, who plays Greg, remembers learning about classic theater and about what makes comedy comedy. “It’s whenever an audience knows more than your character,” he says. “That’s the essence of this play… My character doesn’t know what’s going on, but the audience does. That will be delightful to people.”

In this play, Mr. Cacioppo says, “It’s all circumstantial.”

Mr. Parrish adds, “It’s the situation. It’s all about what we don’t know.”

“The whole first act is building a house of cards that Phillip and Ginny are going to have to maintain,” says Kim Morgan Dean, who plays Ginny. “As much as she wants to end it with him, they want to keep the others in the dark.”

Carrie Lund — who acted in a production of “Relatively Speaking” 24 years ago, also in the role of Sheila — says some have referred to the play as a mystery, because people want to know how it’s going to end.

“This is one of those shows that’s going to surprise us,” Mr. Parrish says. “It’s going to surprise us how much the audience is with us.”

“You have to trust the material,” declares Mr. Cacioppo. “It’s a great play by a great playwright.” ¦

in the know

>> What: “Relatively Speaking”
>> When: March 12-28 (discounted previews
March 9-11)
>> Where: Florida Repertory Theatre, in the
historic Arcade Theatre on Bay Street, between
Hendry and Jackson in downtown Fort Myers
>> Cost: $42 and $38
>> Information: (239) 332-4488 or www.
FloridaRep.org