A Chorus of Disapproval

A play by Alan Ayckbourn directed by the author
National Theatre, 1 August 1985
Olivier Theatre

Decor: Alan Lagg
Costumes: Lindy Hemming
Lighting: Mick Hughes

Music director: Paul Lodd
Dances: Olivia Breeze
Sound: Gary Giles

Bob Peck's Guy Jones is also a beautiful piece of physical acting: at first locked-in and tentative, Peck, in the excitement of adultery, flowers into a breezy spring-heeled lope before reverting to a crushed quietness.

- Michael Billington, Guardian, 3 August 1985

One criticism must, however, be made of the miscasting of Bob Peck in the role of the widower. A solid, gritty actor, he lacks the innocence and charm essential for the role.

- Francis King, Sunday Telegraph, 4 August 1985

Light opera and heavy relationships converge in Alan Ayckbourn's ambitious A Chorus of Disapproval in which a diffident widower joins a local production of 'The Beggars Opera', eventually nabs the leading role, beds a local swinger and falls in love with the timid but rebelling wife of the company director. It's a play which begins awkwardly but builds with the usual Ayckbournian assurance into a panorama of small-town life in which observance of the finer arts mixes easily with individual eccentricity, shadey property deals, casual and not so casual extra-marital nookey and in which characters are observed in a gently objective way which reveals attempts to flesh out a large number of recognisably contemporary characters and which manages to blend comedy and pathos to such stirring effect. There are numerous comic gems 0- the blind lighting technician, the violently butch stage manageress and a gut-aching scene in which two wives fight over the underpants worn by their mutual lover but in fact belonging to the husband of one of them. Of the performances, Michael Gambon as a scruffy, myopic, repressed director, Bob Peck cunningly cast as the shy Guy and Imelda Staunton as the love-lorn wife are particularly brilliant. A very good night out.

- Steve Grant, TIME OUT, 8 August 1985

Bob Peck--one of the National's most valuable acquisitions in a long time--employs a vast vocabulary of gesture to suggest Jones's awkwardness, and to breathe new life into old jokes. Examples include his first intimate encounter with the more swish of his brief loves, who chokes him on tequila cocktails and baffles him with sexual sophistication. Less expected are the bizarre mannerisms he rehearses for his first role of 'Crook-Fingered Jack', and the way he skips around when alone, revealing thespian enthusiasm he is incapable of putting into words.

The pairing of Peck and Gambon is dream casting, and pays expected dividends.

- Jim Hiley, Listener, 15 August 1985

Peck is an interesting but perverse choice for the shy widower. He is a clever and knowing actor playing slightly daft, scuffing the shag-pile carpets, mouse-voiced and weak at the knees, whereas what is needed is a genuine blank sheet upon whom members of the community can scribble their ruthlessness and ambition.

- Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 4 August 1985