Time travel is one of literature’s most durable, recurrent fantasies. Adjacent to immortality and closely allied to omnipotence, it springs from a magical faith in the fundamental interchangeability of space and time. Imagine if moving through space could somehow enable you to turn back — or forward — the clock. Where would you go? What would you do?
This idea forms the premise of Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors, the comedy/thriller that opens March 2 at Santa Barbara City College’s Garvin Theatre. An aging roué, Reece (Matt Smith), orders a sex worker up to his hotel room, only to substitute confession for coition. It seems he has participated in plotting the death of two of his wives. The hired woman, Poopay (Felicia Hall), understandably upset by these revelations, winds up becoming the killer’s next target and only manages to escape by fleeing through the hotel room’s communicating door, which leads, as it turns out, not to another suite in the hotel but rather back to the same room 20 years before. There she joins forces with Ruella (Leslie Gangl Howe) and eventually with Jessica (Brittany Harter), the victims of Reece’s assistant Julian (George Coe), in a madcap race through time — and those doors — to see if they can stop the slaughter not only from continuing but also from happening in the first place.
Working in meticulously coached British accents, the cast will confront an evening-length obstacle course of rapid-fire changes both onstage and off. For director Katie Laris, it’s an opportunity to revel in theater’s ability to put characters in “circumstances beyond their imagining,” yet without losing their fundamental humanity. “The show is quite genuine despite its fantasy elements,” said Laris. “There’s a lot of heart in this piece, and at the same time it provides amusement through the comedy action; it’s really about human friendship — the capacity to show courage and kindness, and to connect with another person. It’s not a romantic show, but it is about falling in love, the kind of love that’s based in appreciating another person for who they are.”