Love thy neighbour, if you dare (From Gazette Series)

Love thy neighbour, if you dare

5:59pm Tuesday 14th February 2012 in Leisure By Marion Sauvebois

LOVE thy neighbour…or else! This is in a nutshell the plot of Alan Ayckbourn’s mad –but oh-so-delectable—dark comedy Neighbourhood Watch.

We have all been cornered at some point by an intense neighbour raging about the hike in crime rates, the country going down the drain and launching into a speech about street violence taking its toll on pensioners.

But what would happen, the playwright asks, if it was not just one neighbour but of group of them? What if they decided to join forces and set up a neighbourhood watch? And what if, more worryingly, they were given free reign to ‘restore order’ in an altogether quiet and crimeless community?

When Hilda and Martin move to Bluebell Hill, they decide, along with a handful of their new neighbours, to set up such a policing group after Martin spots a trespasser on his lawn. Although the deliquent turns out to be a child on his way home from his weekly clarinet lessons next door, the team opt to go ahead with the plan. What starts off as a peaceful and well-meaning endeavour turns into a settling of scores after someone intentionally—probably the child himself—smashes Martin and Hilda’s livingroom window by throwing the man’s beloved garden gnome at it.

The safety craze escalates and the group convince their gullible neighbours to agree to the erection of a 10-foot razor-sharp metal fence around the street with ID checks of anyone going in and out of Bluebell Hill. A fearmongering campaign spreads through the quiet residential area and soon the neighbourhood watch extends its justice-seeking mission to not only protecting the community from outside danger but to save it from itself. And their reign of terror begins.

Ayckbourn’s equisitly witty, incisive and hilarious dialogue makes the play a pleasure to watch. But far from allowing us sit back and distance ourselves from what is presented to us, he puts enough familiar comments in the characters’ mouth for us to feel slightly uncomfortable in our seats. After all, some of these people are like us and were not so extreme in their views to begin with. How easy it could be to do evil in the name of good and fall to the other side.

Neighbourhood Watch is a hysterical—in every meaning of the word- and unique play that will stay with you for a very very long time.

Neighbourhood Watch is on at the Theatre Royal until Saturday 18.