New Statesman (D.A.N. Jones)
It is as if a brilliant child has gathered up the dirty glasses after an adult party and mixed the stale leavings into something resembling a champagne cocktail.
Sunday Times (Harold Hobson)
This is a comedy of mistaken identity ingeniously worked out so that the one sensible word which would shatter the play into nothing is convincingly never spoken.
The Times (Irving Wardle)
Relatively Speaking is a single-minded contribution to the theatre of pleasure; and for once I am compelled to admit the existence of a good play that has practically nothing to express…. He [Ayckbourn] tackles the theme simply as a game to be played as brilliantly as possible, and for once ‘brilliant’ exactly describes the result.
The Stage (R.B. Marriott)
[Relatively Speaking] is stylish, in the sense it has it own distinctive, fine quality in approach and writing; witty with a comic sense that springs from penetrating observation of character, and is not merely the outcome of situation or superficial behaviour; and has depth because the author is saying something of importance while he endeavours to entertain. It is the best comedy seen in the West End for a considerable time.
What’s On (Kenneth A. Hurren)
Relatively Speaking may not be the most distinguished and elevating play of our time, but I shall burn a boat and say that, if it does nothing else, it exploits the business of mistaken identities more successfully than any piece on the English stage since Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer. Actually, it does nothing else. Which is not a complaint. I merely mention it, not irrelevantly, but to emphasise the wondrous extent of Mr Ayckbourn’s expertise. He juggles with his single joke for some two hours, but with such skill and variety that the laughter it provokes is virtually continuous.
Fonte: http://relativelyspeaking.alanayckbourn.net/RS_Reviews.htm
"The launch of my play Relatively Speaking in 1967 in London's West End, when I was still under 30 [was my big break]. It came a the right time: it was a French window play at a period when most plays were set around kitchen sinks. I think the critics breathed a collective sigh of relief: instead of dirty dishes and angry northerners they had shiny southerners having breakfast in the sunshine."
(The Guardian, 5 October 2010)
