Alan Ayckbourn
Encyclopedia
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE
(born 12 April 1939) is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London
and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre
in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End
, at the Royal National Theatre
or by the Royal Shakespeare Company
since his first hit Relatively Speaking
opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Major successes include Absurd Person Singular
(1975), The Norman Conquests
trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce
(1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind
(1985), A Small Family Business
(1987), Man Of The Moment
(1988), House & Garden
(1999) and Private Fears in Public Places
(2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard
Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway
, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.
, London. His mother Irene Worley ("Lolly") was a writer of short stories who published under the name "Mary James". His father, Horace Ayckbourn, was an orchestral violinist, at one time deputy leader of the London Symphony Orchestra
. His parents, who separated shortly after World War II
, never married, and Ayckbourn's mother divorced her first husband to marry again in 1948.
Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge (a preparatory school in the village of Wisborough Green
) when he was about 10. While at prep school as a boarder his mother wrote to tell him she was marrying Cecil Pye, a bank manager, and when he was at home for the holidays his new family consisted of his mother, his stepfather and Christopher, his stepfather's son by an earlier marriage. This relationship too, reportedly ran into difficulties early on. Biographer Paul Allen has compared characters and themes in Ayckbourn's mature plays with his childhood experience of several unconventional relationships and an unhappy marriage.
Ayckbourn attended Haileybury
, in the village of Hertford Heath
, and while there toured Europe and America with the school's Shakespeare company.
, where he was introduced to the artistic director, Stephen Joseph
. It is said that Joseph became both a mentor and father figure for Ayckbourn until his untimely death in 1967, and he has consistently spoken highly of him.
Ayckbourn's career was briefly interrupted when he was called for National Service
. He was swiftly discharged, officially on medical grounds, but it is suggested that a doctor who noticed his reluctance to join the Armed Forces deliberately failed the medical as a favour. Although Ayckbourn continued to move where his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, the house formerly owned by Stephen Joseph
.
In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company, and indeed Ayckbourn's first two plays were written jointly with her under the pseudonym of "Roland Allen". They had two sons, Steven and Philip
. However, the marriage had difficulties which eventually led to their separation in 1971. Alan Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Christine became easy once they agreed their marriage was over. Around this time, he started to share a home with Heather Stoney, an actress he had first met ten years earlier. Like his mother, neither he nor Christine sought a divorce for the next thirty years and it was only in 1997 that they formally divorced; Ayckbourn married Heather Stoney. One side-effect of the timing is that, as Alan was awarded a knighthood
a few months before the divorce, both his first and second wife are entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn.
In February 2006, he suffered a stroke
in Scarborough, and stated: "I hope to be back on my feet, or should I say my left leg, as soon as possible, but I know it is going to take some time. In the meantime I am in excellent hands and so is the Stephen Joseph Theatre." He left hospital after eight weeks and returned to directing after six months, but the following year he announced he would step down as Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Ayckbourn, however, continues to write and direct his own work at the theatre.
(1975), he admitted to being, in some respects, all four of the men in the play. It has been suggested that, after Ayckbourn himself, the person who is used the most in his plays is his mother, particularly as Susan in Woman in Mind
(1985).
What is less clear is how much influence events in Ayckbourn's life have had on his writing. It is true that the theme of marriages in various difficulties was heavily present throughout his plays in the early seventies, around the time his own marriage was coming to an end. However, by this time, he had also witnessed the failures of his parents' relationships as well as those of some of his friends. Which relationships, if any, he drew on for his plays, is unclear. In Paul Allen’s biography, Ayckbourn is briefly compared to Dafydd and Guy in A Chorus of Disapproval
(1984). Both characters feel themselves in trouble, and there was speculation that Alan Ayckbourn himself may have felt himself to be in trouble. At the time, he had reportedly become seriously involved with another actress, which threatened his relationship with Heather Stoney. But again, it is unclear whether this had any effect on the writing, and Paul Allen's view is that it is not current experience that Ayckbourn uses for his plays.
It could be that Ayckbourn had written plays with himself and his own issues in mind, but as Ayckbourn is portrayed as a guarded and private man, it is hard to imagine him exposing his own life in his plays to any great degree. In the biography, Paul Allen wrote, regarding a suggestion in Cosmopolitan that his plays were becoming autobiographical: "If we take that to mean that his plays tell his own life story, he still hasn't started."
by his French master. Ayckbourn joined Wolfit on tour to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as an acting assistant stage manager (meaning a role that involved both acting and stage management) for three weeks, with his first role on the professional stage being various parts in The Strong are Lonely by Fritz Hochwälder
. In the following year, Ayckbourn appeared in six other plays at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing
, and the Thorndyke theatre, Leatherhead
.
In 1957, Ayckbourn was employed by the director Stephen Joseph
at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, the predecessor to the modern Stephen Joseph Theatre
. His role, again, was initially an acting stage manager. This employment led to Ayckbourn's first professional script commission, in 1958. When he complained about the quality of a script he was performing, Joseph challenged him to write a better one. The result was The Square Cat, written under the pseudonym Roland Allen and first performed in 1959. In this play, Ayckbourn himself played the character Jerry Watiss.
After thirty-four appearances in plays at the Library Theatre, including four of his own, in 1962 Ayckbourn moved to Stoke-on-Trent
to help set up the Victoria Theatre, (now the New Vic
), where he appeared in a further eighteen plays. His final appearance in one of his own plays was as the Crimson Gollywog in the disastrous children's play Christmas v Mastermind. He left the Stoke company in 1964, officially to commit his time to the London production of Mr. Whatnot, but reportedly because was having trouble working with the artistic director, Peter Cheeseman
. By now, his career as a writer was coming to fruition, and his acting career was sidelined.
His final role on stage was as Jerry in Two for the Seesaw
by William Gibson
, at the Civic Theatre in Rotherham
. He was left stranded on stage because Heather Stoney was unable to re-appear because the props had been left unpacked, and this led him to decide acting was more trouble than it was worth. The assistant stage manager on the production, Bill Kenwright
, would become one of the UK's most successful producers.
). His first play, The Square Cat, was sufficiently popular locally to secure further commissions, but neither this nor the following three plays had any major impact outside of Scarborough. But, after his transfer to Victoria Theatre
in Stoke-on-Trent
, there came Christmas v Mastermind, which flopped and is now universally regarded as Ayckbourn's greatest disaster.
His fortunes began to revive in 1963 with Mr. Whatnot, again premièring at the Victoria Theatre. This was the first play that Ayckbourn was sufficiently happy with to allow performances today, and the first play to receive a West End
performance. However, the West End production flopped, in part down to misguided casting. After this, Ayckbourn experimented by collaborating with comedians, first writing a monologue for Tommy Cooper
, and later with Ronnie Barker
, who played Lord Slingsby-Craddock in the London production of Mr Whatnot in 1964, for the scripts of for LWT
's Hark at Barker
. Ayckbourn used the pseudonym 'Peter Caulfield' because he was under exclusive contract to the BBC
at the time.
Then, in 1965, back at the Scarborough Library Theatre, Meet my Father was produced, later retitled Relatively Speaking
. This time, the play was a massive success, both in Scarborough and the West End, making Alan Ayckbourn rich and earning him a congratulatory telegram from Noel Coward
. This was not quite the end of Ayckbourn's hit-and-miss record, because his following play, The Sparrow only ran for three weeks at Scarborough. However, the following play, How the Other Half Loves, secured his runaway success as a playwright.
The height of Ayckbourn's commercial success included Absurd Person Singular
(1975), The Norman Conquests
trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce
(1975) and Just Between Ourselves (1976), all plays that focused heavily on marriage in the British middle classes. The only failure during this period was 1975 musical with Andrew Lloyd-Webber
, Jeeves, and even this did little to dent Ayckbourn's popularity. Although his plays have received major West End productions almost from the beginning of his writing career, and hence have been reviewed in British newspapers, Ayckbourn's work was for years routinely dismissed as being too slight for serious study. Recently, scholars have begun to view Ayckbourn as an important commentator on the lifestyles of the British suburb
an middle class
, and as a stylistic innovator who experiments with theatrical styles within the boundaries set by popular tastes.
From the 1980s, Ayckbourn began to move away from the recurring themes of marriage and explore other contemporary themes, one example being Woman in Mind
, a play performed entirely from the perspective of a Woman going through a nervous breakdown. He also experimented with several more unconventional ways of writing plays, such as Intimate Exchanges, which has one beginning and sixteen possible endings, and House & Garden
, where two plays take place simultaneously of two different stages, as well as diversifying into children's theatre (such as Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays
and musical plays, such as By Jeeves
(a more successful rewrite of the original Jeeves).
With a résumé of over seventy plays, of which more than forty have played at the National Theatre or in the West End, Alan Ayckbourn is one of England’s most successful living playwrights. Despite his success, honours and awards (which include a prestigious Laurence Olivier Award), Alan Ayckbourn remains a relatively anonymous figure dedicated to regional theatre. Throughout his writing career, all but four of his plays were premièred at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
in Scarborough in its three different locations.
Alan Ayckbourn received the CBE in 1987 and was knighted in 1997. It is frequently claimed (but not proven) that Alan Ayckbourn is the most performed living English playwright, and the second most performed of all time after Shakespeare.
Although Alan Ayckbourn's plays no longer dominate the theatrical scene on the scale of his earlier works, he continues to write, his most recent major success being Private Fears in Public Places
that had a hugely successful Off-Broadway
run, and in 2006 was made into a film Cœurs, directed by Alain Resnais
. After suffering a stroke, there was uncertainly as to whether he could continue to write (the Ayckbourn play premièred immediately after the stroke, If I Were You
, was written before his illness), but his first play written afterwards, Life and Beth
, was premièred in the summer of 2008. Ayckbourn continues to write for the Stephen Joseph Theatre on invitation of his successor as Artistic Director, Chris Monks, with the first new play under this arrangement, My Wonderful Day
, performed in October 2009.
Alan Ayckbourn began directing at the Scarborough Library Theatre
in 1961, with a production of Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton
. He directed five other plays that year and the following year in Scarborough, and after transferring to the Victoria Theatre
, directed a further six plays in 1963. Between 1964 and 1967 (when much of his time was taken up by various productions of his early successes Mr. Whatnot and Relatively Speaking
) he only directed one play (The Sparrow, written by himself, later withdrawn), but in 1968 he resumed regularly directing plays, mostly at Scarborough. At this time he also worked as a radio drama producer for the BBC, based in Leeds.
At first, his directing career was separate from his writing career. It was not until 1963 that Ayckbourn directed a play of his own (a revival of Standing Room Only), 1967 that Ayckbourn directed a première of his own (The Sparrow). The London premières remained in the hands of other directors for longer, with the first play of his both written and directed by him in London (Bedroom Farce
) waiting until 1977.
After the death of Stephen Joseph
in 1967, the position of Director of Productions was appointed on an annual basis. Alan Ayckbourn was offered this position in 1969 and 1970, succeeding Rodney Wood, but he handed the position over to Caroline Smith in 1971 (having spent most of his time that year in the USA with How the Other Half Loves). He became Director of Productions again in 1972, and this time, on 12 November that same year, he was made the permanent Artistic Director of the theatre.
In mid-1986, Ayckbourn accepted an invitation to work as a visiting director for two years at the Royal National Theatre
in London, form his own company, and perform a play in each of the three auditoria provided at least one was a new play of his own. Using a stock company that included established performers like Michael Gambon
, Polly Adams
and Simon Cadell
. The three plays became four, and were: Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine, with adaptations by Ayckbourn (Lyttelton), Arthur Miller
's A View From the Bridge (Cottesloe), his own A Small Family Business
(Olivier) and John Ford
's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
(Olivier again). During this time, Alan Ayckbourn shared his role of Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Robin Herford and returned in 1987 to direct the première of Henceforward...
.
He announced in 1999 that he would step back from directing the work of other playwrights, in order to concentrate on his own plays, the last one being Rob Shearman
's Knights in Plastic Armour in 1999; the exception being in 2002 when he directed the world première of Tim Firth
's The Safari Party.
In 2002, following a dispute over the Duchess Theatre
's handling of Damsels in Distress
, Ayckbourn sharply criticised both this and the West End
's treatment of theatre in general, in particular their casting of celebrities. Although he did not explicitly say he would boycott the West End, he did not return to direct in the West End again until 2009 with a revival of Woman in Mind
(although he did allow other West End producers to revive Absurd Person Singular
in 2007 and The Norman Conquests
in 2008).
After Ayckbourn suffered a stroke in February 2006, he returned to work in September and premièred his 70th play If I Were You
at the Stephen Joseph Theatre the following month.
He announced in June 2007 that he would retire as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre after the 2008 season. His successor, Chris Monks, took over at the start of the 2009–2010 season, but Ayckbourn remained to direct premières and revivals of his work at the theatre, beginning with How the Other Half Loves in June 2009.
In March 2010 he directed an in-the-round revival of his play Taking Steps at the Orange Tree Theatre
, winning universal press acclaim.
, first performed in 1974.
The other two one-act plays were:
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(born 12 April 1939) is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, at the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
or by the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
since his first hit Relatively Speaking
Relatively Speaking (play)
Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The...
opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Major successes include Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples...
(1975), The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...
trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...
(1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind
Woman In Mind
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End...
(1985), A Small Family Business
A Small Family Business
A Small Family Business is a play by Alan Ayckbourn, based around the business of the title and dealing with the Thatcherism of the time. It premiered at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre on 20 May 1987, where it won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for that year...
(1987), Man Of The Moment
Man of the Moment (play)
Man of the Moment is a play by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on 10 August 1988 and transferred to the Globe Theatre in the West End on 14 February 1990-Original West End cast:...
(1988), House & Garden
House & Garden (plays)
House and Garden are a diptych of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and...
(1999) and Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,...
(2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.
Childhood
Ayckbourn was born in HampsteadHampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London. His mother Irene Worley ("Lolly") was a writer of short stories who published under the name "Mary James". His father, Horace Ayckbourn, was an orchestral violinist, at one time deputy leader of the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
. His parents, who separated shortly after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, never married, and Ayckbourn's mother divorced her first husband to marry again in 1948.
Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge (a preparatory school in the village of Wisborough Green
Wisborough Green
Wisborough Green is a village and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England miles west of Billingshurst on the A272.Newbridge where the A272 crosses the River Arun mile east of the village was the highest point of the Arun navigation, and the southern end of the Wey and Arun...
) when he was about 10. While at prep school as a boarder his mother wrote to tell him she was marrying Cecil Pye, a bank manager, and when he was at home for the holidays his new family consisted of his mother, his stepfather and Christopher, his stepfather's son by an earlier marriage. This relationship too, reportedly ran into difficulties early on. Biographer Paul Allen has compared characters and themes in Ayckbourn's mature plays with his childhood experience of several unconventional relationships and an unhappy marriage.
Ayckbourn attended Haileybury
Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Haileybury and Imperial Service College, , is a prestigious British independent school founded in 1862. The school is located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford, from central London, on of parkland occupied until 1858 by the East India College...
, in the village of Hertford Heath
Hertford Heath
Hertford Heath is a small village and civil parish near the county town of Hertford in Hertfordshire, England.-Geography:It is located on a heath above the River Lea valley, on its south side...
, and while there toured Europe and America with the school's Shakespeare company.
Adult life
After leaving school at 17, Ayckbourn's career took several temporary jobs in various places before starting a temporary job at the Scarborough Library TheatreStephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
, where he was introduced to the artistic director, Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph was an English stage director and pioneer of "theatre in the round".-Life:Stephen Joseph was born in London, the son of Hermione Gingold and the publisher Michael Joseph . He was educated at Clayesmore School in Dorset...
. It is said that Joseph became both a mentor and father figure for Ayckbourn until his untimely death in 1967, and he has consistently spoken highly of him.
Ayckbourn's career was briefly interrupted when he was called for National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
. He was swiftly discharged, officially on medical grounds, but it is suggested that a doctor who noticed his reluctance to join the Armed Forces deliberately failed the medical as a favour. Although Ayckbourn continued to move where his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, the house formerly owned by Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph was an English stage director and pioneer of "theatre in the round".-Life:Stephen Joseph was born in London, the son of Hermione Gingold and the publisher Michael Joseph . He was educated at Clayesmore School in Dorset...
.
In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company, and indeed Ayckbourn's first two plays were written jointly with her under the pseudonym of "Roland Allen". They had two sons, Steven and Philip
Philip Ayckbourn
Philip Ayckbourn is an English actor, director and playwright. He is the son of playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn.Ayckbourn trained for three years at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art...
. However, the marriage had difficulties which eventually led to their separation in 1971. Alan Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Christine became easy once they agreed their marriage was over. Around this time, he started to share a home with Heather Stoney, an actress he had first met ten years earlier. Like his mother, neither he nor Christine sought a divorce for the next thirty years and it was only in 1997 that they formally divorced; Ayckbourn married Heather Stoney. One side-effect of the timing is that, as Alan was awarded a knighthood
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
a few months before the divorce, both his first and second wife are entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn.
In February 2006, he suffered a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in Scarborough, and stated: "I hope to be back on my feet, or should I say my left leg, as soon as possible, but I know it is going to take some time. In the meantime I am in excellent hands and so is the Stephen Joseph Theatre." He left hospital after eight weeks and returned to directing after six months, but the following year he announced he would step down as Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Ayckbourn, however, continues to write and direct his own work at the theatre.
Influence on plays
Since Alan Ayckbourn's plays started becoming established in the West End, interviewers have raised the question of whether his work is autobiographical. There is no clear answer to this question. There has only been one biography, written by Paul Allen, and this primarily covers his career in the theatre. Ayckbourn has frequently said he sees aspects of himself in all his characters. For example, in Bedroom FarceBedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...
(1975), he admitted to being, in some respects, all four of the men in the play. It has been suggested that, after Ayckbourn himself, the person who is used the most in his plays is his mother, particularly as Susan in Woman in Mind
Woman In Mind
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End...
(1985).
What is less clear is how much influence events in Ayckbourn's life have had on his writing. It is true that the theme of marriages in various difficulties was heavily present throughout his plays in the early seventies, around the time his own marriage was coming to an end. However, by this time, he had also witnessed the failures of his parents' relationships as well as those of some of his friends. Which relationships, if any, he drew on for his plays, is unclear. In Paul Allen’s biography, Ayckbourn is briefly compared to Dafydd and Guy in A Chorus of Disapproval
A Chorus of Disapproval (play)
A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...
(1984). Both characters feel themselves in trouble, and there was speculation that Alan Ayckbourn himself may have felt himself to be in trouble. At the time, he had reportedly become seriously involved with another actress, which threatened his relationship with Heather Stoney. But again, it is unclear whether this had any effect on the writing, and Paul Allen's view is that it is not current experience that Ayckbourn uses for his plays.
It could be that Ayckbourn had written plays with himself and his own issues in mind, but as Ayckbourn is portrayed as a guarded and private man, it is hard to imagine him exposing his own life in his plays to any great degree. In the biography, Paul Allen wrote, regarding a suggestion in Cosmopolitan that his plays were becoming autobiographical: "If we take that to mean that his plays tell his own life story, he still hasn't started."
Early career and acting
On leaving school his theatrical career started immediately, with an introduction to Sir Donald WolfitDonald Wolfit
Sir Donald Wolfit, KBE was a well-known English actor-manager.-Biography:Wolfit, who was "Woolfitt" at birth was born at New Balderton, near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire and attended the Magnus Grammar School and made his stage début in 1920...
by his French master. Ayckbourn joined Wolfit on tour to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as an acting assistant stage manager (meaning a role that involved both acting and stage management) for three weeks, with his first role on the professional stage being various parts in The Strong are Lonely by Fritz Hochwälder
Fritz Hochwälder
Fritz Hochwälder also known as Fritz Hochwaelder, was an Austrian playwright. Known for his spare prose and strong moralist themes, Hochwälder won several literary awards, including the Austrian State Prize for Literature in 1966...
. In the following year, Ayckbourn appeared in six other plays at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
, and the Thorndyke theatre, Leatherhead
Leatherhead
Leatherhead is a town in the County of Surrey, England, on the River Mole, part of Mole Valley district. It is thought to be of Saxon origin...
.
In 1957, Ayckbourn was employed by the director Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph was an English stage director and pioneer of "theatre in the round".-Life:Stephen Joseph was born in London, the son of Hermione Gingold and the publisher Michael Joseph . He was educated at Clayesmore School in Dorset...
at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, the predecessor to the modern Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
. His role, again, was initially an acting stage manager. This employment led to Ayckbourn's first professional script commission, in 1958. When he complained about the quality of a script he was performing, Joseph challenged him to write a better one. The result was The Square Cat, written under the pseudonym Roland Allen and first performed in 1959. In this play, Ayckbourn himself played the character Jerry Watiss.
After thirty-four appearances in plays at the Library Theatre, including four of his own, in 1962 Ayckbourn moved to Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
to help set up the Victoria Theatre, (now the New Vic
New Vic Theatre
The New Vic Theatre is situated in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. It was purpose-built as a theatre in the round and opened in 1986, replacing a converted cinema, the Victoria Theatre, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.-History:...
), where he appeared in a further eighteen plays. His final appearance in one of his own plays was as the Crimson Gollywog in the disastrous children's play Christmas v Mastermind. He left the Stoke company in 1964, officially to commit his time to the London production of Mr. Whatnot, but reportedly because was having trouble working with the artistic director, Peter Cheeseman
Peter Cheeseman
Peter Cheeseman, CBE was a British theatre director who is credited with having pioneered "theatre in the round".-Career:...
. By now, his career as a writer was coming to fruition, and his acting career was sidelined.
His final role on stage was as Jerry in Two for the Seesaw
Two for the Seesaw
Two for the Seesaw is a 1962 romance-drama film directed by Robert Wise and starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine. It was adapted from the Broadway play written by William Gibson.-Plot:...
by William Gibson
William Gibson (playwright)
William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938.He was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry...
, at the Civic Theatre in Rotherham
Rotherham
Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Don, at its confluence with the River Rother, between Sheffield and Doncaster. Rotherham, at from Sheffield City Centre, is surrounded by several smaller settlements, which together form the wider Metropolitan Borough of...
. He was left stranded on stage because Heather Stoney was unable to re-appear because the props had been left unpacked, and this led him to decide acting was more trouble than it was worth. The assistant stage manager on the production, Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright CBE is a leading West End theatre producer and film producer.He is also the Chairman of Everton Football Club, an English professional football club from the city of Liverpool....
, would become one of the UK's most successful producers.
Writing
Alan Ayckbourn's earliest plays were written and produced at a time when the Scarborough Library theatre, like most regional theatres, regularly commissioned work from their own actors to keep costs down (the other notable actor whose work was being commissioned being David CamptonDavid Campton
David Campton was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years...
). His first play, The Square Cat, was sufficiently popular locally to secure further commissions, but neither this nor the following three plays had any major impact outside of Scarborough. But, after his transfer to Victoria Theatre
New Vic Theatre
The New Vic Theatre is situated in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. It was purpose-built as a theatre in the round and opened in 1986, replacing a converted cinema, the Victoria Theatre, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.-History:...
in Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
, there came Christmas v Mastermind, which flopped and is now universally regarded as Ayckbourn's greatest disaster.
His fortunes began to revive in 1963 with Mr. Whatnot, again premièring at the Victoria Theatre. This was the first play that Ayckbourn was sufficiently happy with to allow performances today, and the first play to receive a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
performance. However, the West End production flopped, in part down to misguided casting. After this, Ayckbourn experimented by collaborating with comedians, first writing a monologue for Tommy Cooper
Tommy Cooper
Thomas Frederick "Tommy" Cooper was a very popular British prop comedian and magician from Caerphilly, Wales.Cooper was a member of The Magic Circle, and respected by traditional magicians...
, and later with Ronnie Barker
Ronnie Barker
Ronald William George "Ronnie" Barker, OBE was a British actor, comedian, writer, critic, broadcaster and businessman...
, who played Lord Slingsby-Craddock in the London production of Mr Whatnot in 1964, for the scripts of for LWT
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
's Hark at Barker
Hark at Barker
Hark at Barker was a 1969 British comedy series combining elements of sitcom and sketch show, which starred Ronnie Barker. It was made for the ITV network by LWT.Each show began with a spoof news item read by Barker as a continuity announcer...
. Ayckbourn used the pseudonym 'Peter Caulfield' because he was under exclusive contract to the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
at the time.
Then, in 1965, back at the Scarborough Library Theatre, Meet my Father was produced, later retitled Relatively Speaking
Relatively Speaking (play)
Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The...
. This time, the play was a massive success, both in Scarborough and the West End, making Alan Ayckbourn rich and earning him a congratulatory telegram from Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
. This was not quite the end of Ayckbourn's hit-and-miss record, because his following play, The Sparrow only ran for three weeks at Scarborough. However, the following play, How the Other Half Loves, secured his runaway success as a playwright.
The height of Ayckbourn's commercial success included Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples...
(1975), The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...
trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...
(1975) and Just Between Ourselves (1976), all plays that focused heavily on marriage in the British middle classes. The only failure during this period was 1975 musical with Andrew Lloyd-Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
, Jeeves, and even this did little to dent Ayckbourn's popularity. Although his plays have received major West End productions almost from the beginning of his writing career, and hence have been reviewed in British newspapers, Ayckbourn's work was for years routinely dismissed as being too slight for serious study. Recently, scholars have begun to view Ayckbourn as an important commentator on the lifestyles of the British suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
an middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
, and as a stylistic innovator who experiments with theatrical styles within the boundaries set by popular tastes.
From the 1980s, Ayckbourn began to move away from the recurring themes of marriage and explore other contemporary themes, one example being Woman in Mind
Woman In Mind
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End...
, a play performed entirely from the perspective of a Woman going through a nervous breakdown. He also experimented with several more unconventional ways of writing plays, such as Intimate Exchanges, which has one beginning and sixteen possible endings, and House & Garden
House & Garden (plays)
House and Garden are a diptych of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and...
, where two plays take place simultaneously of two different stages, as well as diversifying into children's theatre (such as Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays
Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays
Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays is a play written by Alan Ayckbourn in 1988. It relies heavily on the audience for many scenes inside Mr Accousticus' house.- Plot :...
and musical plays, such as By Jeeves
By Jeeves
By Jeeves, originally Jeeves, is a 1975/1996 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn, based on the novels of P. G. Wodehouse....
(a more successful rewrite of the original Jeeves).
With a résumé of over seventy plays, of which more than forty have played at the National Theatre or in the West End, Alan Ayckbourn is one of England’s most successful living playwrights. Despite his success, honours and awards (which include a prestigious Laurence Olivier Award), Alan Ayckbourn remains a relatively anonymous figure dedicated to regional theatre. Throughout his writing career, all but four of his plays were premièred at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
in Scarborough in its three different locations.
Alan Ayckbourn received the CBE in 1987 and was knighted in 1997. It is frequently claimed (but not proven) that Alan Ayckbourn is the most performed living English playwright, and the second most performed of all time after Shakespeare.
Although Alan Ayckbourn's plays no longer dominate the theatrical scene on the scale of his earlier works, he continues to write, his most recent major success being Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,...
that had a hugely successful Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
run, and in 2006 was made into a film Cœurs, directed by Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
. After suffering a stroke, there was uncertainly as to whether he could continue to write (the Ayckbourn play premièred immediately after the stroke, If I Were You
If I Were You (play)
If I Were You is a 2006 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about an unhappy married couple who are given the chance to understand each other by discovering, quite literally, what they would do "if I were you".-Background:...
, was written before his illness), but his first play written afterwards, Life and Beth
Life and Beth
Life and Beth is a 2008 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was written as a third part of a trilogy named Things That Go Bump, uniting the cast of the first two plays: Haunting Julia and Snake in the Grass...
, was premièred in the summer of 2008. Ayckbourn continues to write for the Stephen Joseph Theatre on invitation of his successor as Artistic Director, Chris Monks, with the first new play under this arrangement, My Wonderful Day
My Wonderful Day
My Wonderful Day is a 2009 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a nine-year-old girl, Winnie, who has an essay to write about her day, and records the shenanigans of grown-ups around her....
, performed in October 2009.
Directing / Artistic Director
Although Alan Ayckbourn is best known as a writer, it is said that he only spends 10% of his time writing plays. Most of the rest of his time is spent directing.Alan Ayckbourn began directing at the Scarborough Library Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
in 1961, with a production of Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton
Patrick Hamilton (dramatist)
Patrick Hamilton was an English playwright and novelist.He was well regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley and study of his novels has been revived recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture...
. He directed five other plays that year and the following year in Scarborough, and after transferring to the Victoria Theatre
New Vic Theatre
The New Vic Theatre is situated in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. It was purpose-built as a theatre in the round and opened in 1986, replacing a converted cinema, the Victoria Theatre, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.-History:...
, directed a further six plays in 1963. Between 1964 and 1967 (when much of his time was taken up by various productions of his early successes Mr. Whatnot and Relatively Speaking
Relatively Speaking (play)
Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The...
) he only directed one play (The Sparrow, written by himself, later withdrawn), but in 1968 he resumed regularly directing plays, mostly at Scarborough. At this time he also worked as a radio drama producer for the BBC, based in Leeds.
At first, his directing career was separate from his writing career. It was not until 1963 that Ayckbourn directed a play of his own (a revival of Standing Room Only), 1967 that Ayckbourn directed a première of his own (The Sparrow). The London premières remained in the hands of other directors for longer, with the first play of his both written and directed by him in London (Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...
) waiting until 1977.
After the death of Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph
Stephen Joseph was an English stage director and pioneer of "theatre in the round".-Life:Stephen Joseph was born in London, the son of Hermione Gingold and the publisher Michael Joseph . He was educated at Clayesmore School in Dorset...
in 1967, the position of Director of Productions was appointed on an annual basis. Alan Ayckbourn was offered this position in 1969 and 1970, succeeding Rodney Wood, but he handed the position over to Caroline Smith in 1971 (having spent most of his time that year in the USA with How the Other Half Loves). He became Director of Productions again in 1972, and this time, on 12 November that same year, he was made the permanent Artistic Director of the theatre.
In mid-1986, Ayckbourn accepted an invitation to work as a visiting director for two years at the Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in London, form his own company, and perform a play in each of the three auditoria provided at least one was a new play of his own. Using a stock company that included established performers like Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
, Polly Adams
Polly Adams
Polly Adams is an English actress best known for her work on the stage both in England and in the United States, and for her portrayal of Mrs. Brown on the television series Just William. She made her Broadway debut in the critically acclaimed 1975 revival of London Assurance as Grace Harkaway...
and Simon Cadell
Simon Cadell
Simon John Cadell was an English actor.Born in London, he was the grandson of the Scottish character actor Jean Cadell, the brother of the actress Selina Cadell, and the cousin of the actor Guy Siner. He was educated at Bedales School at Petersfield where his close friends included Gyles...
. The three plays became four, and were: Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine, with adaptations by Ayckbourn (Lyttelton), Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
's A View From the Bridge (Cottesloe), his own A Small Family Business
A Small Family Business
A Small Family Business is a play by Alan Ayckbourn, based around the business of the title and dealing with the Thatcherism of the time. It premiered at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre on 20 May 1987, where it won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for that year...
(Olivier) and John Ford
John Ford (dramatist)
John Ford was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.-Life and work:...
's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
'Tis Pity She's a Whore
'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was likely first performed between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins...
(Olivier again). During this time, Alan Ayckbourn shared his role of Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Robin Herford and returned in 1987 to direct the première of Henceforward...
Henceforward...
The play Henceforward... is the first comedy in which Alan Ayckbourn includes elements of science fiction. It concerns Jerome, a composer, who develops a plan to persuade his estranged wife Corinna that his home life is sufficiently stable for her to allow their daughter to stay with him...
.
He announced in 1999 that he would step back from directing the work of other playwrights, in order to concentrate on his own plays, the last one being Rob Shearman
Rob Shearman
Robert Shearman is currently best known as a writer for Doctor Who and for his ongoing association with Jarvis & Ayres Productions which has resulted in six plays for BBC Radio 4 broadcast in the station's regular weekday Afternoon Play slot, and one classic...
's Knights in Plastic Armour in 1999; the exception being in 2002 when he directed the world première of Tim Firth
Tim Firth
Tim Firth is an English dramatist, screenwriter and songwriter.Tim Firth was born, and has lived all his life in, the North West of England on the border of Cheshire and Lancashire...
's The Safari Party.
In 2002, following a dispute over the Duchess Theatre
Duchess Theatre
The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street, near Aldwych.The theatre opened on 25 November 1929 and is one of the smallest 'proscenium arched' West End theatres. It has 479 seats on two levels....
's handling of Damsels in Distress
Damsels in Distress (plays)
Damsels in Distress is a trilogy of plays written in 2001 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The three plays, GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company . The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same...
, Ayckbourn sharply criticised both this and the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
's treatment of theatre in general, in particular their casting of celebrities. Although he did not explicitly say he would boycott the West End, he did not return to direct in the West End again until 2009 with a revival of Woman in Mind
Woman In Mind
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End...
(although he did allow other West End producers to revive Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples...
in 2007 and The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...
in 2008).
After Ayckbourn suffered a stroke in February 2006, he returned to work in September and premièred his 70th play If I Were You
If I Were You (play)
If I Were You is a 2006 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about an unhappy married couple who are given the chance to understand each other by discovering, quite literally, what they would do "if I were you".-Background:...
at the Stephen Joseph Theatre the following month.
He announced in June 2007 that he would retire as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre after the 2008 season. His successor, Chris Monks, took over at the start of the 2009–2010 season, but Ayckbourn remained to direct premières and revivals of his work at the theatre, beginning with How the Other Half Loves in June 2009.
In March 2010 he directed an in-the-round revival of his play Taking Steps at the Orange Tree Theatre
Orange Tree Theatre
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round....
, winning universal press acclaim.
C.V.
| 1956: Acting assistant stage manager with Donald Wolfit's company for three weeks at Edinburgh Festival. |
| 1956 – 1957: Actor at Worthing, Leatherhead, Scarborough (see below), and Oxford |
| 1957 – 1962: Acting assistant stage manager (1957 only) and actor (1958–1962) at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, Yorkshire |
| 1962 – 1964: Associate Director, Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire |
| 1964 – 1970: Drama producer, BBC Radio, Leeds |
| 1972 – 2009: Artistic Director, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough (formerly Library Theatre & Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round) |
| 1986 – 1988: Associate Director, National Theatre, London |
| 1991 – 1992: Cameron Mackintosh Professor of contemporary theatre, Oxford University |
Honours and awards
- 1973: Evening Standard AwardEvening Standard AwardsThe Evening Standard Theatre Awards, established in 1955, are presented annually for outstanding achievements in London Theatre. Sponsored by the Evening Standard newspaper, they are announced in late November or early December...
, Best Comedy, for Absurd Person SingularAbsurd Person SingularAbsurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples... - 1974: Evening Standard Award, Best Play, for The Norman ConquestsThe Norman ConquestsThe Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...
- 1977: Evening Standard Award, Best Play, for Just Between Ourselves
- 1981: Honorary Doctor of LettersDoctor of LettersDoctor of Letters is a university academic degree, often a higher doctorate which is frequently awarded as an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding scholarship or other merits.-Commonwealth:...
degree (Litt.D.) from University of HullUniversity of HullThe University of Hull, known informally as Hull University, is an English university, founded in 1927, located in Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire... - 1985: Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, for A Chorus of DisapprovalA Chorus of Disapproval (play)A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...
- 1985: Laurence Olivier Award, Best Comedy, for A Chorus of DisapprovalA Chorus of Disapproval (play)A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...
- 1987: Evening Standard Award, Best Play, for A Small Family BusinessA Small Family BusinessA Small Family Business is a play by Alan Ayckbourn, based around the business of the title and dealing with the Thatcherism of the time. It premiered at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre on 20 May 1987, where it won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for that year...
- 1987: Plays and Players Award
- 1987: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) from Keele University
- 1987: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) from University of LeedsUniversity of LeedsThe University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
- 1987: Commander of the Order of the British EmpireOrder of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(CBE) - 1989: Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, for Henceforward...Henceforward...The play Henceforward... is the first comedy in which Alan Ayckbourn includes elements of science fiction. It concerns Jerome, a composer, who develops a plan to persuade his estranged wife Corinna that his home life is sufficiently stable for her to allow their daughter to stay with him...
- 1990: Evening Standard Award, Best Comedy, for Man of the MomentMan of the Moment (play)Man of the Moment is a play by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on 10 August 1988 and transferred to the Globe Theatre in the West End on 14 February 1990-Original West End cast:...
- 1997: Knight BachelorKnight BachelorThe rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
- 1998: Honorary Doctor of the University degree (D.Univ.) from Open UniversityOpen UniversityThe Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
- 2009: Laurence Olivier Special Award
- 2009: The Critics' Circle annual award for Distinguished Service to the ArtsCritics' Circle Award for Distinguished Service to the ArtsEach year since 1988 The Critics' Circle has presented an award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, voted for by all members of the Circle, embracing Dance, Drama, Film, Music, Visual Arts and Architecture....
- 2011: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (Litt.D.) from York St. John University
Full-length plays
To date, Alan Ayckbourn has written 74 full-length plays.| Play numberThis numbering is the system used by the official Ayckbourn site as to how many plays have been written. This includes the full-length plays performed but later withdrawn and full-length plays for family audiences, but excludes revues and musical entertainments, adaptations of other plays, plays for children, individual one-act plays, "grey plays" (those written for performance but not publication) and plays for television. It also treats each of the plays in The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour... , House and Garden House & Garden (plays) House and Garden are a diptych of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and... and Damsels in Distress Damsels in Distress (plays) Damsels in Distress is a trilogy of plays written in 2001 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The three plays, GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company . The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same... as one play each, the one-acts from Confusions Confusions Confusions is a play by Alan Ayckbourn consisting of a series of five interconnected one-act plays. It was first staged in 1974 and played by just five actors... as a single full-length play, all variations of Intimate Exchanges as one play (likewise for Sisterly Feelings and It Could Be Any One Of Us), both parts of The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts... as a single play, and the rewrites of Jeeves and Callisto 5 as the same play as the original. Other sources may number plays differently. |
Title | Series | Scarborough Stephen Joseph Theatre The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain.... Première Scarborough premières of Ayckbourn plays between 1959 and 1976 were at the original venue of the Library Theatre, and premières between 1977 and 1995 were at the intermediate venue of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round at Westwood. Premières from 1996 were at the current Stephen Joseph Theatre, in the Round unless otherwise stated. In some productions, the official première date was later than the actual opening night. The première date is shown here. |
West End West End theatre West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking... Première |
Broadway Broadway theatre Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City... Première |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Square Cat | 30 July 1959 | |||
| 2 | Love After All | 21 December 1959 | |||
| 3 | Dad's Tale | 19 December 1960 | |||
| 4 | Standing Room Only | 13 July 1961 | (12 June 1966) This play was not performed in the West End but was performed in the British Council, London Overseas Student Centre for one night only. http://standingroomonly.alanayckbourn.net/StandingRoomOnlyProductions.htm | ||
| 5 | Christmas V Mastermind | 26 December 1962 | |||
| 6 | Mr Whatnot | 12 November 1963 | 6 August 1964 | ||
| 7 | Relatively Speaking Relatively Speaking (play) Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The... Relatively Speaking Relatively Speaking (play) Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The... was originally titled Meet My Father |
9 July 1965 | 29 March 1967 | ||
| 8 | The Sparrow | 13 July 1967 | |||
| 9 | How The Other Half Loves | 31 July 1969 | 5 August 1970 | 29 March 1971 | |
| 10 | Family Circles Family Circles was originally titled The Story So Far…, then Me Times Me Times Me, then Me Times Me | 20 August 1970 | 8 October 1974 | ||
| 11 | Time And Time Again | 8 July 1971 | 16 August 1972 | ||
| 12 | Absurd Person Singular Absurd Person Singular Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples... |
26 June 1972 | 4 July 1973 | 8 October 1974 | |
| 13 | The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour... |
Table Manners Table Manners was originally titled Fancy Meeting You | 18 June 1973 | 9 May 1974 | 7 December 1975 |
| 14 | Living Together Living Together (play) Living Together is a 1973 play by the British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn. It is one of the plays in The Norman Conquests trilogy, which together form one of Ayckbourn's most popular works.*... Living Together Living Together (play) Living Together is a 1973 play by the British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn. It is one of the plays in The Norman Conquests trilogy, which together form one of Ayckbourn's most popular works.*... was originally titled Make Yourself At Home |
26 June 1973 | 21 May 1974 | 7 December 1975 | |
| 15 | Round and Round the Garden | 2 July 1973 | 6 June 1974 | 7 December 1975 | |
| 16 | Absent Friends Absent Friends (play) Absent Friends is a 1974 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn.When Colin, a friend who has been absent, comes back to his circle of friends, his friends are worried about how to approach him over the death of his fiancée, Carol . Diana organizes a tea party for Colin's arrival... |
17 June 1974 | 23 July 1975 | ||
| 17 | Confusions Confusions Confusions is a play by Alan Ayckbourn consisting of a series of five interconnected one-act plays. It was first staged in 1974 and played by just five actors... |
30 September 1974 | 19 May 1976 | ||
| 18 | Jeeves | 22 April 1975 | |||
| 19 | Bedroom Farce Bedroom Farce (play) Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:... |
16 June 1975 | 16 March 1977 | 29 March 1979 | |
| 20 | Just Between Ourselves | 28 January 1976 | 20 April 1977 | ||
| 21 | Ten Times Table | 18 January 1977 | 5 April 1978 | ||
| 22 | Joking Apart Joking Apart (play) Joking Apart is a 1978 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was written in response to comments that Ayckbourn only ever wrote about unhappy couples. In this play, Richard and Anthea are a perfectly happy married couple, who inadvertently worsen the lives of those around them.*... |
11 January 1978 | 7 March 1979 | ||
| 23 | Sisterly Feelings | 10/11 January 1979 | 3/4 June 1980 | ||
| 24 | Taking Steps | 28 September 1979 | 2 September 1980 | 20 February 1991 | |
| 25 | Suburban Strains | 18 January 1980 | 5 February 1981 | ||
| 26 | Season's Greetings Season's Greetings (play) Season's Greetings is a 1980 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about a dysfunctional family Christmas, set over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day in an average English suburban house.... |
25 September 1980 | 29 March 1982 | ||
| 27 | Way Upstream Way Upstream Way Upstream is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. It was first performed, under Ayckbourn's direction, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK, "in the round" at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, on 2 October 1981... |
2 October 1981 | 4 October 1982 | ||
| 28 | Making Tracks Making Tracks (Ayckbourn play) Making Tracks was a 1981 musical play with words by Alan Ayckbourn and music by Paul Todd. It is set in a recording studio and is about Stan, a recording studio owner in debt to businessman Wolfe, who stakes everything on singer/songwriter Sandy, whilst actually using the voice of Lace: Stan's... |
16 December 1981 | 14 March 1983 | ||
| 29 | Intimate Exchanges Intimate Exchanges Intimate Exchanges is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Written between 1982 and 1983 it consists of eight major stories all originating from a single opening scene. As the play progresses, the characters make choices each of which causes the story to go in one of two directions, leading to one of 16... Intimate Exchanges is a play with four two-way forks in the plot, thereby offering sixteen possible variations depending on choices made by the characters. The eight variations offered after the third fork are often treated as individual plays. |
Affairs in a Tent | 3 June 1982 | 14 August 1984 | (31 May 2007) The New York Première of Intimate Exchanges, was off-Broadway at 59E59 Primary Stages Theater Primary Stages was founded in 1984 by Casey Childs as a New York State non-profit theater company with the mission of producing new plays and fostering the artistic development of emerging and established playwrights.... as part of the 2006–07 revival. |
| Events on a Hotel Terrace | |||||
| A Garden Fete | |||||
| A Pageant | |||||
| A Cricket Match | |||||
| A Game of Golf | |||||
| A One Man Protest | |||||
| Love in the Mist | |||||
| 30 | It Could Be Any One Of Us It Could Be Any One Of Us It Could Be Any One Of Us is a 1983 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. This play was a murder mystery, but with only subtle changes to the play, there are three possible endings, each naming a different character as the murderer.*... It Could Be Any One Of Us is a single play with three alternative endings. |
5 October 1983 | 14 March 1983 | ||
| 31 | A Chorus of Disapproval A Chorus of Disapproval (play) A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while... |
2 May 1984 | 1 August 1985 | ||
| 32 | Woman in Mind Woman In Mind Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End... |
30 May 1985 | 3 September 1986 | ||
| 33 | A Small Family Business A Small Family Business A Small Family Business is a play by Alan Ayckbourn, based around the business of the title and dealing with the Thatcherism of the time. It premiered at the Olivier stage of the Royal National Theatre on 20 May 1987, where it won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for that year... |
20 May 1987 | 27 April 1992 | ||
| 34 | Henceforward... Henceforward... The play Henceforward... is the first comedy in which Alan Ayckbourn includes elements of science fiction. It concerns Jerome, a composer, who develops a plan to persuade his estranged wife Corinna that his home life is sufficiently stable for her to allow their daughter to stay with him... |
30 July 1987 | 21 November 1988 | ||
| 35 | Man Of The Moment Man of the Moment (play) Man of the Moment is a play by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on 10 August 1988 and transferred to the Globe Theatre in the West End on 14 February 1990-Original West End cast:... |
10 August 1988 | 14 February 1990 | ||
| 36 | Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays is a play written by Alan Ayckbourn in 1988. It relies heavily on the audience for many scenes inside Mr Accousticus' house.- Plot :... |
30 November 1988 | 4 March 1993 | ||
| 37 | The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts... The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies The Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts... is a two-part play normally performed over two separate evenings. |
13 June 1989 | 13 March 1991 | ||
| 38 | Invisible Friends Invisible Friends Invisible Friends is a 1989 children's play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. Often seen as a companion play to Woman in Mind, it is about a teenager, Lucy, who escapes her unhappiness with her own family by reviving her imaginary childhood friend, Zara.-References:* Allen, Paul A Pocket Guide... |
23 November 1989 | 13 March 1991 | ||
| 39 | Body Language Body Language (play) Body Language is a 1990 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about two women, one thin and one fat, who have their bodies swapped as a result of a botched operation.-References:*... |
21 May 1990 | |||
| 40 | This Is Where We Came In | 4/11 January 1990 | |||
| 41 | Callisto 5 Callisto 5 was re-written in 1999 as Callisto #7. | 12 December 1990 | |||
| 42 | Wildest Dreams Wildest Dreams (play) Wildest Dreams is a 1991 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn.... |
6 May 1991 | 14 December 1993 | ||
| 43 | My Very Own Story | 10 August 1991 | |||
| 44 | Time Of My Life | 21 April 1992 | 3 August 1993 | ||
| 45 | Dreams From A Summer House | 26 August 1992 | |||
| 46 | Communicating Doors Communicating Doors Communicating Doors is a play written in 1994 by Alan Ayckbourn. The setting is a hotel suite that moves through time from 1974 to 2014. The central character, Poopay, must save herself from the murderous Julian by preventing the murders of Reece's two wives.-External links:*... |
2 February 1994 | 7 August 1995 | ||
| 47 | Haunting Julia Haunting Julia Haunting Julia is a 1994 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about Julia Lukin, a nineteen-year-old brilliant musician who committed suicide twelve years earlier, who haunts the three men closest to her, through both the supernatural and in their memories... |
20 April 1994 | |||
| 48 | The Musical Jigsaw Play | 1 December 1994 | |||
| 49 | A Word From Our Sponsor | 20 April 1995 | |||
| (18) | By Jeeves By Jeeves By Jeeves, originally Jeeves, is a 1975/1996 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn, based on the novels of P. G. Wodehouse.... |
2 July 1996 | 2 July 1996 | 28 October 2001 | |
| 50 | The Champion Of Paribanou | 4 December 1996 | |||
| 51 | Things We Do For Love | 29 April 1997 | 2 March 1998 | ||
| 52 | Comic Potential Comic Potential (play) Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn is a romantic sci-fi comedy. It is set in a TV studio in the foreseeable future, when low-cost androids have largely replaced actors.-Background:... |
4 June 1998 | 13 October 1999 | ||
| 53 | The Boy Who Fell Into A Book The Boy Who Fell Into A Book The Boy Who Fell Into a Book is a 1998 family play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premièred as the Stephen Joseph Theatre's 1998 Christmas production to mark the 1999 National Year of Reading... |
4 December 1998 | |||
| 54 | House and Garden House & Garden (plays) House and Garden are a diptych of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and... House and Garden House & Garden (plays) House and Garden are a diptych of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and... are a pair of plays intended to be performed simultaneously as a diptych Diptych A diptych di "two" + ptychē "fold") is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. Devices of this form were quite popular in the ancient world, wax tablets being coated with wax on inner faces, for recording notes and for measuring time and direction.In Late Antiquity, ivory diptychs with... |
House | 17 June 1999 | 8 August 2000 | |
| 55 | Garden | 17 June 1999 | 8 August 2000 | ||
| (41) | Callisto#7 | 4 December 1999 | |||
| 56 | Virtual Reality Virtual Reality (play) Virtual Reality is a 2000 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is set in a modern world where everyone communicates through electronic gadgetty, and is about Alex, a man who invents "Viewdows", a large screen for people to look at pleasant views.... |
8 February 2000 | |||
| 57 | Whenever Whenever (play) Whenever is a 2000 children's musical play with words Alan Ayckbourn and music by Denis King, that was shown as the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Christmas production. It is loosely derived from The Wizard of Oz, and it is about a young Victorian girl named Emily to travels back and forth in time to... |
5 December 2000 | |||
| 58 | Damsels in Distress Damsels in Distress (plays) Damsels in Distress is a trilogy of plays written in 2001 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The three plays, GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company . The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same... |
GamePlan GamePlan (play) GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.-Background:See also: Background on Damsels in Distress... |
29 May 2001 | 7 September 2002 | |
| 59 | FlatSpin FlatSpin (play) FlatSpin is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the second in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress It is about an actress called Rosie Seymour who accepts a date with a mysterious Sam Berryman, who seems to have mistaken her for a Joanna Rupelford.-Background:See also:... |
3 July 2001 | 7 September 2002 | ||
| 60 | RolePlay RolePlay (play) RolePlay is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the third in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress... |
4 September 2001 | 7 September 2002 | ||
| 61 | Snake in the Grass | 5 June 2002 | |||
| 62 | The Jollies The Jollies The Jollies is a 2002 children's play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a young girl, Polly Jollie, where a magic trick gone awry at her brother's birthday party causes her brother, Billy, to age 25 years, and her mother, Jilly, to become 25 years younger. The play is viewed by some... |
3 December 2002 | |||
| 63 | Sugar Daddies Sugar Daddies (play) Sugar Daddies is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a student who forms a friendship with a rich man over three times her age, who has a sinister past, and maybe a sinister present too.-Background:... |
23 July 2003 | |||
| 64 | Orvin - Champion Of Champions Orvin - Champion Of Champions Orvin - Champion Of Champions is a 2003 musical play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, with music by Denis King. It was one of his few plays written for performance entirely by children, and, after the usual première at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, went on to be performed at the National Youth... |
8 August 2003 | |||
| 65 | My Sister Sadie My Sister Sadie My Sister Sadie is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was billed as a "family" play, and shown as the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Christmas production... |
2 December 2003 | |||
| 66 | Drowning on Dry Land | 4 May 2004 | |||
| 67 | Private Fears in Public Places Private Fears in Public Places Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,... |
17 August 2004 | (5 May 2005) | (9 June 2005) | |
| 68 | Miss Yesterday Miss Yesterday Miss Yesterday is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was, like My Sister Sadie shown the previous year, billed as a "family" play in the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Christmas production. It is about a teenage girl who is sent back in time one day to prevent the death of her older... |
2 December 2004 | |||
| 69 | Improbable Fiction Improbable Fiction Improbable Fiction is a 2005 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a writers' circle, on the night the chairman, Arnold, seems to wander into the imaginations of the other writers.-Background:... |
31 May 2005 | |||
| 70 | If I Were You If I Were You (play) If I Were You is a 2006 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about an unhappy married couple who are given the chance to understand each other by discovering, quite literally, what they would do "if I were you".-Background:... |
17 October 2006 | |||
| 71 | Things That Go Bump Things That Go Bump (plays) Things That Go Bump is a season of plays performed in 2008 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn.Unlike Ayckbourn's previous trilogies, where all three plays were written for the same season, the three plays in this set were written over a period of fourteen years... |
Life and Beth Life and Beth Life and Beth is a 2008 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was written as a third part of a trilogy named Things That Go Bump, uniting the cast of the first two plays: Haunting Julia and Snake in the Grass... |
22 July 2008 | ||
| 72 | Awaking Beauty Awaking Beauty Awaking Beauty is a 2008 musical with words by Alan Ayckbourn and music by Denis King. It was shown as the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Christmas production, but, unlike earlier productions, was expressly billed as not suitable for young children... |
16 December 2008 | |||
| 73 | My Wonderful Day My Wonderful Day My Wonderful Day is a 2009 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a nine-year-old girl, Winnie, who has an essay to write about her day, and records the shenanigans of grown-ups around her.... |
13 October 2009 | |||
| 74 | Life of Riley | 16 September 2010 | |||
| 75 | Neighbourhood Watch | 13 September 2011 | |||
One-act plays
There are seven one-act plays written by Alan Ayckbourn. Five of them (Mother Figure, Drinking Companion, Between Mouthfuls, Gosforth’s Fete and A Talk in the Park) were written for ConfusionsConfusions
Confusions is a play by Alan Ayckbourn consisting of a series of five interconnected one-act plays. It was first staged in 1974 and played by just five actors...
, first performed in 1974.
The other two one-act plays were:
- Countdown, first performed in 1962, most well known as part of Mixed Doubles, a set of short one-act plays and monologues contributed by nine different authors.
- A Cut in the Rates, performed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1984, and filmed for a BBC documentary.
Film adaptations of Ayckbourn plays
Plays adapted as films include:- A Chorus of Disapproval (play)A Chorus of Disapproval (play)A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...
filmed as A Chorus of DisapprovalA Chorus of DisapprovalA Chorus of Disapproval is a 1988 British film adapted from the Alan Ayckbourn play of the same title, directed by Michael Winner. Among the movie's cast are Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons, Richard Briers, and Alexandra Pigg....
(1988 film), directed by Michael WinnerMichael WinnerMichael Robert Winner is a British film director and producer, active in both Europe and the United States, also known as a food critic for the Sunday Times.-Early life and early career :...
; - Intimate Exchanges (play) filmed as Smoking/No SmokingSmoking/No SmokingSmoking/No Smoking is a 1993 French movie. It was directed by Alain Resnais and written by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, from the play Intimate Exchanges by Alan Ayckbourn...
(1993 film), directed by Alain ResnaisAlain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
; - The Revengers' ComediesThe Revengers' ComediesThe Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts...
(play) filmed as Sweet Revenge (1998 film)Sweet Revenge (1998 film)Sweet Revenge is a 1998 British comedy film written and directed by Malcolm Mowbray. The screenplay is based on the epic two-part play The Revengers' Comedies by Alan Ayckbourn....
, directed by Malcolm MowbrayMalcolm MowbrayMalcolm Mowbray is a British screenwriter and television and film director.Mowbray began his career in television, directing episodes of Premiere, BBC2 Playhouse, and Objects of Affection...
; - Private Fears in Public PlacesPrivate Fears in Public PlacesPrivate Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,...
(play) filmed as Cœurs (2006 film) directed by Alain ResnaisAlain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
.