Improbable Fiction
Encyclopedia
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.
's Twelfth Night:
If the immediately preceding adult play, Private Fears in Public Places
was notable for being the bleakest Ayckbourn play for many years, Improbable Fiction was notable for being the lightest, because in the few years previously, even the comedies had serious themes to them. It has been observed that this play has similarities with Ayckbourn's earlier family plays The Boy Who Fell Into a Book and, to a lesser extent, My Very Own Story. Whether there was an intentional adaptation of these plays is unclear, but this was repeated the following year with If I Were You
(argued to be derived from The Jollies).
Whatever the reason for such a light play, it fitted in with the Stephen Joseph Theatre
's 50th anniversary season, along with a revival of another Ayckbourn comedy, Time and Time Again.
In the second act, all the characters start playing various parts from various stories, apart from a confused Arnold who carries on being himself, whatever role is thrust on him by the story.
and its 54 mini-scenes, Improbable Fiction used the single set of the living room in Arnold's house throughout the play, and one continuous scene, broken only by the interval. The first act almost entirely takes place during the Writers' Circle meeting. In the second act, however, the same room represents various houses in various stories in Victorian times, the 1930s, and the present day, with no set change other than changing the type of phone present on the dresser.
The play was performed in-the-round
for its original run at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
in 2005. In the 2006 tour, it was adapted for the proscenium
.
When the rest of the group arrive, they all, over the first act, reveal what they are working on. Grace shows her illustrations for her children's story "Doblin the Goblin" (with friend Sid the Squirrel), Jess tells her of her vision for her period romance, Vivi explains how her latest detective novel is darker than the last three, Brevis plays a (somewhat tuneless) song "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" from his musical adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress
, and Clem reads out an extract from his science fiction story (or, as Clem sees it, "science fact", with names changed to protect identities).
All the writers have obvious weaknesses with their writing. Grace's children have long since grown up and her ideas would be confusing to the age this kind of story is aimed at. Jess never manages to start writing, whilst Vivi is clearly over-writing, and her description of the detective's smitten sidekick is obviously modelled on her and her search for the right man. Brevis's long list of successfully performed musicals can be attributed to the fact that he was a teacher at a school, and now that he is retired he is stuck. And Clem gets angry that no-one can follow his incomprehensible plot, and his persistent mispronunciation of words (such as "invulshable" instead of "invincible") drives Brevis up the wall.
There is not much sign of the writers helping each other that much, and the group is still reeling from last week's visiting writer (if you can count someone who is only publicised on the internet as a writer), whose summary, in Arnold's words, was that "You should get the F-word on with it" (to which Brevis points out he finished with "you bunch of wankers.") When a nervous Ilsa enters and serves the tea painfully slowly, the rest of the group start making wild speculation about her.
With the meeting over, the five writers go home, leaving just Ilsa, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up on his motorbike. Suddenly, the lights go out, and Arnold sees Ilsa, in Victorian dress, walk towards him with a candle and a knife. The other five writers also surround him in Victorian dress. Ilsa screams, Arnold cries "Good Gracious!" and the first act ends.
With the second act starting exactly where the first one left off, Arnold suddenly hears Jess narrating the story, somewhat in the style of Jane Austen
or the Brontë
sisters. Ilsa, it seems, has turned into an heiress who has seen some sort of ghost. But before this mystery can be solved, the room changes into that of a 1930s house, and a detective (Clem) and his assistant (Vivi, behaving very similar to the real Vivi) question Arnold about the murder of his wife, rather like a Poirot mystery. And then, before this is solved, Arnold finds himself confronted by a group of agents investigating the alien abduction of his mother-in-law (this time, with striking similarity to The X Files, Alien
or The Matrix
), with the leader (Brevis), mispronouncing all the long words exactly how Clem would want them.
As Arnold flits back and forth through the stories, the first two mysteries are solved relatively easily. The ghost that the heiress/Ilsa saw, was, of course, just a model created by her scheming cousin (Clem) so that she could be declared insane and he could get the inheritance, but he gets rumbled. And so (or, as Jess narrates "And so, dear reader ...") this story ends. The murder's alibi in the 1930s is exposed when it is pointed out she did not have her glasses at the time, but not before the detective comes across a strange instruction manual in his pocket. Making the first kind comment ever to his sidekick (and Vivi says "Isn't he wonderful!") he leaves Arnold with the maid/Ilsa, who now seems to be his mistress. Ilsa advances on a bemused Arnold, but before she can have her way with him, he is back in the sci-fi story.
The agents capture an alien pod and use it as trade. Whilst waiting, Brevis almost starts playing a song he wrote on the piano, but gets interrupted by the release of the captive. Suddenly, the alien pod starts to open to reveal ... Doblin the Goblin (Ilsa). A much more tuneful version of "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" starts playing, Doblin sails down the river (the open alien pod now serving as Doblin's walnut-cum-boat), Sid the Squirrel follows, with all the rest in tow.
And so Arnold is left alone again. He says "It's nice to finish with a song". The real Ilsa joins him - evidently, whilst he spent an hour in other people's imaginations, for her it was just a moment in another room. It is clear that Arnold and Ilsa have a genuine friendship. Then, after Ilsa leaves, to prove it is back to reality, Arnold's mother bangs on the ceiling once more. He goes upstairs saying "It was a quiet evening really. Nothing unusual ..."
had its first performance on 26 May 2005, and an opening night on 31 May 2005 featuring the following cast:
The production team were:
The production toured in 2006 with the same cast, except that Stuart Fox replaced Giles New as Clem. London, once again, was not included in the tour.
Since the Stephen Joseph production, there have been three further productions by other theatre companies, in Outer London, Hastings
and Crawley
.
Amongst the positive reviews, Alfred Hickling of The Guardian wrote "... the second half provides a theatrical transformation of the magnitude only Ayckbourn can dream of." Charles Hutchinson of the Yorkshire Evening Press wrote: "Ayckbourn moves into the speeding, fantastical dimensions of his Christmas family shows, as stories in the style of each writer overlap, giving Ayckbourn the chance to send up Jane Austen, Dorothy L Sayers and The Matrix."
However, the same second act that earned praise from some critics was criticised by Sam Marlowe, saying "The problem is that this parade of comic cardboard cut-outs is impossible to care about, so it’s not long before it falls flat," whilst arguing the earlier scenes worked better. Charles Spencer
, reviewing the show on its tour at Guildford
, was harsher, suggesting this play was evidence of Ayckbourn's decline. He wrote: "Ultimately, it's the laziness that bothers me most about latter-day Ayckbourn. You don't feel he truly cares about his characters any more: indeed, at times he can't be bothered to get inside their heads at all."
It was suggested that the reviews were generally better for the Scarborough production in the context of its 50th anniversary season, whilst expectations on the tour were for something deeper. Nonetheless, with three professional productions in the three years after the tour ended, Improbable Fiction has maintained a stage life outside of its original run.
The play had its American premiere on May 1, 2009, at the Black River Playhouse, Chester, New Jersey, directed by Michael T. Mooney.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE 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...
. It is about a writers' circle, on the night the chairman, Arnold, seems to wander into the imaginations of the other writers.
Background
Part of the inspiration for Improbable Fiction was reported to be a talk that Alan Ayckbourn once gave to a writers' circle, which he suspected was actually more of a social circle. The title was inspired by a quote from William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Twelfth Night:
"If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction." - Twelfth Night, Act III, scene 4
If the immediately preceding adult play, 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,...
was notable for being the bleakest Ayckbourn play for many years, Improbable Fiction was notable for being the lightest, because in the few years previously, even the comedies had serious themes to them. It has been observed that this play has similarities with Ayckbourn's earlier family plays The Boy Who Fell Into a Book and, to a lesser extent, My Very Own Story. Whether there was an intentional adaptation of these plays is unclear, but this was repeated the following year with 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:...
(argued to be derived from The Jollies).
Whatever the reason for such a light play, it fitted in with 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....
's 50th anniversary season, along with a revival of another Ayckbourn comedy, Time and Time Again.
Characters
There are seven characters in the play. They are:- Arnold, middle-aged chairman of the Writers' group and writer of instruction manuals
- Grace, mother of grown-up children, wants to write children's books
- Jess, a farmer, wants to write period romance novels
- Vivi, younger woman, busy writing detective novels
- Brevis, retired headmaster, still writing musicals
- Clem, young man, writing conspiracy theory science fiction
- Ilsa, carer for Arnold's mother during Writers' group meetings.
In the second act, all the characters start playing various parts from various stories, apart from a confused Arnold who carries on being himself, whatever role is thrust on him by the story.
Setting
In contrast to Private Fears in Public PlacesPrivate 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,...
and its 54 mini-scenes, Improbable Fiction used the single set of the living room in Arnold's house throughout the play, and one continuous scene, broken only by the interval. The first act almost entirely takes place during the Writers' Circle meeting. In the second act, however, the same room represents various houses in various stories in Victorian times, the 1930s, and the present day, with no set change other than changing the type of phone present on the dresser.
The play was performed in-the-round
Theatre in the round
Theatre-in-the-round or arena theatre is any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area...
for its original run 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 2005. In the 2006 tour, it was adapted for the proscenium
Proscenium
A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
.
Synopsis
The play begins with Arnold anxiously setting up the chairs for a writers' circle meeting. First to arrive is Ilsa, a young girl whom Arnold hires to serve the tea. Ilsa also looks after Arnold's live-in bed-ridden mother, who periodically demands attention by banging a stick on the upstairs floor. She holds Arnold and the rest of the group in awe on the grounds that they are all writers, although Arnold himself, the only member of the group to have had something published, only writes instruction leaflets.When the rest of the group arrive, they all, over the first act, reveal what they are working on. Grace shows her illustrations for her children's story "Doblin the Goblin" (with friend Sid the Squirrel), Jess tells her of her vision for her period romance, Vivi explains how her latest detective novel is darker than the last three, Brevis plays a (somewhat tuneless) song "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" from his musical adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
, and Clem reads out an extract from his science fiction story (or, as Clem sees it, "science fact", with names changed to protect identities).
All the writers have obvious weaknesses with their writing. Grace's children have long since grown up and her ideas would be confusing to the age this kind of story is aimed at. Jess never manages to start writing, whilst Vivi is clearly over-writing, and her description of the detective's smitten sidekick is obviously modelled on her and her search for the right man. Brevis's long list of successfully performed musicals can be attributed to the fact that he was a teacher at a school, and now that he is retired he is stuck. And Clem gets angry that no-one can follow his incomprehensible plot, and his persistent mispronunciation of words (such as "invulshable" instead of "invincible") drives Brevis up the wall.
There is not much sign of the writers helping each other that much, and the group is still reeling from last week's visiting writer (if you can count someone who is only publicised on the internet as a writer), whose summary, in Arnold's words, was that "You should get the F-word on with it" (to which Brevis points out he finished with "you bunch of wankers.") When a nervous Ilsa enters and serves the tea painfully slowly, the rest of the group start making wild speculation about her.
With the meeting over, the five writers go home, leaving just Ilsa, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up on his motorbike. Suddenly, the lights go out, and Arnold sees Ilsa, in Victorian dress, walk towards him with a candle and a knife. The other five writers also surround him in Victorian dress. Ilsa screams, Arnold cries "Good Gracious!" and the first act ends.
With the second act starting exactly where the first one left off, Arnold suddenly hears Jess narrating the story, somewhat in the style of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
or the Brontë
Brontë
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte , Emily , and Anne , are well-known as poets and novelists...
sisters. Ilsa, it seems, has turned into an heiress who has seen some sort of ghost. But before this mystery can be solved, the room changes into that of a 1930s house, and a detective (Clem) and his assistant (Vivi, behaving very similar to the real Vivi) question Arnold about the murder of his wife, rather like a Poirot mystery. And then, before this is solved, Arnold finds himself confronted by a group of agents investigating the alien abduction of his mother-in-law (this time, with striking similarity to The X Files, Alien
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
or The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
), with the leader (Brevis), mispronouncing all the long words exactly how Clem would want them.
As Arnold flits back and forth through the stories, the first two mysteries are solved relatively easily. The ghost that the heiress/Ilsa saw, was, of course, just a model created by her scheming cousin (Clem) so that she could be declared insane and he could get the inheritance, but he gets rumbled. And so (or, as Jess narrates "And so, dear reader ...") this story ends. The murder's alibi in the 1930s is exposed when it is pointed out she did not have her glasses at the time, but not before the detective comes across a strange instruction manual in his pocket. Making the first kind comment ever to his sidekick (and Vivi says "Isn't he wonderful!") he leaves Arnold with the maid/Ilsa, who now seems to be his mistress. Ilsa advances on a bemused Arnold, but before she can have her way with him, he is back in the sci-fi story.
The agents capture an alien pod and use it as trade. Whilst waiting, Brevis almost starts playing a song he wrote on the piano, but gets interrupted by the release of the captive. Suddenly, the alien pod starts to open to reveal ... Doblin the Goblin (Ilsa). A much more tuneful version of "There's Light at the End of the Tunnel" starts playing, Doblin sails down the river (the open alien pod now serving as Doblin's walnut-cum-boat), Sid the Squirrel follows, with all the rest in tow.
And so Arnold is left alone again. He says "It's nice to finish with a song". The real Ilsa joins him - evidently, whilst he spent an hour in other people's imaginations, for her it was just a moment in another room. It is clear that Arnold and Ilsa have a genuine friendship. Then, after Ilsa leaves, to prove it is back to reality, Arnold's mother bangs on the ceiling once more. He goes upstairs saying "It was a quiet evening really. Nothing unusual ..."
Productions
The original production at the Stephen Joseph 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....
had its first performance on 26 May 2005, and an opening night on 31 May 2005 featuring the following cast:
- Arnold: John Branwell
- Grace: Eileen Battye
- Jess: Becky Hindley
- Vivi: Clare Swinburne
- Brevis: Terence Booth
- Clem: Giles New
- Ilsa: Laura Doddington
The production team were:
- Director - Alan Ayckbourn
- Design - Roger Glossop
- Lighting - James Farncombe
- Costumes - Pip Leckenby
- Music - John Pattison
The production toured in 2006 with the same cast, except that Stuart Fox replaced Giles New as Clem. London, once again, was not included in the tour.
Since the Stephen Joseph production, there have been three further productions by other theatre companies, in Outer London, Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
and Crawley
Crawley
Crawley is a town and local government district with Borough status in West Sussex, England. It is south of Charing Cross, north of Brighton and Hove, and northeast of the county town of Chichester, covers an area of and had a population of 99,744 at the time of the 2001 Census.The area has...
.
Critical reviews
Reviews of the production were divided, generally either broadly positive or broadly negative, with little in between. Much of the difference of opinion was down to what reviewers made of the change between the first and second acts.Amongst the positive reviews, Alfred Hickling of The Guardian wrote "... the second half provides a theatrical transformation of the magnitude only Ayckbourn can dream of." Charles Hutchinson of the Yorkshire Evening Press wrote: "Ayckbourn moves into the speeding, fantastical dimensions of his Christmas family shows, as stories in the style of each writer overlap, giving Ayckbourn the chance to send up Jane Austen, Dorothy L Sayers and The Matrix."
However, the same second act that earned praise from some critics was criticised by Sam Marlowe, saying "The problem is that this parade of comic cardboard cut-outs is impossible to care about, so it’s not long before it falls flat," whilst arguing the earlier scenes worked better. Charles Spencer
Charles Spencer (journalist)
Charles Spencer is a British journalist. He has been the drama critic of The Daily Telegraph since 1991. In 2006, Compton Miller of The Independent wrote in a profile: "This convivial ex-alcoholic is best remembered for his description of Nicole Kidman's nude scene in The Blue Room as 'pure...
, reviewing the show on its tour at Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, was harsher, suggesting this play was evidence of Ayckbourn's decline. He wrote: "Ultimately, it's the laziness that bothers me most about latter-day Ayckbourn. You don't feel he truly cares about his characters any more: indeed, at times he can't be bothered to get inside their heads at all."
It was suggested that the reviews were generally better for the Scarborough production in the context of its 50th anniversary season, whilst expectations on the tour were for something deeper. Nonetheless, with three professional productions in the three years after the tour ended, Improbable Fiction has maintained a stage life outside of its original run.
The play had its American premiere on May 1, 2009, at the Black River Playhouse, Chester, New Jersey, directed by Michael T. Mooney.
External links
- Improbable Fiction on official Ayckbourn website http://improbablefiction.alanayckbourn.net/
- Arts Archive, UK performance listings http://www.arts-archive.com/index.php?pg=12&action=work&wid=S01971584655&genre=P&alpha=Improbable%20Fiction&gname=Play