Bøger af Alan Ayckbourn

Colin must be comforted in his grief over the death of his fiancee so his friends, who never met the girl, arrange a tea party for him. Understandably they are on edge wondering what to say, but there is more to their unease: Diane and Paul, John and Evelyn, and Marge and her husband are perpetually out of circulation with trivial illnesses are all kept together by a mixture of business and cross-marital emotional ties. By the time Colin arrives for tea, their tenseness contrasts dramatically with his air of cheerful relaxation. He is the only happy one among them and his happiness and insensitive analyses of their troubles causes each of them to break down.

Placing wartime and lockdown life side-by-side, Alan Ayckbourn's 85th play is a touching, tender and, of course, funny reflection on the ability of love to rise above adversity and reach across the years.Veteran actor Rob Hathaway, stuck at home during the summer of 2020 with only his sensible older sister for company, has little to do but relive his glory days. One day Rob spots a stranger hanging out the washing in the adjoining garden - but the neighbours haven't been around for months. So who is the mysterious girl next door? And why is she wearing 1940s clothing?

Characters: 2 male, 4 femaleComedyWinnie is nearly nine. Her mum, Laverne, is second-generation Afro-Caribbean and heavily pregnant but continues with her cleaning job since her husband left while she dreams of moving the family back to Martinique. Tuesdays are special: Laverne insists that Winnie speaks only French (in preparation for Martinique) and today is Tuesday - not her usual day to clean at the north London house of Kevin Tate, an affluent, bad-tempered, philandering, minor tele

Alan Ayckbourn ComedyCharacters: 7 male, 5 female Multiple Interior Scenes England's master of satire is in top form in this comic morality play which was triumphantly presented by the National Theatre of Great Britain. Jack McCraken has the opportunity of a lifetime: he is the new head of a family furniture business and believes he will initiate a new age of honesty and integrity. He quickly learns that everyone else involved in the enterprise has a vested intere

For the first time, Alan Ayckbourn shares all of his tricks of the playwright's trade. From helpful hints on writing to tips on directing, the book provides a complete primer for the newcomer and a refresher for the more experienced. Written in Ayckbourn's signature style that combines humor, seriousness, and heady air of theatrical sophistication that Noel Coward would envy, The Crafty Art of Playmaking is a must-have for aspiring playwrights and students of drama.

A sci-fi comedy thriller, Comic Potential is a play set in the foreseeable future, when everything has changed--except human natureComic Potential is set in a television studio in the near future, where the director--an alcoholic has-been--and two assistants are making a daytime soap opera of the usual appalling sort. However, the difference here is that they are using actoids--robots programmed to act--and there are no scriptwriters. Into this situation comes the idealistic Adam, the nephew of the millionaire station owner, who wants to write comedy of the quality that Chaplin and Keaton once embodied. But when Adam falls in love with Jaycee Triplethree (JC333), one of the actoids on the show, everything is turned upside down as she grows more human and the line between actoid and human diminishes. When in anguish Jaycee finally cries that she can't say anything she hasn't been programmed to say, Adam points out that no one ever says anything original anyway.

This brilliant comic trilogy details the amorous exploits of Norman, assistant librarian, whose one aim is to make the women of his life happy—these women being, as it happens, three sisters, one of them his wife, who can’t wear contact lenses because “life with Norman is full of unexpected eye movements.” Each play stands uproariously on its own yet interlocks with the others to form an ingenious Chinese puzzle of successive relations.

Adrian is about to introduce his fianc¿e Grace to his parents at a birthday party, but they are worried that Grace doesn't know about Adrian's alleged reputation. As more birthdays unfold, the truth about the suburban closet Lothario is revealed...

Features ten plays, which have been selected from the BT National Connections scheme, in which some contemporary playwrights in the UK and Europe were commissioned by the Royal National Theatre to produce original drama specifically for young people. The scripts are specifically written for 11-16+.

The year is 1996. Trevor and Linda have been struggling for a while to deal with the behaviour of their rebellious teenage son Jason. In a moment of madness, they hatch a plan to create his own funeral in their living room.

Five one-act plays from 1976 by Britain's most popular playwright, Ayckbourn's classic series of plays are presented in a Student Edition with a full introduction, commmentary and questions for study.

Alan Ayckbourn's play is about a very ordinary teenager called Lucy. With her father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out - that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted - as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.

This third volume of Alan Ayckbourn plays includes Haunting Julia, Sugar Daddies, Drowning on Dry Land and Private Fears in Public Places, with an introduction by the author.Haunting Julia'A play for today. It touches on the failures of education and parenting, on media pressure and overdoses. Kurt Cobain comes to mind. More universally, Haunting Julia mourns how in adolescence and adulthood, we do our loves wrong.' Financial TimesSugar Daddies'A timely warning about the dangers of role-playing and pretence . . . But the real fascination lies in watching Ayckbourn's own transformation from social observer to impassioned moralist.' GuardianDrowning on Dry Land'Ayckbourn at the top of his game.' Guardian'A coruscatingly acid and funny play.' The TimesPrivate Fears in Public Places'Ayckbourn's construction has a masterly clarity; his writing combines ruthless observation with mature tolerance. Nobody else writing today can create a sense of a complicated little world in 90 minutes, or make banal lives seem so unforgivably interesting. Listen: it's a master's voice.' Sunday Times

With over sixty plays written and premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough before going on to play in the West End or the Royal National Theatre, London, or Broadway, Alan Ayckbourn's expertise in writing and directing plays is unsurpassed.For the first time, here in The Crafty Art of Playmaking, he shares all his tricks of the trade. From helpful hints on writing (Where do you start? How do you continue? What is comedy and how do you write it? What is tragedy and how does it work?), to tips on directing (working with actors and technicians, when to listen to the other experts, how to cope with rehearsals), the book provides a complete primer for the tyro and a refresher for the more experienced. Written in an accessible and highly entertaining style, with anecdotes galore to illustrate the how, when, where and why, it's worth the cover price for the jokes alone.'A marvellously useful and enjoyably good-humoured book' Daily Telegraph

A treat to read and a joy to perform, this second collection of Alan Ayckbourn's work is a cornucopia of some of his wonderfully inventive children's plays. From the story of the teenage Lucy in Invisible Friends who revives her childhood imaginary friend when things get difficult at home, onto the storytellers in My Very Own Story and This Is Where We Came In and, finally, to young Ernie who 'illucinates' all sorts of wild and weird happenings with astonishing results.

How Ms Poopay Dayseer, a twenty-first century Specialist Sexual Consultant, whilst peddling her 'services' to an elderly hotel room client unexpectedly finds herself running for her life. How her flight through a communicating door brings her face to face with her own past and with Ruella who apparently died under suspicious circumstances twenty years earlier. And how Poopay's gradual friendship with that remarkable woman changes the future for both of them...A time-travelling comedy thriller, Communicating Doors was published to coincide with the West End opening in 1995.

The first volume of Alan Ayckbourn's collected work contains his morality plays from the 1980s. It includes the plays A Chorus of Disapproval, A Small Family Business, Henceforward . . ., and Man of the Moment.

Love stories yet to happen, in a future filled with surprises.Who is the amorous stranger, Titus, who materialises in young Grace's bedroom? Can she believe he is who he says he is? For her parents, Franklin and Martha, does love everlasting still hold true if death is postponed indefinitely? Can lawyer Lorraine, who prides herself on her infallibility, have finally discovered the ideal partner, one who is also never wrong? Will lonely secretary Sylvia, after unhappy affairs with everyone from deep sea divers to space shuttle pilots, ever find her Mr Right?A comedy with its head in the future and its heart in the past, Alan Ayckbourn's Surprises premiered in July 2012 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in a co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre.

The Revengers' ComediesA hugely entertaining pitch that recalls the old movies to which it frequently pays homage - Strangers on a Train, Rebecca, Kind Hearts and Coronets - and expands after intermission to reveal an immensely disturbing vision of contemporary middle-class England poisoned by the rise of economic ruthlessness and the collapse of ethics. New York Times Things We Do for LoveLloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year AwardOne of his best, his most shockingly and uproariously funny: a cruel and hilarious masterpiece of tragic comedy and comic tragedy. Sunday TimesHouse & GardenThe triumph of his ingenuity lies in the fact that you have to see both plays . . . A second time round, in whichever order you take them, characters will deepen, while those you know become the background. It is a superb Ayckbourn joke that a comedy about non-communication should depend on the sharpest communication skills. Sunday Times

Snake in the GrassA terrific piece - brilliant, bizarre and yet totally believable . . . In fact, it's more than classic; it's close to the top of its class. Yorkshire Post If I Were YouA blissfully funny comedy that's also filled with sadness, a devilishly simple theatrical idea that spins out all kinds of complex truths about human nature. Daily Telegraph Life and BethA wise, humane, funny play about the inevitability of death and the continuity of life. GuardianMy Wonderful DayA transformation happens as magical as the most magnificent pantomime transformation anyone could ever imagine . . . the playwright dissolves the paraphernalia of our adult selves and uncovers that space inside each of us that is still the child we once were. ObserverLife of RileyAs perceptive as ever . . . Ayckbourn has once again achieved a satisfyingly rich, tragi-comic complexity. Daily Telegraph

Elspeth and Arthur are celebrating forty years of quiet, safe, unspectacular, ordinary marriage. Or so most of the guests attending their anniversary party are led to believe. But knowing her and knowing him as they do, their son and daughter know differently.

After a hit and run accident, naive country girl Sasha comes to the aid of ex-villain Val who is using a bogus identity as an ex-policeman. Sasha befriends Val and welcomes him into her home; overcome by her generosity and childlike innocence, he showers Sasha with lavish gifts whilst his rival Ashley, knowing of Val's sordid past, seeks to protect Sasha from this potential danger.