Ask The Archivist is an occasional feature allowing you to put your Alan Ayckbourn related questions to the playwright's archivist Simon Murgatroyd.
If you have a question regarding any aspect of Alan's work, email it to: admin@alanayckbourn.net (labelled Ask The Archivist) and we'll publish any interesting questions.
Question: In your coverage of the National Theatre's revival of A Small Family Business, you noted the playwright Mark Ravenhill had cited it as an influential play. Could you expand on this?
Answer: Mark Ravenhill has cited the significance of Alan Ayckbourn's A Small Family Business on and the influence it had on him on several occasions. Reprinted below is one of his more significant quotes on the subject, tying in the impact of the play with Alan Ayckbourn's other major play at the National Theatre during the same period, his much lauded production of Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge.
"I think if you look at the point A Small Family Business was written in 1987, family and business are the key words of the Thatcher regime. I think it’s significant he’d directed an Arthur Miller play [A View From The Bridge] in the same season and it very much follows an Arthur Miller All My Sons structure where it starts with the ideal of a small family business and bit by bit that ideal is eroded by the events of the play. And to undermine the whole notion of family and business in an absolutely relentless way throughout the play until there’s nothing left of that notion, I think is one of the most intensely political plays of the period."
To submit your question to Ask The Archivist, email Simon Murgatroyd at: admin@alanayckbourn.net labelled Ask The Archivist.
