60 Years At The SJT: 1988
Between 1986 and 1988, Alan Ayckbourn had taken a sabbatical from the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, to become a company director at the National Theatre.
It had been an enormously successful period for Alan and he returned to Scarborough revitalised and ready to move the theatre forward; the year would see him notably write and direct the incredibly ambitious Man Of The Moment - which memorably featured a swimming pool as part of the set.
Yet much of the year at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round was dominated by the fallout from an administrative conflict between the theatre manager, Ian Watson, and the publicity officer, Russ Allen.
Over the course of the year during which Ian Watson left the theatre in January and Russ Allen in December, an increasingly vitriolic spat was played out in the pages of the national media including The Stage newspaper and Private Eye.
Alan resumed work as Artistic Director of the theatre in June, slap bang in the middle of controversy as it spilled into the national eye. It was obviously not what Alan hoped the focus would be on during his triumphant return to the theatre, but it also intriguingly included the strange case of a lost play.
During the summer of 1988, Alan was scheduled to direct a new play by Peter Tinniswood called State Of The Union; Peter already had a good relationship with the theatre following the success of his plays You Should See Us Now (1981) and At The End Of The Day (1983).
State Of The Union was advertised in the summer 1988 brochure as to be directed by Alan Ayckbourn and featuring the return of a popular playwright to the theatre.
"The prolific author, playwright and radio dramatist Peter Tinniswood returns to the Stephen Joseph Theatre with a brand new comedy which re-unites the Ayckbourn / Tinniswood director / author axis which so delighted audiences in past seasons with productions of You Should See Us Now (1981) and At The End Of The Day (1983). Warwick is a man in the middle of unions. As publicity officer for a small northern seaside watering town he has arranged Hallam-on-Sands' first ever trades [sic] union conference. It is no coincidence that the President of the Union is Warwick's father-in-law. Nor is it a secret that Warwick's own union with his wife Brenda is, like Hallam-on-Sands itself, rather gracious and run down - after 15 years of marriage, two dogs and disputes over where to live. Brenda's mum and dad aren't too happy either. And then there's the two dogs..."
And that is all we know of the play. It was later withdrawn from the summer season schedule with no public announcement and there is no documentation held in archive about why it was replaced. The only clue - and the likely reason - is an interview with Alan in the Yorkshire Evening Press in which it notes the play, like Stephen Mallatratt's withdrawn play Wonderland from the previous year, was simply not ready and had to be replaced in the schedule.
But this was not before State Of The Union fed into the Watson / Allen controversy as revealed by The Stage newspaper on 16 June 1988 (click on image to enlarge).
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| The Stage report of problems at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, including the State Of The Union flyers issue. Copyright: The Stage Media Company Ltd. |
Intriguingly, this flyer was a key part part of the advertising for State Of The Union - although no-one would never likely have known this to be the case.
For the promotion of State Of The Union included a campaign for the previously mentioned fake holiday resort of Hallam-On-Sands. Except nowhere on the flyer does it indicate the town is fictional nor has any connection to a forthcoming play; it's not even a clever piece of early viral marketing as there is no way to contact the theatre - the number displayed was an outgoing only line.
The flyer has not been seen since 1988 and is reprinted below for the first time then and clearly illustrates a very strange marketing campaign (click on images to enlarge).
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| The State Of The Union flyer (click to enlarge) Copyright: Scarborough Theatre Trust |
The Stephen Joseph Theatre Archive also contains an early mock-up of the proposed programme cover for the play; sadly the quality is very poor as it was sent via fax, which present a great problem to archives today given how quickly they fade.
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| Copyright: Scarborough Theatre Trust |
With regard to The Stage's accusations, an internal investigation by the theatre revealed: "The cost of the posters was £200 [not £2,000]. The poster did give the security number but this does not now pose a security threat as the telephone line no longer accepts incoming calls, as is usual with security lines."
A piece of correspondence held in archive from Russ Allen suggests State Of The Union was withdrawn to be produced in a future season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, but it was never produced and Peter Tinniswood's next play at the venue would be in 1991 with The Village Fete, an adaptation of his acclaimed and popular radio plays.
All this marked a strange chapter in the life of the SJT. State Of The Union is one of only six publicly announced plays from the theatre between 1955 and the present day which were not produced and the Allen / Watson controversy is the only in-house controversy to have gone public.
All this whilst Alan was looking to re-integrate himself into the theatre as he resumed the daily running of the company.
All this whilst Alan was looking to re-integrate himself into the theatre as he resumed the daily running of the company.
Indeed throughout all this, Alan Ayckbourn remained largely silent as he began looking to the future of the Scarborough company and the theatre prepared to celebrate his 60th birthday in 1989.
