It's with a little sadness that after more than seven years, the Ayckbourn Blog draws to a close today.
With improvements and changes to the News & What's On section of Alan Ayckbourn's Official Website www.alanayckbourn.net, it has been decided to concentrate on a single source of news and articles regarding Alan Ayckbourn and his plays.
With the official website's ever increasing size and features, the blog is duplicating much of the material already in existence and the relaunched News page on the website will now take the place of the weekly blog updates with similar content and more frequent updates.
For those who visited the blog for its articles, existing features will be kept live on the blog as an archive but new articles as well as dozens of previously published Ayckbourn-related articles and interviews from the past six decades can be found in the Interviews / Articles section of the official website as well as within the sections dedicated to the various Plays.
I'd just like to thank everyone who has supported and visited the blog over the years and hope you've enjoyed visiting and reading the blog.
I hope - if you haven't done so already - you'll visit www.alanayckbourn.net where there are now more than 5,000 pages of material dedicated to the career and plays of Alan Ayckbourn and where you can find all the latest news about the playwright.
It's been fun writing the blog, but there's big changes taking places at the official website and I hope you'll join us there.
Simon Murgatroyd
Alan Ayckbourn's Archivist & Administrator for www.alanayckbourn.net
10 July 2017
Monday, July 10, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
60 Years At The SJT: 1989
2017 marks the 60th anniversary of Alan Ayckbourn joining the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1957. Alan has been indelibly associated with the company since that time as actor, writer, director and Artistic Director.
60 Years At The SJT: 1989
In 1989, Alan Ayckbourn celebrated his 50th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his professional playwriting debut at the Library Theatre in Scarborough.
He had been Artistic Director of the company for 17 years by this point and been associated with the company for 32 years.
It was a time, he felt, to celebrate by doing something audacious and new. As a result, he came up with a plan to create an epic, two-part, five-hour play called The Revengers' Comedies.
"I've made it to 50, so I thought I'd give people a present. You can't have an 'event' every year, or they become ordinary - but every two or three years, I like to do something a bit different like The Norman Conquests, or Intimate Exchanges. This one is a bit of an epic."
It had actually been 17 years since Intimate Exchanges and although there had been big plays such as Way Upstream, A Chorus Of Disapproval and Man Of The Moment - they were not at the time advertised or regarded as an 'event' play in the way The Revengers' Comedies, Intimate Exchanges or, later, House & Garden, would be.
It also marked a notable change of direction for the playwright. His plays during the latter part of the 1980s are frequently regarded as Alan tackling the state of the nation from Woman In Mind to A Small Family Business, Henceforward... to Man Of The Moment. The Revengers' Comedies was something entirely different though, not just epic, but created for a far more suitable anniversary reason.
"I wrote it for fun, really. I was suddenly aware that everyone was asking me, 'What issue are you going to address with this play?' And I don't want to address an issue. I want to tell a story; I want to write a good thriller, which is sort of unfashionable now. Nobody ever asked what issues Alfred Hitchcock addressed. He just addressed the idea of scaring you."
The play paid homage to Alan's great love as a child and young man - cinema. Alan had not been raised as a theatre-goer, but was obsessive about cinema; indeed throughout this career, many of his most significant influences are cinematic as opposed to theatrical.
Here Alan wanted to create a film on stage, cinematic in scope with more than 20 characters and sudden shifts of location from the city to the country.
It's most singular influence was the classic revenge movie Strangers On A Train and whilst the title suggest there was a particular theatrical influence, this was not the case.
"I have never read The Revenger's Tragedy though obviously the title was the inspiration for The Revengers' Comedies. John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore which I directed at the National Theatre in 1989 was the play that most influenced me. It was my first foray into directing Edwardian drama and I was thrilled by the knife edge quality of the writing - the comic paralleling the tragic throughout the work. That exciting dark / light balance was lost for a long time - certainly in English drama - after that period. I wanted to write an equivalent play on a grand scale set in the present day. If there are links, well and good, for that was my intention - certainly as regards construction and balance of emotion. Of course the initial premise of swapped revenges I borrowed shamelessly from the classic film Strangers On A Train."
The play concerns a recently made redundant city executive and a rich, upper-class country-set who has been crossed in love. She, Karen, persuades Henry Bell that revenge is the only possible solution to their problems and that by swapping their revenges, they can find the closure they need.
It obviously does not go to plan.
Henry falls in love with the woman he's meant to be taking his revenge against whilst Karen proves to be psychotic and terrifyingly efficient as she ruthlessly dispatches all in her way at Henry's former company.
"I wanted to write a play about a man who picks up a stray kitten and finds it's a boa constrictor instead.... My alter ego Karen is completely off her trolley. In theatre, there's humour between the cracks of the horror. I'm fascinated by treading that razor-blade."
"I just think revenge is a terribly strong emotion, it's a dangerous emotion, it's as strong as love. It's based on love which turns to hate. It's obsessive, it refuses to see reason. The revenge of normal people lasts about 20 minutes. You have an instinctive fury about what someone's done to you, but with most of us, thank God, the emotion passes. Otherwise there would be very few people left alive. This play is about somebody who doesn't let it go, who actually manufactures it, who enjoys it. I've never had any desire for revenge, but I have a tremendously fiery temper, particularly when I was a child... In order to write plays, you have to have quite a bit of anger... You use anger as a motor and from writing you sometimes find peace with the world."
Once written, it became obvious the play was to pose a huge challenge to the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round on practically every level. Helping meet this challenge was what would become for many years the quintessential Ayckbourn team. The playwright directing with Roger Glossop designing and Mick Hughes lighting. Whilst Alan had worked with both previously in London, this was the first time he had brought them to Scarborough to all work together. It would not be the last time.
With a relatively restrictive budget need to create a cinematic epic on stage, Roger and Mick ingeniously solved Alan's technical challenges with a minimum of props, using light and a versatile pulley system to allow the action to move seamlessly and quickly from one location to the next as the play with its short, fast-moving, location-hopping scenes required.
The play featured a cast of 14, the largest yet seen in an Ayckbourn play in Scarborough, and the publicity department was tasked with making this a major theatrical and celebratory event. To this end, a decision was made to run the play in its entirety every Saturday with the two parts split by a break for tea, which could be taken - picnic-style in the grounds of the former school now theatre.
An event it certainly became and proved to be a huge success for the theatre and drew attention from around the world. It is fair to say, that this was the point that the Stephen Joseph In The Round's profile was at its highest and that aside from the eponymous Fair, Alan and the theatre had become the one thing which was most related to the town around the world.
The most notable attention came from one of the world's most famous theatre critics when Frank Rich of the New York Times - the 'Butcher of Broadway' - came to Scarborough to see The Revengers' Comedies and acclaimed it and the theatre for its vision; the publicity department noted this led to a substantial increase in visitors from abroad and a result.
"It is hard to speak highly enough of a work whose elegant writing and staging is accompanied by an utter lack of pretension. Mr. Ayckbourn would as soon make reference to the Everly Brothers' song Cathy's Clown as to Cyril Tourneur's Jacobean Revenger's Tragedy. That's in keeping with a writer who chooses to work on a small stage in a small town but whose talent and theatrical ambitions increasingly seem without limit."
Frank Rich, The New York Times
The Revengers' Comedies succeeded in Scarborough where it did not in the West End. The need to see a play over two nights or for the better part of a day, worked in the repertory theatre of a small town, but failed to transfer to well to London. It became one of the final nails in the playwright's relationship with London and the complete realisation that his work there could rarely if ever reach the peaks of performance and staging it attained in his home theatre.
Although even Alan came away from that summer in Scarborough exhausted....
"I intend The Revengers' Comedies as a sort of fiftieth birthday present. I can’t think who on Earth the present is aimed at. Certainly not myself - the thing is a technical nightmare and puts years on me. In two halves, four parts, thirty scenes, playing time well over four hours, often on a single day with Glyndebourne style intervals. We all lose a lot of weight this summer. I eat a lot of cold salmon."
60 Years At The SJT: 1989
In 1989, Alan Ayckbourn celebrated his 50th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his professional playwriting debut at the Library Theatre in Scarborough.
He had been Artistic Director of the company for 17 years by this point and been associated with the company for 32 years.
It was a time, he felt, to celebrate by doing something audacious and new. As a result, he came up with a plan to create an epic, two-part, five-hour play called The Revengers' Comedies.
"I've made it to 50, so I thought I'd give people a present. You can't have an 'event' every year, or they become ordinary - but every two or three years, I like to do something a bit different like The Norman Conquests, or Intimate Exchanges. This one is a bit of an epic."
It had actually been 17 years since Intimate Exchanges and although there had been big plays such as Way Upstream, A Chorus Of Disapproval and Man Of The Moment - they were not at the time advertised or regarded as an 'event' play in the way The Revengers' Comedies, Intimate Exchanges or, later, House & Garden, would be.
"I wrote it for fun, really. I was suddenly aware that everyone was asking me, 'What issue are you going to address with this play?' And I don't want to address an issue. I want to tell a story; I want to write a good thriller, which is sort of unfashionable now. Nobody ever asked what issues Alfred Hitchcock addressed. He just addressed the idea of scaring you."
The play paid homage to Alan's great love as a child and young man - cinema. Alan had not been raised as a theatre-goer, but was obsessive about cinema; indeed throughout this career, many of his most significant influences are cinematic as opposed to theatrical.
Here Alan wanted to create a film on stage, cinematic in scope with more than 20 characters and sudden shifts of location from the city to the country.
It's most singular influence was the classic revenge movie Strangers On A Train and whilst the title suggest there was a particular theatrical influence, this was not the case.
The play concerns a recently made redundant city executive and a rich, upper-class country-set who has been crossed in love. She, Karen, persuades Henry Bell that revenge is the only possible solution to their problems and that by swapping their revenges, they can find the closure they need.
It obviously does not go to plan.
Henry falls in love with the woman he's meant to be taking his revenge against whilst Karen proves to be psychotic and terrifyingly efficient as she ruthlessly dispatches all in her way at Henry's former company.
"I wanted to write a play about a man who picks up a stray kitten and finds it's a boa constrictor instead.... My alter ego Karen is completely off her trolley. In theatre, there's humour between the cracks of the horror. I'm fascinated by treading that razor-blade."
Once written, it became obvious the play was to pose a huge challenge to the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round on practically every level. Helping meet this challenge was what would become for many years the quintessential Ayckbourn team. The playwright directing with Roger Glossop designing and Mick Hughes lighting. Whilst Alan had worked with both previously in London, this was the first time he had brought them to Scarborough to all work together. It would not be the last time.
With a relatively restrictive budget need to create a cinematic epic on stage, Roger and Mick ingeniously solved Alan's technical challenges with a minimum of props, using light and a versatile pulley system to allow the action to move seamlessly and quickly from one location to the next as the play with its short, fast-moving, location-hopping scenes required.
The play featured a cast of 14, the largest yet seen in an Ayckbourn play in Scarborough, and the publicity department was tasked with making this a major theatrical and celebratory event. To this end, a decision was made to run the play in its entirety every Saturday with the two parts split by a break for tea, which could be taken - picnic-style in the grounds of the former school now theatre.
An event it certainly became and proved to be a huge success for the theatre and drew attention from around the world. It is fair to say, that this was the point that the Stephen Joseph In The Round's profile was at its highest and that aside from the eponymous Fair, Alan and the theatre had become the one thing which was most related to the town around the world.
"It is hard to speak highly enough of a work whose elegant writing and staging is accompanied by an utter lack of pretension. Mr. Ayckbourn would as soon make reference to the Everly Brothers' song Cathy's Clown as to Cyril Tourneur's Jacobean Revenger's Tragedy. That's in keeping with a writer who chooses to work on a small stage in a small town but whose talent and theatrical ambitions increasingly seem without limit."
Frank Rich, The New York Times
The Revengers' Comedies succeeded in Scarborough where it did not in the West End. The need to see a play over two nights or for the better part of a day, worked in the repertory theatre of a small town, but failed to transfer to well to London. It became one of the final nails in the playwright's relationship with London and the complete realisation that his work there could rarely if ever reach the peaks of performance and staging it attained in his home theatre.
Although even Alan came away from that summer in Scarborough exhausted....
"I intend The Revengers' Comedies as a sort of fiftieth birthday present. I can’t think who on Earth the present is aimed at. Certainly not myself - the thing is a technical nightmare and puts years on me. In two halves, four parts, thirty scenes, playing time well over four hours, often on a single day with Glyndebourne style intervals. We all lose a lot of weight this summer. I eat a lot of cold salmon."
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Stephen Joseph Theatre retains NPO status & gains capital funding
Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre - where Alan Ayckbourn has premiered practically all his work since 1959 - has successfully retained its status as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation for another four years.
The theatre’s Development Trust has also been offered a one-off grant by ACE for various necessary upgrades.
NPOs are the organisations which receive regular annual funding from ACE, and are seen as representing some of the best arts practice in the world. For the four financial years from 2018 to 2022, the Stephen Joseph Theatre will receive annual funding of £637,715 a year, the same amount it received each financial year from 2015 to 2018.
The one-off capital grant of £419,122 is a large part of an overall capital project of £561,000 for developments to the front of house areas, including better access via an improved passenger lift and wheelchair platform; a new, environmentally-friendly LED lighting system in the Round, which will lower the venue’s energy bills; and various smaller projects.
The Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Chief Executive, Stephen Freeman, says: “The retention of our NPO status is brilliant news, and real recognition of our vision and of the theatre’s vital role within the communities of Scarborough and Yorkshire.
“The capital grant will enable us to enhance our customer experience enormously. The Stephen Joseph Theatre has been in its current venue for 21 years now, and we’re very aware that it needs some refurbishment. We want to provide a 21st century theatre-going experience for audiences both new and existing. Our ongoing vision will be to complement the unique period features of this building whilst looking to the future.”
Stephen added that the theatre’s Development Trust will shortly be launching a fund-raising campaign to secure the necessary match-funding for the capital project.
“We’d welcome discussions with anyone locally who has ideas or thoughts on ways to reach our target,” he said.
Richard Grunwell, chair of the Stephen Joseph Theatre board, says: “We’re absolutely delighted with today’s news. We have a wonderful summer of entertainment coming up, followed by an equally exciting 2017/18 winter season. This validation of the Stephen Joseph Theatre as a world-class organisation will enable us to create even more exciting work in 2018 and beyond.
“I’d like to thank our committed and hard-working team, our strong network of supporters, and our wonderful and loyal audiences.”
The theatre’s Development Trust has also been offered a one-off grant by ACE for various necessary upgrades.
NPOs are the organisations which receive regular annual funding from ACE, and are seen as representing some of the best arts practice in the world. For the four financial years from 2018 to 2022, the Stephen Joseph Theatre will receive annual funding of £637,715 a year, the same amount it received each financial year from 2015 to 2018.
The one-off capital grant of £419,122 is a large part of an overall capital project of £561,000 for developments to the front of house areas, including better access via an improved passenger lift and wheelchair platform; a new, environmentally-friendly LED lighting system in the Round, which will lower the venue’s energy bills; and various smaller projects.
The Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Chief Executive, Stephen Freeman, says: “The retention of our NPO status is brilliant news, and real recognition of our vision and of the theatre’s vital role within the communities of Scarborough and Yorkshire.
“The capital grant will enable us to enhance our customer experience enormously. The Stephen Joseph Theatre has been in its current venue for 21 years now, and we’re very aware that it needs some refurbishment. We want to provide a 21st century theatre-going experience for audiences both new and existing. Our ongoing vision will be to complement the unique period features of this building whilst looking to the future.”
Stephen added that the theatre’s Development Trust will shortly be launching a fund-raising campaign to secure the necessary match-funding for the capital project.
“We’d welcome discussions with anyone locally who has ideas or thoughts on ways to reach our target,” he said.
Richard Grunwell, chair of the Stephen Joseph Theatre board, says: “We’re absolutely delighted with today’s news. We have a wonderful summer of entertainment coming up, followed by an equally exciting 2017/18 winter season. This validation of the Stephen Joseph Theatre as a world-class organisation will enable us to create even more exciting work in 2018 and beyond.
“I’d like to thank our committed and hard-working team, our strong network of supporters, and our wonderful and loyal audiences.”
Friday, June 23, 2017
60 Years At The SJT: 1988
2017 marks the 60th anniversary of Alan Ayckbourn joining the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1957. Alan has been indelibly associated with the company since that time as actor, writer, director and Artistic Director.
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..."
The report alleges that the theatre lost £2,000 when a flyer was discovered to have revealed "the top secret burglar alarm system number linked to the police station."
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).
 |
| 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).
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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.
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