Love After All
Play: 2
World premiere: 21 December 1959
Venue: Library Theatre, Scarborough
Published: No - held in archive (unavailable for production)
Find out more: http://loveafterall.alanayckbourn.net
Short Synopsis
An elderly miser, Scrimes, plans to marry of his daughter Angelica to a pig-breeding bore of an aristocrat, Rupert Hodge. A passing stranger, Jim Jones, sees Angelica at her window and falls in love with her whilst Angelica's clever maid, Minta, falls for him.
Jones, donning a variety of increasingly bizarre disguises - including a portrait artist, doctor and Scrimes' female American cousin - attempts to see gain entry to the house to propose to Angelica; all the while Minta telling him he's pursuing the wrong girl.
In a bid to rid himself of Jones, Scrimes comes up with a plan for Hodge to disguise himself and abduct Angelica; Minta informs Jones of the plan and engineers Hodge's successful abduction of Angelica, whilst she waits in disguise to entrap Jones for herself. With everyone in disguise and confusion abounding, Scrimes gives several dowries to Jones instead of Hodge. Jones and Minta run off together with the money, whilst Hodge and Angelica flee a pistol-wielding Scrimes to also begin a new life together.
Did you know?
> This is the Ayckbourn play about which least is known. Only one original manuscript exists (despite there being two different versions of the play), very few reviews exist and Alan Ayckbourn has said very little about the play.
> It is, arguably (and I’d argue very strongly for this!), this most conventional play written by Alan Ayckbourn. It is a period farce which satisfies but does not push the conventions of the genre.
> Although apparently based on The Barber Of Seville; it seems this was only in the loosest use of the term.
> Alan has suggested it was an easier play to write than The Square Cat as he stole the plot; he has never explained why he stole the plot though. This could be because he was only commissioned to write it no earlier than 9 September 1959 (the end of the summer season) for rehearsals beginning no later than 9 December 1959 - less than three months!
> It is attributed to Roland Allen (a pseudonym combining of the names of Alan and his wife, Christine Roland); quite why a pseudonym is used is unclear given the programme - free to all audience members - makes it clear the author Roland Allen is actually the actor Alan Ayckbourn.
> Love After All is - even more so than The Square Cat - centred largely on providing a showcase for the leading actor (who plays four different characters). Ironically, Alan wrote it to showcase his own abilities, but was then not able to perform in the original production due to being called for National Service.
> It is Alan’s first multi-location set as it contains both a ground floor living room and a second floor bedroom on the same stage.
> Alan has frequently talked about how he and the company’s other resident playwright, David Campton, wrote each other the worst roles possible (culminating in David writing Alan a role for a one-eyed, one armed, one legged barman). Possibly it all began here with Alan casting David as an 83 year old miser (David being 35 at the time).
> It is possibly (and I stand to be corrected) the only Ayckbourn play where a character gives an aside to the audience (breaking the in-the-round equivalent of the fourth wall) where the convention hasn’t been established as part of the narrative (i.e. the narrators / lead characters in certain family plays such as Invisible Friends and Miss Yesterday).
> There is also an astonishing example of monologuing by Minta purely to provide exposition and, presumably, to just make it clear to the audience a character was in disguise; it's doubly unusual given Alan so rarely writers monologues in his plays.
> Notable dialogue: “I have always ridiculed the doctor who sat and listened to his patient’s chest as if it were a gramophone. If a gramophone goes wrong, one does not sit listening to it. On the contrary, one opens it up - dear sir - opens it up and has a good look inside.”
> Like The Square Cat before it, the play was so popular with audiences that a decision was made to run it for a second week.
> For the summer of 1960, the play was revived but the new director Julian Herington decided he did not like it and updated it to a contemporary setting. As a script for this production hasn't survived, we have no idea how substantially it was altered.
> While Alan joked in the 1970s he was trying to destroy all copies of his early plays, the fact that only one Love After All manuscript is known to exist (and in a place where Alan could not destroy it!), whereas there are multiple copies of his other early plays, does suggest he really did try to destroy Love After All!
Look out for our accompanying Ayckbourn Moments photograph on this blog on Friday.
Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without the permission of the copyright holder.
