Alan Ayckbourn

Advantages: great for am-dram groups
Disadvantages: need a stage with room to make three areas

...Here is a great play for 6 - 3m - 3f. if you want to make your audience laugh and have a good night out. It is rather line intensive for your actors but the punchy wit and the build up of the characters relationships gives plenty of energy and enjoyment to the cast and director. If you like Alan Aykebourne then you will absolutely love this delving into the politics and psyche of inhabitants of the most intimate room in the house. It is set in three bedrooms in separate houses and shows the tensions and pleasures of marraige at different stages in life. A young, middle aged and older couple are reviewing an evening out. I would recommend this to school groups for exam drama, as well as amatuer groups, as it gives room for impressing an examiner with pace, role play and sense of belief. The main difficulty will probably lie... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Funny. Dark. Ayckbourn up to date
Disadvantages: Stunt doubles bit at end is a bit weak

..., who eventually married him. For all his joviality, Vic still has a nasty streak and is cruel to the unhappy, overweight nanny. Tragedy strikes when the nanny tries to kill herself. The play is Ayckbourn at his best. The subject matter is extremely dark, but it is so funny that you find yourself laughing out loud when you know you shouldn't. Vic's 2 page monologue when he describes the bank raid and tries to justifies his actions is grotesquely funny. The staging of this play is tricky for amateurs. A swimming pool on stage is tough to build, but it is possible even in the tiniest of theatres. The ending seems a little bit false, but this is not a big problem. If you get a chance to see this play, do so.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Humour and interesting ideas, based on good book the premise rather than the plot)
Disadvantages: Very hard to stage, too absurd?, not really an adaptation but a new story

...to be insane to choose being sectioned over assisting a kidnap. Such little ironies are only part of the humour. Generally the play's much funnier and not as dark as the book. Whereas Rhinehart (in the book) is led to rape, adultery and more, here it's the absurdity of dice-living that's emphasised; how rolling the die can frustrate one's obvious desires - e.g. when Ratner pronounces he'll put a stop to the abduction, before rolling a die and then announcing that actually he'll sit calmly by and watch. The absurd humour has more than a touch of Alan Ayckbourn about it - helped by the fact it's set in a mental hospital, and truly enlivened by patients, such as Mr Smith, who has paranoid delusions the whole world is conspiring against him, and Victor (what he's done with Ratner's car is too near the end to reveal, but probably the funniest moment... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful