Does Sir Alan Ayckbourn actually enjoy the theatre? The fact is, the great man
of the British stage, the first playwright to be knighted after Terence
Rattigan, can't stand most of it. It makes him cringe. “It's a love-hate
thing,” he says. “I love that moment when a show is firing on all cylinders
in a room full of people who are having a great time. But the rest of it is
really irritating. Come on ... why are we sitting in the dark? We all know
it's only a play - so get on with it! I hate what Stephen Daldry once called
'burglar's theatre' - you know, suddenly everything goes dark and people in
black called stage hands creep on and steal vases and things. If you are
going to ask people to be stuck in the dark you've got to surprise them. I
try to make my plays events, not plays, with lots of things happening.”
There's a trait here. Ayckbourn's father, Horace, disliked music and thought
Beethoven was rubbish - a drawback for the first violinist of the London
Symphony Orchestra.
Young Ayckbourn ruled the West End by writing the sort of plays he wanted to
see. In one year alone (1975) he had five plays on in London simultaneously.
He was - and still is - a purveyor of laughter to the middle classes, who
found themselves reflected, judged and found wanting in plays full of broken
hearts and malfunctioning household gadgets.
His experimental plays (The Norman Conquests was three plays all set on
the same weekend seen from three different parts of the house; Intimate
Exchanges has 16 plot variants) were as daring as they were commercially
successful. His Noël Coward-like grip on the public taste made him a
fortune, much of which he ploughed back into his own theatre - his train
set, he called it - on the Yorkshire coast, where he first went in 1957.
He's still there, working as a playwright and artistic director (unsalaried by
choice) of the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Ayckbourn, twice as prolific as
Shakespeare, will be 70 in April. He was lucky to make 69 after a serious
stroke two years ago, which has slowed him up.
“I have yet to write my stroke play but I dare say it will come,” he says. On
the other hand, death is at the front of his mind. “When you get older, you
go to a few funerals. You don't know what to say to the woman - and it's
usually a woman. You start this awful business, 'He was a terrific bloke',
and they look at you as if saying, 'Yes, yes, get it over with'. My new play
is about a woman who is just coming to terms with the death of her husband,
and all her family are doing the crying on her behalf.”
Lady Ayckbourn (the former actress Heather Stoney) has her work cut out with
his recuperation and his son (by his first marriage) and grandchildren
living in the flat upstairs in their house in Scarborough's Old Town. In
hospital he took the decision to retire from running the theatre he's been
the head of since 1972.
“Before the stroke I had a blithe confidence in immortality - I thought,
'Maybe He'll miss me out'. I had cut back on my directing by not doing other
people's plays, which I found totally exhausting because of the
responsibility. So I have now given up the administering and the planning
and what I am left with is directing my own plays and writing them. It's
about as much as I can cope with”.
Next spring, the director Chris Monks will take over the running of the
Stephen Joseph Theatre (formerly the Library Theatre). He has already asked
Ayckbourn for a new play for 2009.
In the meantime another new Ayckbourn opens this week. Life and Beth -
with Liza Goddard and Susie Blake - is about a widow facing her first
Christmas alone. “It's all about taking the famous Philip Larkin text, 'They
f*** you up, your mum and dad' - the disastrous effect parents have on their
children and sometimes the other way round. I describe it as my Blithe
Spirit. It's still quite sad. You can't write a play about a recently
widowed woman at Christmas without it getting sad.”
His own childhood was a lonely business after his father left his mother for
the orchestra's second violinist when Ayckbourn was young. His
ciggie-toting, magazine-journalist mother took up with a bank manager -
another unsatisfactory relationship which Ayckbourn has parlayed into
umpteen plays.
Two things about this new play are typically Ayckbournian. Ticket prices are
affordable, a belief instilled in him by his mentor Stephen Joseph in whose
honour he renamed the in-the-round theatre and whose house he bought.
Secondly, he writes superb parts for actresses. His plays are full of women:
vivid, memorable, victimised. As so often in Ayckbourn, the laughter
conceals the seriousness of the content.
He's been in Scarborough so long people think of him as local. He's not - he's
a southerner who went from Haileybury public school straight into theatre to
meet girls. At a tender age he married and had two boys. He split from his
first wife after ten years but didn't divorce her for another 30, when he
tied the knot in 1997 with Stoney.
“I came to Scarborough in 1957 as a sprog assistant stage manager playing
small parts. I remember I got off the train packed with holidaymakers and
this bracing air and smell of chips. I said, 'Wow!' Because I was an inland
child living in north Sussex, one of the great treats as a child was a trip
to the seaside - so, dear reader, I bought the sweet shop. I came to the
seaside and stayed. I thought, 'This can't get better'.”
His old hits never go away. The Norman Conquests will be staged at the
Old Vic in September. The pattern was for years that his new plays would go
from Scarborough straight to the West End. Recently, however, he has grown
disillusioned, refusing to allow his new plays into London because of the
way a transfer a few years back was mangled.
“I know I sound blimpish but I do feel the straight play is a doomed species.
And what I get really angry about is the terrible starvation of the theatre
out of London. You can see it in insidious ways. The death of regional work
is very serious. You pick up the programme of the average rep company and
you find no individual voice - it's all co-productions with other theatres.
Or it's 'devised' work, and most of that is rubbish.”
One day the Stephen Joseph Theatre will have to cope without Ayckbourn. For
the time being, though, the house writer has no intention of stopping work.
“Two things I live for. One is being in a rehearsal room. The other is writing
a new play. As soon as a new play comes out there's a terrible moment of
post-partum emptiness - and then another idea comes in, sometimes two or
three. I just can't imagine being alive without a play in me somewhere,” he
says, getting up, pregnant with play No 72, his Christmas show.
Life and Beth opens at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough (01723
370541), tomorrow. The Norman Conquests trilogy previews from Sept 11
at the Old Vic, SE1 (0870 0606628) and opens on Oct 6
Life of a playwright
1939 Born April 12 in London
1957 Joins the Library Theatre in Scarborough as an actor and stage
manager
1959 His first play, The Square Cat
1967 His first West End show, Relatively Speaking
1969 How The Other Half Loves, with Robert Morley, is a West End hit
1972 Becomes artistic director of the Library Theatre
1975 Has five plays running simultaneously in the West End
1986 Invited by Peter Hall to form his own company at the National
Theatre
1996 His Scarborough company moves to a new building, called the
Stephen Joseph Theatre
1997 Becomes the first playwright since Terence Rattigan to be knighted
2006 Suffers a stroke in February. Returns to work in September
Noel Coward was, as correctly stated by David Cunard, knighted in 1970 but Terence Rattigan was not knighted until the following year. Alan Ayckbourn was thus the first playwright to be knighted since Rattigan in 1971.
Simon Murgatroyd, Scarborough, England
Noel Coward was, as David Cunard correctly states, knighted in 1970. Terence Rattigan was knighted the following year though, which means Alan Ayckbourn is the first playwright to be knighted since Rattigan in 1971.
Simon Murgatroyd, Scarborough, England
A living British icon.
Let us enjoy him and his work now when he is very much alive - and not wait until he is dead !!!!!
ian payne, walsall,
"The first playwright since Terence Rattigan to be knighted." Doesn't Noel Coward count? He received the Accolade in 1970, very nearly thirty years before Sir Alan, who obviously admires "The Master". He calls 'Life and Beth' his 'Blithe Spirit', one of Sir Noel's most popular works.
David Cunard, Los Angeles, United States
We love Sir Alan's work in the United States; not enough theatres do his work over here--and we've got a lot to learn from his sense of stagecraft!
Joseph Millett, Knoxville, USA