'What is remarkable about Alan Ayckbourn's comedy is that it contrives to be simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. Literally, it is agonisingly funny' Daily Telegraph In Three Plays Ayckbourn's perfectly pitched dialogue slices into the soul of suburbia. The settings are simple - a kitchen, a bedroom, a party - but the relationships between the husbands and wives are more complicated. Fraught relationships are exposed with humour, bathos and a sharp understanding of human nature.
“Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great-great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive.” –Aleksandar Hemon From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook comes the uproarious and poignant story of one very fat man and one very small country Meet Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, a 325-pound disaster of a human being, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, proud holder of a degree in multicultural studies from Accidental College, USA (don’t even ask), and patriot of no country save the great City of New York. Poor Misha just wants to live in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman in Russia, all hopes of a U.S. visa are lost. Salvation lies in the tiny, oil-rich nation of Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. But after a civil war breaks out between two competing ethnic groups and a local warlord installs hapless Misha as minister of multicultural affairs, our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century. With the enormous success of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Gary Shteyngart established himself as a central figure in today’s literary world—“one of the most talented and entertaining writers of his generation,” according to The New York Observer. In Absurdistan, he delivers an even funnier and wiser literary performance. Misha Vainberg is a hero for the new century, a glimmer of humanity in a world of dashed hopes.
THE STORY: LAUGHING STOCK is a hilarious backstage farce and genuinely affectionate look into the world of the theatre. When The Playhouse, a rustic New England summer theatre, schedules a repertory season of Dracula , Hamlet and Ch
An award-winning novel of love, betrayal, and Arab Israeli identity by the author of Dancing Arabs—“one of the most important contemporary Hebrew writers” (Haaretz). A successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist find their lives intersecting under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in Jerusalem, a large house, and a Mercedes. He speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and lives with his wife and two young children. To maintain his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he makes frequent visits to a local bookstore and picks up popular novels. But on one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. Tucked in its pages, he finds a love letter, in Arabic . . . in his wife’s handwriting. Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, he decides to hunt down the book’s previous owner—a man named Yonatan. But Yonatan’s identity is more complex than the attorney imagined. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer breaks the fragile threads that hold all of their lives together. Winner of the 2011 Bernstein Prize, Second Person Singular is “part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery” (The Boston Globe) that offers “sharp insights on the assumptions made about race, religion, ethnicity, and class that shape Israeli identity” (Publishers Weekly). “[Kashua’s] dry wit shines.” —Los Angeles Times “Kashua’s protagonists struggle, often comically . . . making his narratives more nuanced than some of the other Arabs writing about the conflict” —Newsweek “Sayed Kashua is a brilliant, funny, humane writer who effortlessly overturns any and all preconceptions about the Middle East. God, I love him.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
A play set in the foreseeable future when everything has changed except human nature; a future where TV daytime soaps are performed by android actors emotionally programmed by the control room. One, JC 31333, finds herself humanized as Jacie Triplethree, complete with a sense of humour and Adam, a young scriptwriter, falls for her.
The central character of Alan Ayckbourn's new play is Susan, a parson's wife, 'one of the most moving and devastating that he has created...' Robin Thornber reviewing the first production in Scarborough in the Guardian.
"In this play, Annie has arranged to spend an illicit weekend with her sister Ruth's husband Norman, and for this reason, suitably disguised, has asked her elder brother Reg and his wife Sarah to look after their widowed mother and the house. As it happens the seduction, thought or planned, by each of the six characters never takes place either"--Publisher's website.
A student edition of five one-act plays by Britain's most popular playwright. Ayckbourn's series of plays for 4-5 actors typify his black comedies of human behaviour. First produced in 1976, the plays are alternately naturalistic, stylised and farcical, but underlying each is the problem of loneliness. The Mother Figure shows a mother unable to escape from baby talk; in The Drinking Companion an absentee husband attempts seduction without success; in Between Mouthfuls, a waiter oversees a fraught dinner encounter. A garden party gets out of hand in Gosforth's Fete whilst A Talk in the Park is a revue style curtain call piece for the five actors. Whether the comedies concern marital conflict, infidelity or motherhood and take place on a park bench or at a village fete, the characters are familiar and their cries for help instantly recognisable. "Principally he is respected as a radical re-inventor of form" Dominic Dromgoole
In The Crafty Art of Playmaking, this seminal guide from renowned playwright Alan Ayckbourn shares his tricks of the trade. From helpful hints on writing to tips on directing, this book provides a complete primer for the newcomer and a refresher for those with more experience. Written in Ayckbourn's signature style that combines humor, seriousness, and a heady air of sophistication, The Crafty Art of Playmaking is a must-have for aspiring playwrights, students of drama, and anyone who has ever laughed their way through one of Ayckbourn's plays.
