Alan Ayckbourn Plays 5
Alan Ayckbourn Plays 5

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2011-10-06

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0571274633

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Snake in the Grass A terrific piece - brilliant, bizarre and yet totally believable . . . In fact, it's more than classic; it's close to the top of its class. Yorkshire Post If I Were You A blissfully funny comedy that's also filled with sadness, a devilishly simple theatrical idea that spins out all kinds of complex truths about human nature. Daily Telegraph Life and Beth A wise, humane, funny play about the inevitability of death and the continuity of life. Guardian My Wonderful Day A transformation happens as magical as the most magnificent pantomime transformation anyone could ever imagine . . . the playwright dissolves the paraphernalia of our adult selves and uncovers that space inside each of us that is still the child we once were. Observer Life of Riley As perceptive as ever . . . Ayckbourn has once again achieved a satisfyingly rich, tragi-comic complexity. Daily Telegraph

Comic Potential
Comic Potential

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9780573627972

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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.

Woman in Mind
Woman in Mind

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2014-07-17

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13: 0571318223

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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.

A Small Family Business
A Small Family Business

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780573693779

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Jack McCraken has the opportunity of a lifetime: he is the new head of a family furniture business and believes he will initiate a new age of honesty and integrity. He quickly learns that everyone else involved in the enterprise has a vested interest in maintaining business as usual, rife with dishonesty and deceit "--

Confusions
Confusions

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-04

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 147253641X

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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

Table Manners
Table Manners

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9780573617157

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"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.

Callisto
Callisto

Author: Torsten Krol

Publisher: Picador Australia

Published: 2007-11-10

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 174197836X

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"My name is Odell Deefus. I am a white person, not black like you might think from hearing the name and not seeing me. If you did see me, you wouldn't remember me for my face, which isn't the kind to stick in anyone's mind, but you might remember me for being tall. I am six-three, which makes women attracted to me, then they find out I don't talk the kind of talk they like to hear, so there goes the romance before it even started. You have to be able to talk to get anywhere. Me, I have to think awhile before I talk, but in the meantime the conversation has moved on, as they say, so forget that. I have had this difficulty all my life, with bad consequences." This blackly funny novel of our times follows what happens when Odell Deefus takes one wrong turn on the journey of his life and crashes into a world of oddballs, misfits, drug-dealers, religious fanatics and crooked cops, hypocrisy, torture and bloody murder. In Callisto, Odell Deefus discovers a vast web of corruption and deceit leading to the dark heart of America.

Communicating Doors
Communicating Doors

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 9780573626845

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This intricate time traveling comic thriller by the British master of farcical comedy delighted London and New York audiences. A London sex specialist from the future stumbles into a murder plot that sends her, compliments of a unique set of hotel doors, traveling back in time. She and two women who were murdered in 1998 and 1978 race back and forth in time trying to rewrite history and prevent their own violent ends. The frantic race begins when Poopay is hired for an evening at the Regal Hotel by an old man who eschews a fling in favor of confessing his role in the demise of his wives. Now a target, Poopay flees into the vestibule and somehow triggers the time machine. -- Publisher's website.

The Crafty Art of Playmaking
The Crafty Art of Playmaking

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2015-04-28

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1250083087

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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.

Season's Greetings
Season's Greetings

Author: Alan Ayckbourn

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2010-12-02

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0571273483

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Now we don't want to start Christmas like this, do we?Cheating at snakes and ladders, fighting over comic books, a bungled infidelity beneath the tree. Christmas has arrived in the Bunker household along with family and friends. But as the children lurk just out of sight, it's the adults who are letting the side down. I couldn't. Not in our sitting-room. Not in front of the television. Somewhere else. Presiding over the festivities are two warring uncles, one a kindly, incompetent doctor with an interminable puppet show to perform; the other a bullying retired security guard who dominates the TV, brings toy guns for his nieces and determines there's a thief in their midst. Alan Ayckbourn's masterly Season's Greetings offers a seriously entertaining look at the misery and high jinks of an average family Christmas. The play opens at the National Theatre, London, in December 2010.Three times I caught him at it. Ripping open presents, helping himself to the contents.