Alan Ayckbourn

With an Introduction by the author.'The prolific master of suburban mayhem has still got his mojo.' Evening StandardTime of My Life'One of Mr. Ayckbourn's most virtuosic experiments in postmodern narrative.' Wall Street JournalNeighbourhood Watch'Ayckbourn's tartly topical, pitch-black comedy, a startling evocation of the panic induced by nightmarish notions of "broken Britain"... An arresting, nastily comic cautionary tale.' The TimesArrivals and Departures'Ayckbourn's genius lies in his ability to write what you might call 'sad comedies,' uproariously funny farces that are at second glance deeply serious, at times despairing portraits of modern middle-class life and its discontents. On occasion, as in Arrivals & Departures, he puts the despair at centre stage, and what results is a play that at bottom can no longer be called a comedy at all.' Wall Street JournalHero's Welcome 'Alan Ayckbourn is the poet laureate of missed connections. In play after pensive, droll and acid play, Ayckbourn anatomizes how we fail to understand and trust our lovers and friends.' GuardianA Brief History of Women'As A Brief History of Women follows Spates at twenty year intervals through the next sixty years, it becomes progressively more funny, more tender, more Ayckbourn. Ayckbourn knows that moments of real connection between people are hard-won and hard to forget.' The Times

This third volume of Alan Ayckbourn plays includes Haunting Julia, Sugar Daddies, Drowning on Dry Land and Private Fears in Public Places, with an introduction by the author. Haunting Julia 'A play for today. It touches on the failures of education and parenting, on media pressure and overdoses. Kurt Cobain comes to mind. More universally, Haunting Julia mourns how in adolescence and adulthood, we do our loves wrong.' Financial Times Sugar Daddies 'A timely warning about the dangers of role-playing and pretence . . . But the real fascination lies in watching Ayckbourn's own transformation from social observer to impassioned moralist.' Guardian Drowning on Dry Land 'Ayckbourn at the top of his game.' Guardian 'A coruscatingly acid and funny play.' The Times Private Fears in Public Places 'Ayckbourn's construction has a masterly clarity; his writing combines ruthless observation with mature tolerance. Nobody else writing today can create a sense of a complicated little world in 90 minutes, or make banal lives seem so unforgivably interesting. Listen: it's a master's voice.' Sunday Times

The first volume of Alan Ayckbourn's collected work contains his morality plays from the 1980s. It includes the plays A Chorus of Disapproval, A Small Family Business, Henceforward . . ., and Man of the Moment.

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.

With over sixty plays written and premièred at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough before going on to play in the West End or the Royal National Theatre, London, or Broadway, Alan Ayckbourn's expertise in writing and directing plays is unsurpassed.For the first time, here in The Crafty Art of Playmaking, he shares all his tricks of the trade. From helpful hints on writing (Where do you start? How do you continue? What is comedy and how do you write it? What is tragedy and how does it work?), to tips on directing (working with actors and technicians, when to listen to the other experts, how to cope with rehearsals), the book provides a complete primer for the tyro and a refresher for the more experienced. Written in an accessible and highly entertaining style, with anecdotes galore to illustrate the how, when, where and why, it's worth the cover price for the jokes alone.'A marvellously useful and enjoyably good-humoured book' Daily Telegraph

Two plays about love and marriage take place in different auditoria simultaneously with the same large cast appearing in both of them. As always in Ayckbourn, hilarity is combined with hurt.

This children's play is both inventive and entertaining, ideal for use in schools for the Literacy Hour strand of primary teaching for Key Stage 2 - both to read aloud and perform.

"Comic Potential" is a comedy set in the foreseeable future when everything has changed except human nature...Alan Ayckbourn's fifty-third full-length play was first presented at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1998 and received its West End premiere at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, in October 1999.

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.

Funny, gripping and wrenchingly truthful, these three blackly comic plays slice into the soul of suburbia. Couples – often mismatched, sometimes disorientated – dominate the action. The settings are simple – a kitchen, a bedroom, a party – all familiar terrains where husbands and wives meet, bewildered, puzzled and angry. ‘In the hilarious delineation of marital pain there is no one to touch Alan Ayckbourn’ Eric Shorter in the Daily Telegraph.

This is a bright comedy by the famous English comic playwright about the extraordinary powers of Ernie Fraser, a dreamer with a difference. Ernie has a vivid imagination; and his thoughts have the disconcerting habit of turning into reality....

Melanie believes she has foreseen the future. But has she really? Or is it all in her mind? True or false, she has seen events which threaten the life of one she secretly loves, and she feels they are in terrible danger. What can she possibly do or say to prevent things happening, and who will even believe her?

Irascible author Algy Waterbridge is hard at work on his thirty-third crime novel. While Algy’s wife is getting more forgetful, and his PA frequently oversteps the mark, the constant interruptions come to a head with an unfortunate newspaper interview. As Algy’s fictional characters take over, the lines between fiction and reality become blurred. A comedy of confusion about a grumpy old man who might not be so grumpy after all.

Elspeth and Arthur are celebrating forty years of quiet, safe, unspectacular, ordinary marriage. Or so most of the guests attending their anniversary party are led to believe. But knowing her and knowing him as they do, their son and daughter know differently.

Six people with six very separate lives are strangely linked by circumstance. Does Nicola still love Dan? Can Stewart be on the verge of an office romance? Will Imogen ever find true love? Does Ambrose have a secret life? And what on earth is Charlotte up to?

After a hit and run accident, naive country girl Sasha comes to the aid of ex-villain Val who is using a bogus identity as an ex-policeman. Sasha befriends Val and welcomes him into her home; overcome by her generosity and childlike innocence, he showers Sasha with lavish gifts whilst his rival Ashley, knowing of Val's sordid past, seeks to protect Sasha from this potential danger.