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Damsels in Distress (plays)
Encyclopedia
Damsels in Distress is a trilogy of plays written in 2001 by British
playwright
Alan Ayckbourn
. The three plays, GamePlan
, FlatSpin
and RolePlay
, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Company (SJT). The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same set. Although the plays loosely shared some common themes, the three stories were independent of each other and unconnected.
This trilogy is considered Alan Ayckbourn's first major success of the 21st century. It also began a dispute between Ayckbourn and the West End
.
's repertory system. Throughout the theatre's time at its first two venues, plays had largely been staged on a repertory
basis, with plays being chosen and written around the actors available. After the move to the theatre's current venue in 1996, however, the system largely ended (apart from the 10×10 season in 1998), with the theatre relying more on actors hired for single roles. Partly because of this, and partly because of the ongoing financial pressure on the theatre, in 2001 Ayckbourn chose to write a set of plays which could be performed by the same company of seven actors available at the time. This included three long-standing SJT performers (Robert Austin, Jacqueline King
and Bill Champion), two recent additions (Alison Pargeter
and Saskia Butler) and two newcomers (Beth Tuckey and Tim Faraday).
It was originally planned for Damsels in Distress to be two plays, GamePlan
and FlatSpin
. Indeed, this remained the intention when GamePlan was premiered in May. It was only during rehearsals for FlatSpin when Ayckbourn considered the "company" effect to take hold, and the idea for a third play started to emerge. After getting agreement from the cast to take on a third play, it was written in the week after FlatSpin began performances, and the summer programme was rescheduled to include this play, RolePlay
, late in the season.
As well as sharing the same seven actors, the trilogy was also written to use the same set: a flat in the London Docklands, where Ayckbourn himself owns a flat. Beyond that, there was no intentional link between the plays, and the only reason the name Damsels in Distress was chosen was that the plays all happened to include a female character in some sort of trouble. However, there were nonetheless a number of common themes that arose from the plays' settings: flats owned by well-to-do Londoners who know little of who their neighbours are or what they do; and seedy vices left behind from London's old East End coming back to haunt them. The plays also shared themes common to most Ayckbourn plays.
for their original productions at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
. However, in subsequent productions elsewhere they were re-staged for the proscenium
.
GamePlan
premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
on 24 May 2001, followed by FlatSpin
on 3 July 2001 and RolePlay
on 4 September 2001. The production team for all three plays was:
The three plays then toured, including a return to the Stephen Joseph Theatre to compensate for the earlier short run of RolePlay. The trilogy was chosen as the inaugural productions for the newly-built Gala Theatre in Durham
in January 2002.
The plays began a West End
run at the Duchess Theatre
on 7 September 2002, with the same cast and production team. However, the success of RolePlay over led to play's producers, the Really Useful Group
, gradually reducing the number of performances of the other two plays. Finally, it was decided to stage only RolePlay during the week, with the other two staged only during the day on a Saturday as part of the whole trilogy. This caused considerable upset amongst the cast and led to a long-standing rift with the West End in general.
All three plays have received further performances by other theatre companies since, but, so far, no professional theatre has attempted to re-stage the whole trilogy.
GamePlan was reviewed first. The critics reacted positively to the concept of a return to repertory theatre, and the departure to more contemporary themes, although they were split on how good GamePlan was as a play. FlatSpin received relatively little attention as an individual play, with most critics choosing to review it as part of the set along with RolePlay. When RolePlay was reviewed, it received unanimous praise from the critics. The trilogy as a whole then received further praise throughout its tour and West End performances, with Michael Billington of The Guardian
dubbing the cast "The Magnificent Seven". FlatSpin was generally considered the weakest of the three, and RolePlay the strongest.
Alison Pargeter
won Best Newcomer in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for her roles of Kelly Butcher, Rosie Seymour and Paige Petite.
and FlatSpin
in favour of RolePlay
finally came to public attention in October 2002. Shortly after the end of the West End production, at the Orange World lecture at the Apollo Theatre
, Michael Billington
asked Alan Ayckbourn about the state of the West End
. Ayckbourn responded by expressing his dissatisfaction with the commercial producers who, in his words, "condemned two of the parts to the dustbin," and said of the West End in general "If all we are looking for these days is one-shot plays with one big name in it, I don't want to be part of it." This was widely reported as Alan Ayckbourn threatening to boycott the West End.
Ayckbourn also heavily criticised the West End for casting cinema, pop and television stars instead of theatre actors, particularly their lack of voice projection. He singled out his harshest criticism for casting Madonna
in David Williamson
's Up for Grabs
, saying "You might as well have put her on stage eating a plate of spaghetti and put a rope round her chair instead of putting her in a theatre where she wasn't at home and was struggling."
Although a "boycott" was not what Ayckbourn said word-for-word, the effect was broadly the same. The following year, Ayckbourn suggested he might return to the West End on condition that plays were staged on his terms, and this was interpreted as a sign that his latest play, Sugar Daddies
, would get a West End performance. But this did not happen, and the closest performance to London was at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
in Guildford
. In 2005, Private Fears in Public Places
also omitted the West End from its run, instead choosing to perform at the Outer London venue of the Orange Tree Theatre
, in Richmond. Ayckbourn has continued to criticise the West End frequently, and has said he does not expect to direct at the West End again (except, if asked, at the National Theatre
where he spent a two-year sabbatical).
In 2007, he relaxed the boycott to allow other directors to direct his "classic" plays in the West End again, although his moratorium on the recent plays remained, and Absurd Person Singular
was performed at the Garrick Theatre
. The following year, he allowed The Norman Conquests
to be revived at The Old Vic
, which went to the length of re-staging the theatre in the round
, as the play was originally intended.
He finally allowed a return to the West End as a director with a revival of Woman in Mind
starring Janie Dee
. This revival, first staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
in September 2008, ran in early 2009 at the Vaudeville Theatre
, where the original London première was performed in 1986.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
. The three plays, GamePlan
GamePlan (play)
GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.-Background:See also: Background on Damsels in Distress...
, FlatSpin
FlatSpin (play)
FlatSpin is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the second in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress It is about an actress called Rosie Seymour who accepts a date with a mysterious Sam Berryman, who seems to have mistaken her for a Joanna Rupelford.-Background:See also:...
and RolePlay
RolePlay (play)
RolePlay is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the third in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress...
, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
Company (SJT). The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same set. Although the plays loosely shared some common themes, the three stories were independent of each other and unconnected.
This trilogy is considered Alan Ayckbourn's first major success of the 21st century. It also began a dispute between Ayckbourn and the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
.
Background
Damsels in Distress began as an experiment to revive the Stephen Joseph TheatreStephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
's repertory system. Throughout the theatre's time at its first two venues, plays had largely been staged on a repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
basis, with plays being chosen and written around the actors available. After the move to the theatre's current venue in 1996, however, the system largely ended (apart from the 10×10 season in 1998), with the theatre relying more on actors hired for single roles. Partly because of this, and partly because of the ongoing financial pressure on the theatre, in 2001 Ayckbourn chose to write a set of plays which could be performed by the same company of seven actors available at the time. This included three long-standing SJT performers (Robert Austin, Jacqueline King
Jacqueline King
-Career:King trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. After training she worked as an actor in Africa, Canada, America, Sri Lanka and UAE.On returning to the UK, she appeared in several Alan Ayckbourn productions, including the original runs of Comic Potential and the Damsels in Distress...
and Bill Champion), two recent additions (Alison Pargeter
Alison Pargeter
Alison Pargeter is an English actress who played the roles of stalker Sarah Cairns in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also Mary Slessor in a 11-part television series of Mary Slessor, and the Nag's Head barmaid called Val in the BBC Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips.-Theatre:Pargeter was a...
and Saskia Butler) and two newcomers (Beth Tuckey and Tim Faraday).
It was originally planned for Damsels in Distress to be two plays, GamePlan
GamePlan (play)
GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.-Background:See also: Background on Damsels in Distress...
and FlatSpin
FlatSpin (play)
FlatSpin is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the second in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress It is about an actress called Rosie Seymour who accepts a date with a mysterious Sam Berryman, who seems to have mistaken her for a Joanna Rupelford.-Background:See also:...
. Indeed, this remained the intention when GamePlan was premiered in May. It was only during rehearsals for FlatSpin when Ayckbourn considered the "company" effect to take hold, and the idea for a third play started to emerge. After getting agreement from the cast to take on a third play, it was written in the week after FlatSpin began performances, and the summer programme was rescheduled to include this play, RolePlay
RolePlay (play)
RolePlay is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the third in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress...
, late in the season.
As well as sharing the same seven actors, the trilogy was also written to use the same set: a flat in the London Docklands, where Ayckbourn himself owns a flat. Beyond that, there was no intentional link between the plays, and the only reason the name Damsels in Distress was chosen was that the plays all happened to include a female character in some sort of trouble. However, there were nonetheless a number of common themes that arose from the plays' settings: flats owned by well-to-do Londoners who know little of who their neighbours are or what they do; and seedy vices left behind from London's old East End coming back to haunt them. The plays also shared themes common to most Ayckbourn plays.
Characters
Each of the three plays has its own cast of seven characters. In the original production, the twenty-one characters were cast as follows:| Actor in original production | Actor required | GamePlan | FlatSpin | RolePlay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Champion | Male, younger | Troy Stephens | Sam Berryman | Justin Lazenby |
| Saskia Butler | Female, younger | Sorrel Saxon | Tracy Taylor | Julie-Ann Jobson |
| Alison Pargeter Alison Pargeter Alison Pargeter is an English actress who played the roles of stalker Sarah Cairns in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also Mary Slessor in a 11-part television series of Mary Slessor, and the Nag's Head barmaid called Val in the BBC Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips.-Theatre:Pargeter was a... |
Female, younger | Kelly Butcher | Rosie Seymour | Paige Petite |
| Tim Faraday | Male, older | Dan Endicott | Tommy Angel | Micky Rale |
| Robert Austin | Male, older | Leo Tyler | Maurice Whickett | Derek Jobson |
| Beth Tuckley | Female, older | Grace Page | Edna Stricken | Dee Jobson |
| Jacqueline King Jacqueline King -Career:King trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. After training she worked as an actor in Africa, Canada, America, Sri Lanka and UAE.On returning to the UK, she appeared in several Alan Ayckbourn productions, including the original runs of Comic Potential and the Damsels in Distress... |
Female, older | Lynette Saxon | Annette Sefton-Wilcox | Arabella Lazenby |
Setting
All three plays are single-scene plays, written to use the same set of a flat in the London Docklands, although each play is set in a different flat. The set includes a living area, kitchen and balcony over the river, all of which have different functions in different plays. The plays were performed in the roundTheatre in the round
Theatre-in-the-round or arena theatre is any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area...
for their original productions at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
. However, in subsequent productions elsewhere they were re-staged for the proscenium
Proscenium
A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
.
GamePlan
The first play, GamePlan, is the darkest of the three, and covers the theme of teenage prostitution - a theme far more contemporary than those often expected from Ayckbourn plays. The play centres around Lynette Saxon, a once-successful dotcom businesswoman now reduced to cleaning the offices she once managed, her 16-year-old daughter Sorrel, and Sorrel's friend, Kelly Butcher. Sorrel intends to support herself and her mother by setting herself up as a high-class call girl (inspired by a somewhat romanticised account from a former pupil), and enlists Kelly as her "maid". Sorrel is convinced she has everything worked out and does not see selling sex as a big deal. However, Sorrel's plan starts to unravel when her first client arrives, especially after he dies of a heart attack in her mother's flat.FlatSpin
The second play, FlatSpin, is a comedy thriller. Rosie Seymour is an out-of-work actress openly desperate for a job and a man. She is house-sitting for a flat owned by a Joanna Rupelford, when a handsome stranger, Sam Berryman, arrives and eventually tells her she is the most beautiful woman he has ever met and asks her out on a date, even though he appears to have mistaken her for the flat's owner. Rosie, going along with this assumed identity, allows Sam back to the flat that evening to cook her dinner. The date is going extraordinarily well until Sam is suddenly called away, only for a couple of heavies to return with Sam later. It turns out that Sam, the heavies and the flat are all part of an elaborate drugs sting due to take place that evening. With Rosie having shown herself to the drug courier they intend to entrap, Rosie is talked into doing the sting herself.RolePlay
RolePlay was the play written as the afterthought, but turned out to be the most successful play of the three. The play centres on a dinner party held by Justin Lazenby and Julie-Ann Jobson, where they intend to announce their engagement. Before the dinner begins, there are already signs of tension: Julie-Ann gets overly frantic about making the meal perfect for her parents (her father, it later turns out, is a right-wing bigot), and Justin's alcoholic mother is clearly going to arrive paralytic. However, the biggest complication turns out to be when Paige Petite climbs onto the balcony, on the run from her violent boyfriend. Trapped in the flat by her minder, Justin and Julie-Ann are forced to keep up appearances during the dinner whilst the stand-off is played out.Productions
GamePlan (play)
GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.-Background:See also: Background on Damsels in Distress...
premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
on 24 May 2001, followed by FlatSpin
FlatSpin (play)
FlatSpin is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the second in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress It is about an actress called Rosie Seymour who accepts a date with a mysterious Sam Berryman, who seems to have mistaken her for a Joanna Rupelford.-Background:See also:...
on 3 July 2001 and RolePlay
RolePlay (play)
RolePlay is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the third in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress...
on 4 September 2001. The production team for all three plays was:
- Director - Alan AyckbournAlan AyckbournSir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
- Design - Roger Glossop
- Lighting - Mick Hughes
- Costumes - Christine Wall
- Music - Keith Jarrett
The three plays then toured, including a return to the Stephen Joseph Theatre to compensate for the earlier short run of RolePlay. The trilogy was chosen as the inaugural productions for the newly-built Gala Theatre in Durham
Durham
Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...
in January 2002.
The plays began a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
run at the Duchess Theatre
Duchess Theatre
The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street, near Aldwych.The theatre opened on 25 November 1929 and is one of the smallest 'proscenium arched' West End theatres. It has 479 seats on two levels....
on 7 September 2002, with the same cast and production team. However, the success of RolePlay over led to play's producers, the Really Useful Group
Really Useful Group
The Really Useful Group Ltd. is an international company set up in 1977 by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is involved in theatre, film, television, video and concert productions, merchandising, magazine publishing, records and music publishing...
, gradually reducing the number of performances of the other two plays. Finally, it was decided to stage only RolePlay during the week, with the other two staged only during the day on a Saturday as part of the whole trilogy. This caused considerable upset amongst the cast and led to a long-standing rift with the West End in general.
All three plays have received further performances by other theatre companies since, but, so far, no professional theatre has attempted to re-stage the whole trilogy.
Critical Reviews
Further details in review sections on individual GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay pages.GamePlan was reviewed first. The critics reacted positively to the concept of a return to repertory theatre, and the departure to more contemporary themes, although they were split on how good GamePlan was as a play. FlatSpin received relatively little attention as an individual play, with most critics choosing to review it as part of the set along with RolePlay. When RolePlay was reviewed, it received unanimous praise from the critics. The trilogy as a whole then received further praise throughout its tour and West End performances, with Michael Billington of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
dubbing the cast "The Magnificent Seven". FlatSpin was generally considered the weakest of the three, and RolePlay the strongest.
Alison Pargeter
Alison Pargeter
Alison Pargeter is an English actress who played the roles of stalker Sarah Cairns in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also Mary Slessor in a 11-part television series of Mary Slessor, and the Nag's Head barmaid called Val in the BBC Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips.-Theatre:Pargeter was a...
won Best Newcomer in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for her roles of Kelly Butcher, Rosie Seymour and Paige Petite.
West End dispute
The upset caused by the sidelining of GamePlanGamePlan (play)
GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.-Background:See also: Background on Damsels in Distress...
and FlatSpin
FlatSpin (play)
FlatSpin is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the second in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress It is about an actress called Rosie Seymour who accepts a date with a mysterious Sam Berryman, who seems to have mistaken her for a Joanna Rupelford.-Background:See also:...
in favour of RolePlay
RolePlay (play)
RolePlay is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the third in a trilogy of plays called Damsels In Distress...
finally came to public attention in October 2002. Shortly after the end of the West End production, at the Orange World lecture at the Apollo Theatre
Apollo Theatre
The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...
, Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)
Michael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised...
asked Alan Ayckbourn about the state of the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
. Ayckbourn responded by expressing his dissatisfaction with the commercial producers who, in his words, "condemned two of the parts to the dustbin," and said of the West End in general "If all we are looking for these days is one-shot plays with one big name in it, I don't want to be part of it." This was widely reported as Alan Ayckbourn threatening to boycott the West End.
Ayckbourn also heavily criticised the West End for casting cinema, pop and television stars instead of theatre actors, particularly their lack of voice projection. He singled out his harshest criticism for casting Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
in David Williamson
David Williamson
David Keith Williamson AO is one of Australia's best-known playwrights. He has also written screenplays and teleplays.-Biography:...
's Up for Grabs
Up for Grabs (play)
Up For Grabs is a play by Australian playwright David Williamson.Set in the booming international art market from 1990, which was fuelled by the dot com boom, it involves scenes of an alternate sexual nature...
, saying "You might as well have put her on stage eating a plate of spaghetti and put a rope round her chair instead of putting her in a theatre where she wasn't at home and was struggling."
Although a "boycott" was not what Ayckbourn said word-for-word, the effect was broadly the same. The following year, Ayckbourn suggested he might return to the West End on condition that plays were staged on his terms, and this was interpreted as a sign that his latest play, Sugar Daddies
Sugar Daddies (play)
Sugar Daddies is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a student who forms a friendship with a rich man over three times her age, who has a sinister past, and maybe a sinister present too.-Background:...
, would get a West End performance. But this did not happen, and the closest performance to London was at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Surrey presents in-house productions which often tour and transfer to London's West End. Other performances include opera, ballet and pantomime. Named after the actress Yvonne Arnaud, the company has two performance venues, a main theatre and the smaller Mill...
in Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
. In 2005, Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places
Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,...
also omitted the West End from its run, instead choosing to perform at the Outer London venue of the Orange Tree Theatre
Orange Tree Theatre
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round....
, in Richmond. Ayckbourn has continued to criticise the West End frequently, and has said he does not expect to direct at the West End again (except, if asked, at the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
where he spent a two-year sabbatical).
In 2007, he relaxed the boycott to allow other directors to direct his "classic" plays in the West End again, although his moratorium on the recent plays remained, and Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples...
was performed at the Garrick Theatre
Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a...
. The following year, he allowed The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests
The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth's sister Annie, and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbour...
to be revived at The Old Vic
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...
, which went to the length of re-staging the theatre in the round
Theatre in the round
Theatre-in-the-round or arena theatre is any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area...
, as the play was originally intended.
He finally allowed a return to the West End as a director with a revival of Woman in Mind
Woman In Mind
Woman in Mind is the 32nd play by English playwright, Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End...
starring Janie Dee
Janie Dee
Janie Dee is an English actress and singer.She is married to the actor Rupert Wickham.-Theatre:Dee is presently part of the Globe Theatre 2011 season playing The Countess of Roussillion in Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well" and in October she goes to Nottingham Playhouse to play Amanda in ...
. This revival, first staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
in September 2008, ran in early 2009 at the Vaudeville Theatre
Vaudeville Theatre
The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on The Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each new building retained elements of the previous...
, where the original London première was performed in 1986.