Ayckbourn

I loved hearing about your favourite theatrical experiences on the previous post!  Lots of us seem to cherish special moments of seeing our acting heroes.  I restricted myself to one – otherwise I’d have had to include Judi Dench in Peter and Alice, Judi Dench again in All’s Well That Ends Well, Tamsin Greig in Much Ado About Nothing, Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles in The Rivals… etc. etc.

Well, all is revealed – the book, which I’ve realised I actually mentioned the other day, is The Crafty Art of Playmaking (2002) by Alan Ayckbourn.  I actually bought it earlier in the year, and when I started I hadn’t even remembered that the play I was about to see, Relatively Speaking, was by Ayckbourn.  It wasn’t until I turned to p.3 and saw the play mention (and, er, spoiled a bit) that I realised I should put the book to one side until I’d seen the play.

When I went back to it, I found The Crafty Art of Playmaking an invaluable companion to seeing Relatively Speaking, but it is a fascinating book for anybody interested in the theatre whether or not that have recently watched one of Ayckbourn’s plays.  I’ve written before about my interest in the theatre, but usually (when I read theatrical books) is acting memoir from the twentieth century, or similar.  Other than when actors take a step into the director’s chair (that metaphor fell apart) have I read much from that side of the fence, and I don’t think I’ve read anything particularly thorough about writing plays, although A.A. Milne’s autobiography has a brilliant section where he traces a few of his plays back to their roots.

That is where discussion of Relatively Speaking starts, but I don’t really want to say what he writes, in case it spoils it for you… well, look away now if you don’t want to know, ok?

Initial inspiration – that essential starting point – comes in all shapes and sizes.  Years ago I had the tiniest idea for a situation wherein a young man would ask an older man whether he could marry his daughter.  The twist was that the older man didn’t have a daughter.
And there you go!  From there, Ayckbourn takes us through the various considerations which led to the play being set in two locations, and certain key plot points, and the like.  He also talks about many of his other plays, of course, but (having just seen this one) it was the dissection of Relatively Speaking which I found fascinating.

Throughout the book, Ayckbourn highlights ‘Obvious Rules’, which number from 1 to 100.  Some are not obvious, but it’s a nice conceit to structure the book, and tends to summarise what he has discussed, with examples, in the previous section.  So, we have things like ‘Use the minimum number of characters that you need’ or ‘Don’t let them go off without reason’ – and thins which aren’t really quite rules, like ‘You can never know too much about your characters before you start’.  It works well to keep the playwriting process grounded and achievable, while also showing that you can’t (or shouldn’t) sit down one afternoon thinking that, with a pithy epigram or two, a play will more or less form itself.

The second half of The Crafty Art of Playmaking (and the reason why it’s Playmaking rather than Playwriting) concerns directing.  This was slightly less conceptual, because, instead of make-up characters and potentially infinite plots and dialogue, Ayckbourn is writing about lighting designers and wardrobe mistresses and the like.  He does seem to lump entire professions into single characteristics (wardrobe mistresses – or was it costume designers? – are apparently prone to hysterics; assistant stage managers are universally level-headed; sound engineers are over-ambitious, etc. etc.) but is perhaps being a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Hard to say.

Obviously there is a significant difference between a playwright and a director.  Well, there are many.  But a chief difference is that anybody can try being a playwright from the comfort of their own desk.  They might be appalling, but all they need are pen and paper (or electronic equivalent).  The director must have actually persuaded someone to let them have a job – and, while Ayckbourn does describe the various ways that might happen, it is with a tone of incredulity that it possibly could.  And once it has, I suppose one is no longer an amateur.

Ayckbourn’s model of the director is very power-hungry and micromanaging, but perhaps that is a necessity.  Almost every section seems to end with ‘but don’t let them make any decision without consulting you’, or something similar.  A director in this mould, who trusts nobody to do their jobs properly, would be a nightmare.  But for the first-time director, I suppose it is wise not to be ridden over roughshod.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this two-angle way of looking at playmaking is the contrast.  Ayckbourn often wrote and directed (writes and directs?) his own plays, but it is intriguing to see how he treats the potential director in the first half of the book, and the hypothetical writer in the second half.  All I can say is, he must be sometimes rather conflicted when he is doing one or the other! Incidentally, his plays are almost exclusively called the sort of unmemorable things one expects plays to be called.  Six of One, As You Were, After A Fashion, A Matter of Fact… those are all made up by me (as far as I know!) but you understand the sort of thing.  Bits of expressions, or everyday sayings, and entirely forgettable titles – curious for someone so inventive!

I found the director half of the book a bit harder to get my head around, as it is further from anything I have ever done or would ever want to do, and he is very coy about actual experiences in this area (very few names and dates, and lots of ‘an actress once said…’) but anybody thinking about going into directing would, I think, find it invaluable.

I don’t intend to be either a playwright or a director, but I found Ayckbourn’s book a fascinating glimpse behind these processes – and I think anybody interested in the theatre generally, let alone Ayckbourn specifically, would find a lot to like here.

It seems a bit of a habit with me to see plays somewhere towards the end of their run.  I saw the brilliant All My Sons on its final night, and by the time I blogged about Peter and Alice, it was off the stage.  Well, you’ve got until 31 August to see Alan Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking (1965), and I deeply encourage you to do so if you possibly can!

We had a lovely surprise when we arrived (‘we’ is me and Andrea, my frequent theatre-buddy) at Wyndham’s – our balcony seats were upgraded to brilliant circle seats, right in the middle of the row and tickets which would have cost nearly double what we spent.  Sadly that was because of poor ticket sales (which is absurd on a Saturday night in London, but is encouraging for anybody hoping to grab a bargain on any night) – why people weren’t there, I can’t imagine.  It was the best comedy performance I have ever seen on the stage (All My Sons is still the best play I’ve seen, but nobody could call it a comedy.)

It’s difficult to write much about Relatively Speaking without giving away elements of the plot (which I’d accidentally spoilt for myself the day before seeing the play, by starting Ayckbourn’s The Crafty Art of Playmaking) but suffice to that the whole thing is a delightful, perfectly executed example of crossed wires, dramatic irony, and conversations at cross purposes.  The first scene opens in Ginny’s (Eastender’s Kara Tointon) flat with a semi-clad Greg (Max Bennett) wandering around the place.  There are mysterious phone calls and unexplained packages (“It’s a book! From the book people!”) and poor Greg is getting suspicious of Ginny (a pair of slippers under the bed need some explaining) – yet also getting increasingly in love with her.  They exchange wonderfully witty dialogue, affectionate but with a layer of one-upmanship, while she avoids anything definite and he proposes in the most adorably inept and heartfelt manner.  Both characters are a little rough-and-ready, with hearts in the right place, and the audience is certainly drawn into wanting the best for them… but Ginny is off to visit her parents. (Or is she?)

The next scene sees Sheila (Felicity Kendal – YES, FELICITY KENDAL) and her husband Philip (Jonathan Coy) on the patio of the lovely Buckinghamshire house, engaged in a marital dynamic which seems to be of long standing.  Sheila is a slightly downtrodden wife, but one who could never be entirely trodden down, one feels.  Jonathan Coy is given the only unsympathetic character of the foursome, as a slightly self-important, blustering businessman.  He goes off to find a hoe to do some vigorous gardening, and, through the sidegate of the excellent set, Greg arrives… He wants to come and ask Ginny’s dad for her hand in marriage, and has somehow caught the train that Ginny missed.

And this is where the fun starts.  For reasons which might already have become clear, but which I shan’t spoil just in case, nobody is quite on the same page as each other.  Least in the know is poor Sheila, and Felicity Kendal is absolutely perfect at her dialogue – her replies show that she has no clue why she has got embroiled in these conversations, and yet is willing to go along with it all, out of sheer kindness.  Kendal was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped and expected.

But she had a match!  Max Bennett is sublime as Greg.  I saw him in Luise Miller a while ago, and remember being impressed by him, but he excels at comedy.  Everyone’s comic timing is exceptionally good, with quickfire back-and-forth conversation delivered beautifully, but Bennett manages to make his character entirely lovable.  He is decent and proper, but also quick-witted, witty, and down-to-earth.  It’s rare that a play has a character whom you love and appreciate entirely, but Relatively Speaking manages to have two – which is, indeed, half the cast.  Philip was never intended to be sympathetic, so he’s out, and Kara Tointon – though very good – never seems quite to grasp which direction she wants to take her character in, and she sort of fell between two stools.

But the real star of the piece is Alan Ayckbourn.  His writing is perfect.  It is, of course, a standard of farce and comedy to have characters misunderstanding each other, but Relatively Speaking is crafted so brilliantly, with layer after layer of different crossed wires between different characters,  Even better, the responses characters give are believable, and it is also always credible that other characters wouldn’t realise they were on different pages.  So difficult to engineer, and so slickly done.

If you want to laugh for two flying-at-the-speed-of-light hours, and have the chance to go before the end of August, PLEASE give yourself a treat and see this utterly delightful play.  I quite want to go straight back and watch it again…