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Ayckbourn Alan
Three Plays: Absurd Person Singular; Absent Friends; Bedroom Farce
 List Price: Price: $9.95 You Save: $6.00 (38%) DescriptionA scathing comedy of social striving in the suburbs, Absurd Person Singular follows the fortunes of three couples who turn up in each other's kitchens on three successive Christmases, to hilarious and devastating effect.
Confusions (Modern Drama Student Edition)
 List Price: Price: $10.58 You Save: $5.37 (34%) DescriptionAyckbourn's series of five interlocked plays typify his black comedies of human behavior in recognizable and absurd domestic situations. First produced in 1976, the plays are alternately naturalistic, stylized and farcical, but underlying each is the problem of loneliness and characters who suffer the result of being ignored. The Mother Figure shows a mother unable to escape from baby talk with adults; in The Drinking Companion an aging absentee husband clumsily attempts seduction without success; in Between Mouthfuls, an embarrassed waiter witnesses domestic break-ups on two separate tables. A garden party gets out of hand when a secret affair is announced over the loud speaker in Gosforth's Fete while A Talk in the Park is a revue-style curtain call piece for the five actors. The Student Edition features a comprehensive Introduction and additional information to provide context for understanding this play.
The Norman Conquests: Classic Radio Theatre Series
 List Price: Price: $3.63 You Save: $31.32 (90%) DescriptionRobin Herford and Tessa Peake-Jones star in Alan Ayckbourn's award-winning trilogy: Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden. This trilogy has been hailed as a mold-breaking masterpiece. All three plays take place concurrently—so an exit in one becomes an entrance in another—and can be played in any order. The story of the same dreadful weekend is illuminated from three different vantage points: the living room, the sitting room, and the garden. With a distinguished cast including Robin Herford as Norman and Tessa Peake-Jones as Sarah, The Norman Conquests is a brilliantly entertaining comedy of our time: wise and witty, funny and profound.
The Crafty Art of Playmaking
 List Price: Price: $23.00 You Save: $5.00 (18%) DescriptionIn this seminal guide to playmaking, 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 Playwmaking is a must-have for aspiring playwrights, students of drama, and anyone who has ever laughed their way through one of Ayckbourn's plays.
Comic Potential: A Play
 List Price: Price: $7.06 You Save: $5.94 (46%) DescriptionA sci-fi comedy thriller, Comic Potential is a play set in the foreseeable future, when everything has changed--except human nature
Comic Potential is set in a television studio in the near future, where the director--an alcoholic has-been--and two assistants are making a daytime soap opera of the usual appalling sort. However, the difference here is that they are using actoids--robots programmed to act--and there are no scriptwriters. Into this situation comes the idealistic Adam, the nephew of the millionaire station owner, who wants to write comedy of the quality that Chaplin and Keaton once embodied. But when Adam falls in love with Jaycee Triplethree (JC333), one of the actoids on the show, everything is turned upside down as she grows more human and the line between actoid and human diminishes. When in anguish Jaycee finally cries that she can't say anything she hasn't been programmed to say, Adam points out that no one ever says anything original anyway.
Alan Ayckbourn: Plays 3: Haunting Julia, Sugar Daddies, Drowning on Dry Land, Private Fears in Public Places
 List Price: Price: $9.17 You Save: $7.83 (46%) DescriptionIn this third volume of his collected plays, Alan Ayckbourn takes his signature acerbic wit into the territory of the lonely and isolated, focusing on everyone from the fantastically famous to the lowliest of Eleanor Rigbys. Collected here are Haunting Julia, Sugar Daddies, Drowning on Dry Land, and the universally acclaimed Private Fears in Public Places, described by Newsday's Linda Winer as "an exquisitely modulated chamber sextet about the unpredictable depths and overlapping absurdities of middleage melancholy."
Ayckbourn Alan News
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Boston GlobeThe house Lombardo built - and left behindDo we continue that trajectory and attract the single-ticket, younger audience, or are we going to say, ooh, this was a mistake, let's do more Alan Ayckbourn and Shaw?" As is clear from some of his later projects - "The Pillowman," say,
New York TimesProducer Redoubles Effort to Sell a Triple ComedyBy PATRICK HEALY Despite a raft of positive reviews and seven Tony Award nominations, this spring's Broadway revival of “The Norman Conquests” — Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy of interconnected comic plays — has proved to be one of the biggest business