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

Classic one-act plays by Britain's most popular playwright This student edition includes a full commentary, chronology, bibliography and notes on words and phrases in the text Originally published in 1983, this is a well-established classic

About the Author
Alan Ayckbourn was born in 1939 and has over sixty plays and productions to his name. Ayckbourn's recent play Things We Do For Love was produced in the West End in 1998 and House/Garden was produced at the Royal National Theatre in 2000.


Book Information
ISBN 9780713685510
Author Russell Whiteley
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Methuen Drama
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 84g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 6mm