Review
"Ayckbourn in great form, funny, subtle and satisfying." --The Times (London)
About the Author
Born in London in 1939, Alan Ayckbourn spent most of his childhood in Sussex and was educated at Haileybury. Leaving there one Friday at the age of seventeen, he went into the theatre the following Monday and has been working in it ever since as, variously, a stage manager, sound technician, lighting technician, scene painter, prop-maker, actor, writer, and director. These talents developed thanks to his mentor, Stephen Joseph, whom he first met in 1958 upon joining the newly formed Library Theatre in Scarborough. He was a BBC Radio Drama Producer from 1965 to 1970, returning to Scarborough to take up the post of Artistic Director of the Theatre in the Round, left vacant after Stephen Joseph's death in 1967. He has premiered over forty of his plays at this Yorkshire theatre where he spends the greater part of the year directing other people's work. Some thirty of his plays have subsequently been produced either in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre, or the Royal Shakespeare Company. They have been translated into forty languages, and have been performed throughout the world, receiving many national and international awards. Alan Ayckbourn was appointed a CBE in 1987 and in 1997 received a knighthood for his services to the theatre.