Constant Companions: rise of the machines

It’s not really a new play; the story of robots gradually becoming more human is lifted straight out of the sub-plot of an earlier play. But the sub-plot was crying out to be made a play in its own right, and is the best new Ayckbourn I’ve seen in years.

Okay, Ayckbourn, I saw what you did there. And I’m possibly the only person and the press night who noticed this. But I remember back in 2012 a new Ayckbourn play called Surprises, set in a futuristic world where human beings can now live to well over 100, with all the new problems that entails. A sub-plot, however, is the integration of robots in society that look human and are gradually behaving more human. This sub-plot has been lifted wholesale into a new play, and even keeps some of the same characters. Richard Stacey reprises his role as Jan, and I even recognised my favourite line from Surprises re-used here.

Normally I would mark down a play for being an undeclared rehash of a previous one. But, the thing is, I always thought the robots sub-plot was by far the strongest theme in what was overall a middling play. Surprises suffered because it was unclear what the focus of the play was; but the focus on increasingly human robots and their relation to society produces, in my opinion, Alan Ayckbourn’s strongest play since Roundelay.

Constant Companions keeps the original sub-plot and adds two new ones. In an affluent household, Andrew implores technician Winton to deal with ED94-YBD92, a hussy of a domestic service who’s shamelessly seduced her darling innocent* son. Desperately trying to contact Winston is Don, who’s just bought a “constant companion” robot – with most of Don’s problems down to his inability to stop thinking with his dick. And in the third part of the stage is a state-of-the-art office where human Sylvia and security android Jan 60 are trying to deal with lawyer Lorraine who’s taking both her 60th birthday and her scumbag ex-husband’s present badly.

Relaunch at the SJT: Girl Next Door and Home, I’m Darling

Skip to: Girl Next Door; Home, I’m Darling

Time for another catchup from my jam-packed summer, as this time it’s over to the Stephen Joseph Theatre. They stood out from the crowd amongst regional theatres, because whilst the festival fringes and West End dived into summer 2021 raring to go, most theatres regional theatres played it safe and waited until the autumn. It should have come as no surprise that the Stephen Joseph Theatre hit the ground running – they make an admirable job of running in 2020 when most theatres wrote it off as a doomed venture.

But whilst there’s been a lot of good will amongst audiences and reviewers, that doesn’t guarantee a good review from me. I’ve already covered their co-production with Live Theatre The Offing (which I bumped forwards as it was still running and deserved some publicity), but now let’s wind back and see how their earlier two productions did.

Girl Next Door

One of the most memorable rallying cries I heard from the start of the pandemic was one that put things in perspective. I’ve lost the original quote but it went something like: “In the 1940s, the British put everything on the line for their future. In 2020, the British need to sit on their arses for a few weeks. Come on chaps, we can do this.” I don’t know if Alan Ayckbourn ever saw this, but it’s as good an inspiration as any for laying the two worlds side by side – literally.

SJT and Ayckbourn 2019

Another autumn, another programming of Ayckbourn plays at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Sticking with the long-standing pattern of the last decade, there were two Ayckbourn plays this year: a revival of a classic in the summer – another one from the height of his commercial success – and a new play in the autumn. But wait … I have a third Ayckbourn in the list, that’s officially not affiliated with the SJT, but in practice has a strong connection. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Let us begin with the two plays on at Scarborough.

Season’s Greetings

Astute though Alan Ayckbourn is with his observations of human character, there is one thought that frequently goes through my head when I see an unflattering character in one of his plays: “I pity the poor bastard who this was based on.” Off-hand, I can’t think of anyone this applies to more than poor old Bernard, artistic director of the worst puppet show in the world. Bernard thinks – or has at least deluded himself into believing – that his Christmas plays for the kids are a delightful annual family tradition. For everyone else, it’s notorious, with simple fairy tales padded out to snails pace; add in the numerous complex scene changes (sixteen in this year’s performance of The Three Little Pigs And Their Wives And Families) and the play turns into an endurance test. Who was this person? Who did these awful puppet plays in real life? The answer surprised me.

SJT Summer 2018

Before I embark on Edinburgh Fringe coverage, let’s round up another main season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Apart from a programme very heavily defined by its very famous former artistic director, the other unusual feature of the SJT is that whilst most theatre wind down for the summer as people turn their attention to holidays and/or the Edinburgh Fringe, in Scarborough the programme ramps up.

Skip to: The 39 Steps, Build a Rocket, Joking Apart, Better Off Dead

There is one change this year though – until last year, the SJT ignored the Edinburgh Fringe as it moved into peak summer season. This time, however, they have decided to do both, with a full-on summer season at Scarborough complemented with their own Edinburgh excursion. But I am going to go through the plays in (roughly) chronological order in which they were shows, so we begin with:

The 39 Steps

In the literary world, John Buchan’s spy novel is regarded as one of the seminal spy thrillers. In the film world’ Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the books is regarded as one of the seminal spy films. But in the theatre world, Patrick Barlow’s adaptation is regarded as one of the silliest hits to have graced the West End. Well, to most of the theatre. Some people somehow missed all of this going to the play expecting a deathly serious edge-of-your-seat thriller. But the surprise, when it turns out to not be what they expected, quickly turns into a pleasant surprise.

Taking Steps and A Brief History of Women

SKIP TO: Taking Steps, A Brief History of Women

It took a few years to settle down after Alan Ayckbourn left as Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, but a pattern has finally emerged: the earlier summer season is where his artistic director successor does his stuff, with a revival of a successful earlier Ayckbourn introduced later in the summer, and then a new Ayckbourn play in September and October. 2017 was no exception. For once, I couldn’t catch them in Scarbourough, but luckily, I can count on a transfer to the New Vic that’s now in easy reach of me.

It is difficult to tell how new Ayckbourns will turn out in advance. Ayckbourn has a lot of tricks up his sleeves, but a lot of his new plays have been using old tricks in new ways. Don’t dismiss that – when it works well, it’s outstanding, but it’s always a bit a of pot luck involved to see how the new offering turns out. But the revival on offer is something that I recommended, not just because I know and like the play – but because this play is one of the few where it’s important to see it done by someone who knows how it’s meant to be done. That’s where we shall begin.

More alternative Christmas: No Knowing and Snowflakes

Skip to: The Terminal Velocity of Snowflakes, No Knowing

Damn. December is usually my catch-up month where all the theatres show pantomimes, which I avoid like the plague. However, this year, there have been an unusually high number of non-pantomimes in December I’ve wanted to see. I’ve already reviewed How Did We Get To This Point?, which was unexpectedly outstanding. Now for the two other standard plays I saw in December, both of which were pleasing.

The Terminal Velocity of Snowflakes

The most remarkable thing about this studio piece at Live Theatre is its critical reception. I  don’t often mention other people’s reviews in my own reviews (most of the time, I avoid reading the other reviews completely to avoid influence on mine). However, this time the acclaim was unprecedented. Five stars from the Guardian. Local reviews need treating with a bit of caution, but it’s big achievement for any play to get that rating in a national newspaper; for a studio production from a first-time writer to get it (let alone get a reviewer up at all), it’s phenomenal.

So much for Ayckbourn’s retirement 2: Henceforward, Karaoke Theatre, Consuming Passions

REVIEWS: Skip to: Henceforward …, Karaoke Theatre Company, Consuming Passions

Hey, Alan, aren’t you supposed to be having a rest? He stepped down over six years ago, but perhaps to cover a Chris Monks-shaped hole in the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s programme, he’s directing three plays – four if count the lunchtime shows as two. And he’s doing the Christmas production too. He was never normally this busy when he was Artistic Director. I suppose his final season as Artistic Director back in 2008 might have been a little busier depending on how you count things, but really, what happened to this retirement of his?

The good news, of course, is that Ayckbourn-heavy seasons in Scarborough rarely disappoint, and this is no exception. So let’s get stuck in.

Henceforward …

Ayckbourn trivia 1: Alan Ayckbourn wrote and directed Henceforward … during his two-year sabbatical at the National Theatre. Yes, even when he was wowing crowds at the National with A Small Family Business and other plays, he still found time to produce at Scarborough. Ayckbourn trivia 2: Henceforward … was a return to a genre he’d not visited ever since a very early (and now abandoned) play Standing Room Only, that being science fiction, with a heavy emphasis on a dystopian future, breaking a twenty-five run of plays dominated by middle-class suburbia. He’s done other decent science fiction plays since, but this remains his most acclaimed, and this year it returned to Scarborough just shy of its 30th anniversary.

Hero’s Welcome: Ayckbourn still marches on

Hero’s Welcome might be more “vanilla” Ayckbourn than the title suggests, but it’s still an excellent play showing Ayckbourn is no spent force.

One of the biggest bits of shock news of northern theatre this year has been Chris Monks’s unexpected departure from the Stephen Joseph Theatre after only six years. With both artistic and executive directors leaving in such a short space of time, the theatre has an uncertain future ahead of it. Luckily, the one constant force in this affair is Alan Ayckbourn, who in spite of having stepped down as artistic director himself in 2009, still produces new plays and revives classic plays. This is the one thing they can rely on.

Although Ayckbourn is still writing at the same rate he’s always done, after the excellent My Wonderful Day in 2009 there’d been a bit of a lull, with plays that were either sameish, or original ideas that didn’t quite work out. This changed in 2014 with Roundelay, a very skilled set of five interlinked plays. And one year on from that it’s time for Hero’s Welcome that does not disappoint.

SJT at 60: spoilt for choice

All the eyes of the theatre world might be on Edinburgh at the moment, but for those northerners who’ve stayed at home there’s been another big thing: the 60th anniversary of the legendary Stephen Joseph Theatre. Sadly, I didn’t make it to the day when all three theatres (their current site and their two predecessors, the library and Westwood) were open for celebrations, but the main attraction for me was the plays. I even had to do some complicated and cunning travel plans to fit them into my busy summer schedule.

This year, their summer season consists of reprises of some of the famous theatre’s greatest hits of the last six decades. And Cox and Box. Oh. But never mind, the rest of the line-up looked very tempting. And with the three headline shows done over the summer, let’s have a roundup. I’m not going to do a detailed critical analysis of these plays because they’re all huge successes that don’t need my help, but I’ll quickly chip in what I thought.

If you only had time to see one show, I think the prime choice has to be The Woman in Black. Even against the high standard of this season’s offerings, this one wins by a convincing margin. After Alan Ayckbourn, this is probably the biggest impact the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s had on the wider world. It originally began as a studio play commissioned to an unknown Stephen Mallatratt, back in the Westwood era when the studio theatre doubled up as the restaurant, and even then only really served the purpose of filling the programme. Who’d have thought?

Roundelay: Ayckbourn back to his best

Five one-act plays performed in a random order might look like a novelty, but the interlinking in Roundelay makes this the best thing Alan Ayckbourn has done in nearly five years.

Observant readers to this blog have noticed that, so far, I have never put an Ayckbourn play at the SJT into my What’s Worth Watching recommendations. Which might seem a bit odd to people who know that I’m a big Ayckbourn fan. There are two reasons for this, and the first is that every new Ayckbourn play gets loads of publicity and I prefer to concentrate my plugs on more obscure writers who need the attention. The second reason, however, is that it’s difficult to tell which new plays will be the must-sees. Alan Ayckbourn’s not had any totally new ideas for some time, but that’s okay because he keeps putting together old ideas in new ways and can still produce masterpieces, the last one being My Wonderful Day in 2009. Since then, however, we’ve have plays with ideas that didn’t quite work out, plays that did work out but had obvious derivations from old ones, and combinations of the two.

Truth be told, I was sceptical about Roundelay. This was billed as five one-act plays, so already I wondered if we were headed for a re-hash of Confusions. The difference from its predecessor was that the plays are to be performed in a random order, with the plays interlinked in a way that works in any order. I wasn’t sure about that at all. We know from Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests trilogy that he’s the master of interlinking – and yet, for all the cleverness of linking three plays with a concurrent timeline and the same casts, I was never convinced that made the plays much better for the audience. Would Roundelay be a piece that took great writing skill yet provided a mediocre play? Would the random order just be a novelty? One might think so if the lukewarm reviews in the broadsheets are anything to go by, so I’m going to stick my neck out and say this is the best new Ayckbourn play I’ve seen for nearly five years.