Ten times table by alan ayckbourn biography

The venue was opened on 26 October not with a new Ayckbourn play but with a revival of one of the few Ayckbourn plays not to have premiered in Scarborough, Mr Whatnot. It would be another three months before Alan would premiere a new play at the theatre in January This was Ten Times Table and it drew its primary inspiration from the torturous committee process that Alan witnessed as he endeavoured to move the company from the Library Theatre to its new home.

Given the play premiered in the same year as the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II taking the throne and the enormous amount of community events and celebrations which took place around the UK to mark it, there has often been speculation Alan was influenced by this. But the play was actually written in December and premiered months before the Silver Jubilee celebrations got into full-swing, so this is no more than coincidence, although there was apparently some inspiration from the meetings for and organisation of Scarborough's Richard III festival held during Unfortunately, the first act struggles to find momentum amongst the boring proceedings it seeks to satirise; and whilst the second prompts far more laughter, the result is satisfactory, rather than triumphant.

Ten times table by alan ayckbourn biography

The town of Pendon, where our bard sets his scene, is in want of a historical pageant, or so thinks local businessman Ray Robert Daws. To this end he, and his Thatcher-esque wife, Helen Deborah Grant have convened a group of the local great-ish and good-ish to the shabby charms of the Swan Hotel Ballroom. This, he believes, is a fine basis for a pageant, and all the community affirming, and tourist boosting, benefits concomitant.

Summoned to the planning committee table are: officious, yet ineffectual local councillor, Donald Mark Curry with his deaf piano-playing mother Audrey Elizabeth Power ; local teacher, and avowed Marxist, Eric Craig Gazey and his voice-less girlfriend Phillipa Rhiannon Handy ; impressionable dog-breeder Sophie Gemma Oaten ; and, stumbling in last, the somewhat tragic figure of Laurence, Robert Duncan , an electrician with a crumbling marriage, and a growing drink-problem.

Eric, with ambitions to transmute pageant into political rally, swiftly finds an ideological enemy in the vocally right-wing Helen, and the battle-lines are drawn. Relatively shallow-subplots such as an ill-advised romance, and an ever-absent committee member, offer little for this talented cast to really get their performative teeth into.

Even the dialogue whilst natural, and accomplished, rarely sparkles as one might expect. Everyone on stage gives their skilful best, but with pace proving so elusive, the interval feels less like a break, and more like a relief. The Massacre of the Pendon This quickly descends into all out class warfare between the champion of the people Eric, a Marxist and Helen Deborah Grant, terrific a leader of the toffs and a proto Mrs Thatcher.

Coats catch their confrontation in a wonderful way: Eric in duffle coat and Helen in fur. Standing between the two factions is Ray the chairman of the committee. Crouching in the middle praying not to be hit by a stray bullet. The play then works on two levels. As a study in political polarisation. Think Remain versus Leave. Here the continuities from the s are strikingly familiar.

The rhetoric is unchanged. Harry Gostelow is superb as the militaristic Tim. The times cry out for such men the play suggests. The other level the play operates on is the psychological. What one might call committee — it is. Mark Curry is terrific as Councillor Donald Evans a committee man par excellence. He serves on several committees and so knows every trick in the book.

Indeed he uses his attendance on committees to leverage his appointment to yet more committees. He is punctilious and pedantic to a fault. As if that were not enough he brings his year-old mother Audrey Elizabeth Power is superb with him to the meetings. Robert Daws gives an outstanding performance as Ray the chairman trying to keep his head whilst all around are losing theirs.