Swan of Scarborough

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 12

Swan of Scarborough

From the “Economist,” London

AT 50, Alan Ayckbourn is arguably the most successful contemporary British playwright. With 37 plays to his credit, he may also be the most prolific. From his base in the Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough, where he is artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, Mr Ayckbourn enjoys a position few artists could find fault with: total artistic freedom.

Scarborough is the cradle of all his plays, and it is here that his latest, "The Revengers’ Comedy,” is showing. This marathon of a play, five hours long, has had a mixed reception; but considering the average concentra-tion-span of even the commited theatre goer, Mr Ayckbourn is fairly pleased. Having started his writing career with comedies of manners and situations of the English middle-class, for which he is still best known, he now says he wants to "up his game.” His two chief influences are Chekhov and Harold Pinter, both of whom have proved that comedy can contain more serious things. “The Revengers’ Comedy,” in which the two main characters each undertake to settle accounts with the enemies of the other, is a step along this road. The very title suggests the Jacobean darkness of Ford and Webster, whose “comedies” are often steeped in gore; and no fewer than four of Mr Ayckbourn’s characters die, all nastily, before the play is over.

This change of form from his undeadly suburban works is not entirely deliberate. Mr Ayckbourn expects that as he grows older his plays will naturally become darker, “like a painter who uses more browns and greys.” They will never, he says, be devoid of laughter, but he wants his audiences to be uncer-

tain whether to laugh or weep. Scarborough has been a blessing in Mr Ayckbourn’s life, not only affording him unlimited artistic scope but also making him financially secure. He came to the town in 1958 to work as an actor and stage manager in the Theatre in the Round, whose director, Stephen Joseph (son of a publisher, Michael Joseph), was known for his receptiveness to new talent.

Encouraged by Joseph, Mr Ayckbourn began to write and direct. He went back to Scarborough every year, in between stints as an actor with repertory companies. When Joseph died in 1967, Mr Ayckbourn accepted the job as director of the theatre. He never looked back.

Writing plays is only part of his life; he also takes auditions, stages and directs his plays, does a certain amount of unavoidable administration and holds theatre workshops. Like many writers, he finds the act of writing an

ordeal; but he sets about it with speed and efficiency, using a word-processor with an extralarge screen. Once the plot and characters are formed in his mind, the actual writing takes him about four days. He never discusses his work-in-progress with actors. His characters, who are mostly composites of people he has met, and his plots, which are often snippets he has heard, gradually take on distinct moral themes, such as the discrepancy between appearance and reality (“Man of the Moment”), or the double nature of bereavement (“Absent Friends”).

The concept of evil has yet to receive its proper due in Mr Ayckbourn’s work. It is a subject that now seems to preoccupy him a great deal. Although he has not, he thinks, encountered it personally, he believes evil to be a distinct force in life, and one to which society is now more open than in any previous age. “Some people invite evil more than others. There are people whose nature and vulnerabilities make them ripe for destruction,” he says. The point is made in a new play he has just finished writing. Mr Ayckbourn is not tempted to leave Scarborough for London. In any case, his more devoted support comes from still farther afield — America, West Germany, even Japan. In Britain, he says, even in gregarious Scarborough, playwrights feel the chill of shrinking audiences: it is becoming increasingly difficult to entice locals to the theatre.

“People,” he says sadly, “seem not to have the time to go out to see plays.” Will they have more time for Mr Ayckbourn if, instead of merely making them laugh, he makes them think? Copyright — The Economist