Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2023, 89 full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Woman in Mind (December Bee) is the 32nd play by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, in 1985. Despite pedestrian reviews by many critics, strong audience reaction resulted in a transfer to London's West End. The play received its London opening at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1986 where it received predominantly excellent reviews.
The play Henceforward... is the first comedy in which Alan Ayckbourn includes elements of science fiction. It concerns Jerome, a composer, who develops a plan to persuade his estranged wife Corinna that his home life is sufficiently stable for her to allow their daughter to stay with him. The plan involves both an actress and a gynoid.
Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father, his first major success.
Season's Greetings is a 1980 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about four days in the life of a dysfunctional family starting on Christmas Eve, and is set in a typical English suburban house.
Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.
The Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts. It was inspired by the playwright's love of films and references many notable movies, particularly the Alfred Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train.
GamePlan is a 2001 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, the first in a trilogy of plays called Damsels in Distress The darkest of the three plays, it is about a teenage girl who tries to support herself and her mother through prostitution.
Drowning on Dry Land is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, his 66th to be produced. Exploring the culture of B-list celebrities, it is a comedy about the rise and fall of Charlie Conrad, a man apparently famous for being a failure.
If I Were You is a 2006 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about an unhappy married couple who are given the chance to understand each other by discovering, quite literally, what they would do "if I were you," in the same manner as the novel Turnabout by Thorne Smith.
Improbable Fiction is a 2005 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a writers' circle, on the night the chairman, Arnold, seems to wander into the imaginations of the other writers.
Sugar Daddies is a 2003 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a student who forms a friendship with a rich man over three times her age, who has a sinister past, and maybe a sinister present too.
Haunting Julia is a 1994 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about Julia Lukin, a nineteen-year-old brilliant musician who committed suicide twelve years earlier, who haunts the three men closest to her, through both the supernatural and in their memories. In 2008, it was presented as the first play of Things That Go Bump.
Things That Go Bump is a season of plays performed in 2008 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn.
My Wonderful Day is a 2009 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It is about a nine-year-old girl, Winnie, who has an essay to write about her day, and records the shenanigans of grown-ups around her.
Things We Do For Love is a 1997 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, premiered as the Stephen Joseph Theatre. It is about a woman who begins an affair with her best friend's fiancé, only for this new relationship to swiftly descend into violence. It was the first Ayckbourn play to be performed on the end-stage in the theatre's new end-space at its current site, and was performed with three floors in view: head-level of the basement, the whole of the ground floor and foot-level of the top floor.
Life of Riley is a 2010 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It was first performed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.
"Sardines" is the first episode of the first series of the British black comedy anthology series Inside No. 9. Written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, it premiered on BBC Two and BBC Two HD on 5 February 2014. In the episode, a group of adults play sardines at an engagement party. Rebecca, the bride-to-be, finds a boring man named Ian in a wardrobe; he introduces himself as a colleague of Jeremy, Rebecca's fiancé. The pair are subsequently joined by family, friends and colleagues of Rebecca and Jeremy. As more people enter the room and step into the wardrobe, secrets shared by some of the characters are revealed, with various allusions to incestuous relationships, child sexual abuse, and adultery. The humour is both dark and British, with references to past unhappiness and polite but awkward interactions.
Science fiction theatre includes live dramatic works, but generally not cinema or television programmes. It has long been overshadowed by its literary and broadcast counterparts, but has an extensive history, and via the play R.U.R. introduced the word robot into global usage.
"Nana's Party" is the fifth episode of the second series of the British dark comedy anthology television programme Inside No. 9. It was first broadcast on 23 April 2015 on BBC Two. Written and directed by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the episode starred Claire Skinner as the obsessive-compulsive and aspirational Angela, who is hosting a party for the 79th birthday of her mother Maggie, played by Elsie Kelly. Angela's husband Jim, played by Pemberton, is keen to play a prank on Pat, Angela's brother-in-law, who is a practical joker. Pat is played by Shearsmith, while Carol, a recovering alcoholic who is Pat's wife and Angela's sister, is played by Lorraine Ashbourne. The episode also features Eve Gordon as Katie, Angela and Jim's teenage daughter, and Christopher Whitlow as a paramedic seen at the beginning and end of the episode.
