LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Alan Ayckbourn: West End
built 210 days ago
Although his plays have received major West End productions almost from the beginning of his writing career, and hence have been reviewed in British newspapers, Ayckbourn's work was for years routinely dismissed as being too slight for serious study. Recently, scholars have begun to view Ayckbourn as an important commentator on the lifestyles of the British suburban middle class, and as a stylistic innovator who experiments with theatrical styles within the boundaries set by popular tastes.
Source:
The Odeon building opened in 1996 with a reconstituted version of PG Wodehouse's musical By Jeeves that Ayckbourn had written with Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was pointed out that it was a 'hell of a nerve' opening a new theatre with 'the most disastrous musical of the 20th century'. But, in Ayckbourn's hands, it stayed friskily afloat, transferred to the West End and Broadway.
Source:
One thinks of farces as swift moving comedies with actors chasing each other from bedroom to bedroom, but Ayckbourn does it his way and wins almost continuous laughter. Quick changes of temper, dress and lighting keeps things moving briskly among the three beds on stage. Early on one realises that this farce is concerned with the marriages of four couples, their moods, modes, nerves and temper, at an evening party which inevitably is bound to break up in the Ayckbourn way. There are the usual comings and goings, hard words and nearness to blows and mysterious disappearances, but they all contrive to rally towards the end.
Source:
"Intimate Exchanges" is the most complicated and daring of all Ayckbourn's comic jigsaws. Starting with a simple binary action -- the decision to smoke or not to smoke a cigarette -- he spins out multiple variations on his recurring theme, marital discontent. The result is organized as eight separate plays with 16 different endings, two of which are currently playing in rotation at Hartford Stage through February 1.
Source:
The website endeavours to carry basic production details of professional and amateur productions of Alan Ayckbourn's work. However, this list is dependent on being supplied with the relevant information, if it's not supplied, it obviously won't be on the list.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
West End