Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough - Not bad
Sun, 11/25/2007 - 11:23
Big article on Alan Ayckbourn in the Daily Telegraph, centred on interview at his home in Scarborough - and with new play coming soon, A Trip to Scarborough.
Includes:
From the bow window of his drawing-room, more a belvedere of
curved glass, Sir Alan Ayckbourn can contemplate the North Sea.
It's the reason he moved his bed here, while convalescing after
his stroke last year. Well, not his bed - a hydraulic one on loan
from the hospital. The playwright adopts a comedy Yorkshire accent
as he recalls the words of the orderly who came to take the bed
away: 'I see you're standing then. Normally when I come to
collect these it's because the patient is dead.'
Although Ayckbourn's house - actually three Victorian terrace
houses knocked into one - overlooks Scarborough's South Bay, he
is not a Yorkshireman himself. Far from it. He was born in Hampstead
and went to school in Hertfordshire. But he clearly delights in
northern bluntness. Indeed, he tells me with an ambiguous grin about
the time a local taxi driver dropped him off at his theatre in
Scarborough and noticed a poster on the wall. It was for an Alan
Ayckbourn play and it was peppered with press quotations praising
the production. 'If you're that good,' the taxi
driver said, 'what are you doing here?'
The short answer is that Ayckbourn, who is now 68, first came to
Scarborough as an 18-year-old actor in 1957, liked it and stayed.
The longer answer is that Scarborough is where his mentor, the
theatrical pioneer Stephen Joseph, founded the theatre-in-the-round
that was to become Ayckbourn's spiritual home.
Ayckbourn is not only the most prolific playwright of his
generation but also the most widely produced. He is probably, in
fact, the most successful-in-own-lifetime playwright there has ever
been, including Shakespeare. And nearly all of the 70 plays he has
written have had their first performances at Scarborough's
Stephen Joseph Theatre. Many have ended up in the West End, too.
There and Broadway, where a street was briefly renamed Ayckbourn
Alley in his honour.
...
In his slightly apprehensive way, Ayckbourn has been trying to
imagine how his play set in Scarborough will go down with a local
audience. 'When you meet Yorkshiremen for the first time they
can seem quite rude,' he says, levering himself up from his
chair with the aid of a walking stick. 'If I meet them on their
way in to see one of my plays they will say: "Am I going to
enjoy this, then?"'
What do they say afterwards?
He grins the ambiguous grin. 'Usually they will say:
"Not bad".'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/25/sv_alanayckbourn.xml
From article on BBC website:
Had you suggested it to him in his youth, Alan Ayckbourn would have scoffed at the idea that he would adopt Scarborough as his second home.
"I'm a Londoner," says the playwright. "I had no idea where Yorkshire was."
But as he began his career in theatre, Ayckbourn was lured to the coastal town by Stephen Joseph - a theatrical impresario and evangelist for the more intimate and democratic in-the-round style of theatre.
Working first as a stage manager, then an actor and writer, Ayckbourn's association with Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre (and, formerly, the Library Theatre) now spans 50 years.
2008, however, marks his final season.
"I think it will be strange, having thought of this as my theatre, to come and have it be someone else's," the playwright muses.
His 36 years in charge as artistic director have given the town a worldwide reputation for high quality theatre - alongside the beer and bingo of the seafront.
...
These final weeks in Scarborough will mark the end of an era, one which put a small North Sea coastal town on the map as the home of the man who used comedy to look at the hidden darkness of everyday British suburban life.
Ayckbourn's Scarborough farewell