Новинки Алана Эйкборна

This ingenious comedy is about two sisters and the choices they make (or have made for them) over a few months. There are four versions that can be done on different evenings, each stemming from one random and one deliberate choice. The story starts with a funeral at which Dorcas, Abigail and Simon solve a dilemma by tossing a coin: either Dorcas or Abigail wins the toss and goes with Simon. Later, at a picnic, Dorcas opts for either a camping adventure for Abigail or a day of sports for herself. The inevitable end of either choice is a wedding.

The leading lights of the village have decided to hold a pageant of local history based on a somewhat vague event, "The Massacre of the Pendon Twelve". But there's a young left wing teacher on the committee who decides to turn it into a rally for proletarian revolution. Committee meetings become symbolic battlefields for conflicting views - the right wing faction being led by the Chairman's conservative wife. The event turns into a violent confrontation between the two extremes, with cataclysmic results. Police intervention brings matters to a relatively quiet conclusion, but already another pageant - Romans versus Britons - seems an…

Six aspiring authors meet on a winter's evening to discuss their work. Among them are writers of historical romances and children's literature who are finding it difficult to start writing, and a crime writer who can't stop. A creator of extremely complicated science fiction, a librettist without a musical partner and the Writer's Circle chairman, who produces instruction booklets, make up the rest of the team. The chairman, Arnold, attempts to get the rest of the group out of a rut by suggesting that they collaborate on a piece of writing, an idea that is received without enthusiasm. However, as Arnold is clearing up after the meeting there is a clap of thunder, a black-out - and then the story that would have resulted from the collaboration takes place before his very eyes. Sharp comedy and affectionate satire characterize this zany, imaginative play.

'What is remarkable about Alan Ayckbourn's comedy is that it contrives to be simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. Literally, it is agonisingly funny' - "Daily Telegraph". In "Three Plays" Ayckbourn's perfectly pitched dialogue slices into the soul of suburbia. The settings are simple - a kitchen, a bedroom, a party - but the relationships between the husbands and wives are more complicated. Fraught relationships are exposed with humour, bathos and a sharp understanding of human nature.

Ayckbourn's series of five interlocked plays typify his black comedies of human behavior in recognizable and absurd domestic situations. First produced in 1976, the plays are alternately naturalistic, stylized and farcical, but underlying each is the problem of loneliness and characters who suffer the result of being ignored. The Mother Figure shows a mother unable to escape from baby talk with adults; in The Drinking Companion an aging absentee husband clumsily attempts seduction without success; in Between Mouthfuls, an embarrassed waiter witnesses domestic break-ups on two separate tables. A garden party gets out of hand when a secret…

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 (the female equivalent of an android).

The play is in two acts, the first of which has two scenes. It is set in London, England, in the future but "sometime quite soon". It is a bleak future where law and order has broken down in at least some parts of the city, and social interaction is limited by the automation of many shops and services. Composer Jerome has been estranged from his wife Corinna (a bank manager) for four years. Their 13-year-old daughter, Geain (pronounced Jane) lives with her mother. Jerome has been unable to compose music since they left and is convinced he needs Geain back with him to be his inspiration.