Morality plays

Author(s): Lucy Muss and Barry Lewis

Source: RSA Journal , February 2003, Vol. 150, No. 5505 (February 2003), pp. 42-45
Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41379584

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42 RSA JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2003

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 Morality
plays

Alan Ayckbourn would like his plays to impart a social

code to a society "without moral foundations"
Words by Lucy Muss. Portrait by Barry Lewis

It is fascinating to watch Sir Alan Ayckbourn direct

a rehearsal at his Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough,
where he also works as artistic director. At the age of
63, with the same number of plays under his belt, Sir Alan
is almost a British institution. Though most of his plays
are first performed at this theatre (Joseph, the theatre's
founder, was an important mentor to Ayckbourn), most
theatregoers are likely to have seen many, if not all, of his
plays such as Absurd Person Singular and The Norman
Conquests elsewhere. Before the interview I managed to
get a moment to watch Ayckbourn direct The follies, a play
he has written for children.
Unlike a conductor pointing and waving his baton and
grappling with fistfuls of air, Ayckbourn is more like an
invisible puppeteer, with the excitable eyes of a child.
Hardly speaking and rarely interrupting, he seems to be
a kind, keen observer, who limps around the edge of the
stage drinking up every word and movement. "I'm in one
way quite a psychological director," Ayckbourn tells me.
"I get a great deal of exposure to the psyche of the actors
I work with, which keeps me ticking. I'm a sort of vampire,
I sort of live off other people." He may well feed off other
people, but it certainly isn't due to a lack of imagination
on his part. Arguably, it is because he was forced to the edge
of life's stage by a volatile, domineering mother.
His mother, Irene Maude Worley - nicknamed "Lolly"
by Alan and his stepbrother, Christopher Pye, because she
bought them lollipops when they were unwell - was
a prolific writer who sold her first story to the Co-op Journal
in r 919 when she was aged 13. She was born in Basildon,
Essex; her father was a Shakespearian actor, and her mother
worked for a time as a music hall male impersonator. In the
CCL
О
same year the precocious teenager also became intensely
? attracted to a musician called Horace Ayckbourn - who
LU
Z
was nine years older than her. Five years later, aged 1 7, she

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sent her first novel, Off the Pavement, to Michael Joseph,
who, not yet a publisher, sent it to a literary agent. The
agent subsequently offered Lolly a five-novel contract.
Although Joseph, too, was nine years her senior, he
proposed marriage to Lolly. She was flattered but felt she
couldn't accept because she did not want him to suffer the
consequences of marrying out of his Jewish faith. Instead,
she married Neville Monroe four years later; a relationship
that turned out to be short-lived. A brief encounter with
Horace Ayckbourn at a concert convinced her that she was
not in love with Monroe after all. So, acting on impulse,
she left after splitting the earnings of her final novel
October Weekend with him.
In 1938 Lolly fell pregnant with Alan. She panicked at
the thought of having to give up her itinerant, journalistic
lifestyle and suggested an abortion. Horace wouldn't hear
1 hate being pigeon-holed... it's a modern thing to label
people; the "dark and mysterious" Harold Pinter or Alan
Ayckbourn, the ''master of the boulevard comedy'"
of it. However, soon after Alan's birth on 1 2 April 1939,
Horace became increasingly absent and tied up with work.
As he spent less time at home, Lolly spent more and more
time with Michael Joseph. As a consequence, her marriage
broke down and eventually she moved away with her
son to a rented cottage on a farm in Sussex. (In 1991
Ayckbourn found out that Lolly and Horace had never
actually been married.)
Raised as an only child in an all-female world, Alan was
fussed over accordingly by "very pretty women". His most
formative years were spent watching his mother type away
furiously on the kitchen table as he pounded a smaller
typewriter she had bought him. Lolly was the female
breadwinner through her writing. And so, at a tender age
Alan began to interpret the adult world through a woman's
experience. But the undivided attention of his highly strung
mother, who "once threw my father's framed photograph at
me in a fury and told me all men were bastards..." came to
a sudden end when he was sent off, aged seven, to the local
boarding school, Wisborough Lodge, and plunged into
a very harsh, all-male environment.
His mother hardly visited him, and although home was
a stone's throw away he boarded at weekends too. In this
macho, alien world Alan developed a unique, slightly tragic
strategy for avoiding a beating: "I just used to smile at
everyone all the time so nobody punched me." The
characteristic Ayckbourn grin thus became a physical
shield, behind which lay, at times, true unhappiness, as he
once explained in a letter to his mother: "I haven't been
feeling so good lately and I shall go to the san [sanatorium,
ie the sick room] later on... to tell you the truth I feel rather
homesick... In fact to sum up this miserable letter - I'm
damned unhappy." This letter contains the kind of
emotional openness that, as he matured, he became more
able to suppress. Ayckbourn's biographer Paul Allen
describes something of the atmosphere of the school in his
book, Grinning at the Edge: "The secret of survival, it
seemed, was never to admit to being hurt... So it became
better to bury the pain somewhere even you couldn't find
it. More objectively, the war had left schools short of quality
staff. The food was often disgusting as these small private
institutions tried to operate profitably in a country
suffering from shortages. Alan recalls a meal at which
44 RSA JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2003
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a rabbit's head appeared on his plate. Dormitories were
large and unheated. Lavatories were often out of doors...
Sport was compulsory, whatever the weather." Allen
suggests that the experience of having to hide his emotions
(probably familiar to a generation of privately-educated
schoolchildren) gave the future writer not only something
to write about but a way of writing it: "No dramatist catches
better the English gift for putting feelings into code."
One highly amusing example comes from RolePlay :
"Derek: We were made different colours for a good
reason, Justin. To differentiate us. So you don't get a goldfish
spawning with a rainbow carp, you follow what I'm saying?
Justin: (bewildered) No...
Derek: I've nothing against any man. Live and let live.
Evil unto no one. But each to his own ornamental pond.
That's all I'm saying.
Justin: I don't quite follow this. Are you saying your
son-in-law is black?
Derek: He's Chinese."
Ayckbourn began writing plays in the early 1960s at the
same time as contemporaries such as Harold Pinter and
John Osborne. (Ayckbourn's first notable play was Mr
Whatnot , performed in 1963, about an ostensibly strong
family unable to defend itself against a wily outsider.)
Inevitably, Ayckbourn has been labelled a writer of
comedies laced with underlying tragedy. Not surprisingly,
he rejects such a narrow view of his work. "I hate being
pigeon-holed," he frowns and his eyebrows point Ayckbourn s Stephen
downward, rather menacingly. "It's a modern thing Joseph Theatre in
to label people, you know the 'dark and mysterious' Harold Scarborough, named
Pinter or Alan Ayckbourn, 'the master of the boulevard after his mentor
comedy'... yes, some [of my plays] are social comedies but
some are indeed very sad." Referencing Woman in Mind,
he explains, his Shakespearian voice hushing to a stage
whisper, "between you and me it isn't really very funny,
it's actually very sad - I mean it is sort of fanny - but not
really". This play ias been regarded as near-confessional.
Though the main character is a woman, it delves, writes
Paul Allen, "further, deeper and more bleakly into a single
psyche than any other Ayckbourn play".
But over the years, people have come to expect some
comedy in an Ayckbourn play and to expect that it may,
more-often-than-not, be laced with tragic poignancy.
Also, one has become accustomed to important female
characters, be they young, old, drunk, eccentric, weak or
powerful. Woman in Mind, first performed in 1985, charts
the psychological demise of a woman who, unfulfilled in
her present, drab domestic reality, starts to hallucinate -
after a knock to the head - about a fantasy, happy life, with
two enthusiastic children and an adoring husband. Like
most of his plays, the tragic veers towards the ridiculous
LU
and a blinked-back tear often turns into a muffled laugh.
Paul Allen boldly suggests that "his [Ayckbourn's] I 1
essential view of the world was formed when he was still I-
E
a relatively small child". But Ayckbourn claims to have
moved on from his mother, and laughingly says, "I do other
s
women now." His preference for the female perspective E
may now simply be a conscious decision. "It's a nice
choice to make when you're writing; 'Shall I be a man or I
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 a woman?'" He diverts on a rather long, eloquent tangent one might expect. At the suggestion that he runs the
about subverting clichés and the question arises again, why Stephen Joseph Theatre as a kind of adopted family he
does he choose women? Is it because women dominated agrçes, freely admitting that with Damsels in Distress
his early youth? Is it because his mother's influence was so playing in London (at the time of the interview), it's like
powerful? A loud cough muffles his response. "I think that's"losing a family". The art-deco theatre seems trapped in
true, the youth bit, but..." he grins and stops. It appears that, a gloriously kitsch, rather staid time warp - orange and
over the years, he has grown tired of journalistic probing. red swirl carpets and burgundy ropes twist their way
The influence of his mother is, however, undeniable. around the labyrinthine interior.
Indeed his final address at her funeral reads, "To someone... He acknowledges his privileged position, for as art
who gave me far more complexes, hang-ups, phobias, director of his own theatre he never has to submit plays,
prejudices, inspirations and self-insights than any writer deal with failure or let go of control: "It's such a close
Stephen Joseph, has a right to expect from a parent... to her many thanks, marriage between a director and a writer, I find it very hard
visionary and much love and farewell." While the characters in his recent now seeing productions of my work other than mine." But,
proponent of Damsels in Distress trilogy do hint at a creator who has despite the emotional proximity he has to his work, there
theatre-in-the-round, moved on from writing entire plays around his mother, is surely a commercial brief to be filled? "I've always had the
encouraged her legacy is still evident among the many quirky cameos brief that Stephen Joseph gave me: 'You've got to entertain
Ayckbourn from who pop up, in particular the drunken, embarrassing, them.' But at the same time you have a company of actors
the beginning of outspoken mother-in-law. who probably want to do something worthwhile. I never
his playwriting career Indeed, if it is not the character of his mother that he believe that because a play's commercial it has to have
writes, it is the effect she had on him that he explores. Last absolutely no brain to it." Toby Young, the new theatre
October, he explained at an "Orange Word" lecture at the critic for The Specřařormagazine agrees: "Tom Stoppard
Apollo Theatre that living with an eccentric, slightly and Alan Ayckbourn have both ably demonstrated that
unhinged woman forced a premature adulthood upon it's perfectly possible to pitch plays at the mass audience
him and he felt compelled to take the reigns in their without pandering to the lowest common denominator."
relationship; not unlike Sorrel in Gameplan (the first of the Nicholas Hytner, the soon-to-be director of the National
Damsels in Distress trilogy). A strong-willed character who Theatre, recently expressed his concerns, however, that
believes she is emotionally invincible, the precocious theatre is in dire straits because it is failing to reach a
1 6-year-old Sorrel cooks up a plan to help her mother pay younger audience. Ayckbourn rejects these accusations:
off her debts, through prostitution. Unwavering in her "I think I try and appeal to the widest possible audience,"
need to resolve their financial ruin and consequently her even though he lives in a "town full of pensioners". He
mother's emotional demise, she steams ahead: blames the price of tickets in London for the dwindling
"Kelly: How can you bear to do it? attendance of youngsters: "Never judge a play by the West
Sorrel: I'd just think about something else, wouldn't I? It End; you have to go to the regions. The price of the theatre
wouldn't worry me that much. As I say, I don't think sex is [in London] is ridiculous." He seems to have countless other
all that great, anyway. It's not going to spoil anything for me."reasons that keep him away from the West End, including
Thankfully though, Sorrel's hard edge softens, the grin the "gimmick casting", the overuse of celebrities and the
turns sour and she breaks down, realising that there are inability to be creatively progressive; only the most
some things she cannot control. According to Ayckbourn, successful play of his trilogy is being played on weekdays
Sorrel is one of his most autobiographical characters - in London with the whole trilogy performed on Saturday,
apart, of course, from the prostitution element. "I was a bit instead of all three rotating on a loop, which is how he
of a control freak," he recalls. originally conceived it.
One can't help but wonder if Ayckbourn will ever run Not only does Ayckbourn aim to appeal to a range of
out of issues to explore in his plays. "Oh no, I mean as you ages, but he tries to impart a kind of social code to a society

'All the characters are parťof me.

I'd say I know myself pretty well now, I ve spent years
prowling the corridors../
get older you get more anxieties and more neuroses." He he once described as being "without moral foundations".
grins. For him, the all-consuming playwriting and directingPeter Hall calls Ayckbourn a "modern moralist" and
process provides him with a useful outlet to express and Ayckbourn agrees: "Yes, my characters do tend to get what
explore his inner emotions: "Sometimes I look at my they deserve." He admits, however, to the irony of his
characters and think, if they're violent, God, I'm capable of position regarding the nuclear family which he yearns for
that. I'm constantly climbing the rock face and breaking and believes in; and yet his plays constantly subvert this
the surface." ideal: "Unfortunately you have to create conflict, otherwise
Writing plays then, is not just something that Alan there'd be no drama." At the end of almost every response
Ayckbourn does for a living. He lives through them as well:Alan Ayckbourn raises his vampiric eyebrows and smiles.
"All the characters are a part of me. I'd say I know myself Perhaps he is tying up the loose ends of thought in a neat
pretty well now, I've spent years prowling the corridors bow and preparing for the next inquiring bullets, or maybe
looking at myself. It's a much more fun way than going to a he does it through force of habit. But Ayckbourn's plays,
psychologist and confronting them, God forbid." Although,like life, are never neatly resolved. ■
surely his prolific literary output and his continued success
provide him with a constant escape route from reality. A new biography, Alan Ayckbourn Grinning at the Edge
Ayckbourn is terribly polite and far more candid than by Paul Allen is available in paperback (Methuen £9.99)

FEBRUARY 2003 RSA JOURNAL 45

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