The Serious Side of Alan Ayckbourn

The Serious Side of Alan Ayckboum MALCOLM PAGE The comedies of Alan Ayckbourn have featured prominently in the British theatre in the last fifteen years. His earliest plays were the lightest and purest of comedies, giving him the reputation of being the most undemanding of entertainers . This initial reputation has obscured the depth and the seriousness of some ofhis plays, particularly those of 1974-78: Absent Friends, Just Between Ourselves, and Joking Apart. Ayckboum's first big success, Relatively Speaking, staged in London in 1967,' led John Russell Taylor to judge that Ayckboum "avoided any suggestion of deeper meaning," that one would not classify him as "important," and that he "looks certain to remain, at best, one of our most reliable light entertainers....'" In 1973, Michael Billington pronounced that Ayckboum's "sole aim is to make us laugh. His plays contain no messages, offerno profound vision of the universe, tell us nothing about how to live our lives."3 John Elsom in 1977 stressed technique: "... Ayckboum is the nearest British equivalent to Feydeau - in his skill, wit, neat characteristics and style.'" Even in 1981 , Hilary Spurling could assert: "Not the least engaging of Alan Ayckboum's many virtues is the fact that - unlike pretty well every other comic genius in the theatre between Pinero and Pinter - he has never let himself be fooled into thinking he was a serious playwright.'" Though Ayckboum's work changed, judgements such as these have been slow to alter. A few critics have recognized the growing seriousness of the plays and tried to grasp the new emphases in various fashions. Billington in 1974: "Ayckboum is a left-wing writer using a right-wing form; and even if there is nothing strident, obvious or noisy about his socialism, it is none the less apparent that he has a real detestation for the money-grubber, the status-seeker and the get-richquicker .,,6 Julian Jebb in 1971' "It does not seem in the least inappropriate to evoke Chekhov when writing about ... [AyckboumJ. Like the master, he sees life as it is- and life as it oughtto be."7 Martin Bronstein in 1980: ''I'm puzzled The Serious Side of Ayckboum 37 why Alan Ayckbourn hasn't been clutched to the bosom of the Women's Liberation Movement as being their writer. He's the only contemporary playwright who shows the real plight of the average woman in today's world.,,' Ayckboum has in fact outlined in numerous interviews precisely what his designs are, aware that he is developing towards the kind of comedy he hopes eventually to achieve - and he has himself claimed to be following Chekhov. As early as 1970, he said: "I'd like to finish up writing tremendously human comedies - Chekhovian comedy in a modem way.'" Seven years later, he had the same model: "... I want to move further into the Chekhovian field, exploring attitudes to death, loneliness, etc. - themes not generally dealt with in comedy."oo In 1975, he remarked that in his later plays, "The characters aren't necessarily getting nastier, but I do feel that they're getting sadder."" He explains: "it seems to me that the deeper you go into a character, the sadder the play must inevitably become."" He has another term for the changing tone in an interview in 1977: "... I started with broad farce and I've been getting more and more gloomy ever since." Here also he expressed an aim: "You can at most make people see their fellows in a new light. ..."'3 In a Preface dated 1976, he accepted seriousness and the pursuit of truth: As a nation, we show a marked preference for comedy when it comes to playgoing, as any theatre managerwill tell you. Atthe same time, overalarge area ofthe stans one can detect a faint sense of guilt that there is something called enjoyment going on.... It's to do with the mistaken beliefthat because it's funny, it can't be serious- which ofcourse isn'ttrue at all. Heavy, no; serious, yes.... [I]t can be funny, but let's make it truthful.14 And in 1979 he offered an aim which sounds as though it might easily be "heavy...