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The Greatest Living British PlaywrightDateline: 8th June, 2003I have a colleague who is an Ayckbourn freak. As I expected, she was at the first night of the touring production of How the Other Half Loves at the Newcastle Theatre Royal, which I was reviewing. She had a friend with her, an actress, who, after being introduced to me, enthused, "Wasn't that wonderful?" Pat laughed and said, "You'll not get him to agree. He doesn't like Ayckbourn." The friend couldn't understand it. How could I not like Ayckbourn? It's not that I dislike Ayckbourn's plays: I just don't like them. There is a real difference here: I don't like does not mean I dislike. I appreciate - indeed, I admire - his willingness to experiment with form and staging, but, when all's said and done, as I said in my review, when you take away the experiment, you're left with a pretty ordinary play. It seems to me that there are two kinds of theatre: theatre as entertainment and theatre as exploration. Of course, you can categorise theatre in many different ways and this is just one of them, but when we consider audiences and the reasons they go to the theatre, this is a good way of categorising them. I do a lot of audience-watching when I go to the theatre. The audience for the Ayckbourn was primarily over fifty, with some younger. There were two young (early twenties) girls sitting behind me and their conversation was illuminating: "What's (s)he been in?" was the question they kept asking, then looking up the answers in the programme. They'd actually come to see Boysie and Marlene, not Alan Ayckbourn! The previous week - Edward Hall's Dream - the audience was totally mixed, from kids of around twelve or thirteen up to the very old, and this is what you expect with Shakespeare. At Live Theatre for Richard Bean's The Smack Family Robinson, the average age of the adience was probably twenty years younger than for the Ayckbourn. I started wondering whom people who have a real interest in theatre think is the greatest living British playwright. Would it be Ayckbourn? Or Pinter? One of the two Howards, Barker or Brenton? Caryl Churchill, possibly? Stoppard? Why not tell us? Why not share your enthusism with the rest of us? Let's get a bit of debate started in the Forum. Please: go along to the Forum at http://disc.server.com/Indices/187766.html and tell us what you think! Articles Indices:
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