Other Articles On Absurd Person Singular

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Absurd Person Singular: The Broadway Experience

by Simon Murgatroyd

Prior to Absurd Person Singular, only one of Alan’s plays had been produced on Broadway. How The Other Half Loves, featuring Phil Silvers of Sergeant Bilko fame, opened in March 1971 and was a respectable success but had hardly made Alan a household name.

In 1973, Absurd Person Singular opened in London and quickly looked set for a long and successful run. As a result, it was only natural the play’s producer, Michael Codron, should look to transfer the play to Broadway to capitalise on its success. Codron teamed up with The Theatre Guild, specifically Philip Langner and Armina Marshall, and the John F Kennedy Centre For The Performing Arts, to produce the play in New York. Founded in 1919, the Guild’s original purpose was to produce non-commercial plays by American and foreign playwrights and it was responsible for a number of significant premieres on Broadway.

Eric Thompson, director of the London production, agreed to direct it for Broadway with an American cast – which caused some initial confusion as Alan was not told whether the play was to be Americanised in location and / or characters and no doubt feared a repeat of a previous painful attempt to produce Relatively Speaking for America. Alan also had misgivings as Philip Langner had some vocal issues with the play, despite investing in it.

In a lunch with Alan, Langner had seriously suggested acts two and three be swapped so the play ended on a comic high. Alan refused as the play had been written with a dark dying fall and when contracts were signed it forbade any major changes to the play and noted: “[The] Guild shall not make nor permit others to make any alterations in the text of said Play without the written approval of the Author”; the contract also forbade major changes to the action and structure of the play.

Despite this, in pre-production Langner suggested to Thompson “the set should collapse at the end of the third act to give the show a big finish” and that drawers and cupboards in the second act should jam to make it obvious how inadequate Geoff was as an architect. That these would not go down well were, according to the director, met with the rebuke from Langner that Alan was contractually obliged “to make such alterations and additions as the Producers deem necessary.” Alan was naturally furious with this news and could not understand why The Theatre Guild was producing the play if they were so unhappy with it. Codron, who Thompson had also contacted, was quick to set the record straight and dismissed Langner’s intimation of Alan’s obligations by quoting the Guild's clause (see paragraph above) to him. He also subtly noted it was in everyone’s interest for this play to go well as The Theatre Guild had already expressed interest in producing The Norman Conquests, which had recently opened in London.

The cast was remarkably strong and featured Tony award winners Richard Kiley, Sandy Dennis and Larry Blyden, the Golden Globe and Emmy award winning Geraldine Page and two well known actors Carole Shelley and Tony Roberts. Alan himself commented: “They were all top-rate actors who very cannily knew how to play a New York audience.” The play was set in England with English characters with the only notable deviation being the acts were subtitled “Christmas Past”, “Christmas Present” and “Christmas To Come.”

The play opened in late August for a week-long try-out at the Westport Country Playhouse, which had coincidentally staged the American premiere of Relatively Speaking in 1967. The play had a record-breaking run before moving to the John F Kennedy Centre in Washington from 4 to 28 September. This also sold out and was greeted by several strong reviews.

The play moved to New York on 27 September and Alan was brought in to help promote the play and, Langner hoped, to edit acts two and three and add some humour to the final act. Alan, of course, did not make any notable alterations to the play with the published American script offering little evidence for any notable changes and in an interview, Alan noted: “I personally haven’t done anything with it.”

The play opened on 8 October 1974 at the Music Box Theatre to excellent reviews and it was soon obvious this was a genuine Broadway hit. The notable cast combined with the strong reviews for the play quickly led to strong a box office. Rather unfortunately, for whatever reasons, The Theatre Guild had not put Alan’s name on any promotional material or even the programme cover. As a result, the only identifiable people concerned with the play were the actors.

Even though the play was a success, Langner’s views on swapping the two acts led to the very famous story that statisticians were brought in to count the laughs in the play. Preposterous as the story sounds, the figures are held in Alan Ayckbourn’s personal archive and can be revealed here.

Quite what Langner intended to prove is a mystery. The experiment was conducted six weeks after the play had opened and all it confirms is there are fewer laughs in the third act than the second; something which Alan was patently aware of as the play had deliberately been written that way.

The success of the play was reflected when the Tony Award nominations were announced with Larry Blyden, Geraldine Page and Carole Shelley all nominated in the Best Featured actor category. The play was also nominated for the Drama Desk Outstanding New Play (Foreign) and while the play did not win any of these awards, it demonstrated Alan had his first true major hit on Broadway.

The play would run until March 6 1976 and during that period it became the longest running comedy on Broadway at that time. The cast stayed with the production for the entire run except for Sandy Dennis who dropped out in May 1975, but then promptly returned for the rest of the run from November 1975. On 28 January 1976, a month before it closed, 45th street was renamed Ayckbourn Alley for the day to mark the fact Alan had four plays running on Broadway with Absurd Person Singular and The Norman Conquests trilogy.

Absurd Person Singular ran for 592 performances and was the most successful comedy on Broadway by a British author since Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which ran from 1942 to 1943. It was, according to Philip Langner, who was seemingly obsessed by statistics, the 141st longest running production to have been mounted on Broadway at that time.

Despite the success of Absurd Person Singular, it did not propel Alan to the heights of fame he had achieved in London. Although The Norman Conquests opened in 1976, again directed by Eric Thompson, it did not reach the same magnitude of success and Alan did not achieve as high a profile hit in New York again until 2005. Then he took the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s production of Private Fears In Public Places to the Brits-Off-Broadway festival, which generated a once-in-a-lifetime reception and reviews. On Broadway, the only Ayckbourn production which can be said to have had similar success is The Old Vic's 2009 transfer of The Norman Conquests, which was critically acclaimed and received a number of significant awards including the first Tony for an Ayckbourn play.

Coincidentally a revival of Absurd Person Singular opened on Broadway soon after Private Fears In Public Fears on 18 October 2005. It closed on 4 December 2005 having received some unflattering comparisons to the original Broadway production and perhaps suffering from the success of Private Fears In Public Places, which had shown American audiences how Ayckbourn plays should be directed and performed.

It certainly could not touch the success and obvious affection for the original production: Alan’s original and still most commercially successful Broadway production.

Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd 2007 (amended: 2012)

Off-Stage On-Stage

by Simon Murgatroyd

Absurd Person Singular is notably Alan Ayckbourn’s first off-stage play; a play which  eschews the obvious setting for somewhere ultimately more revealing.

The play was originally set in the living rooms of the three couples, showing both the actual parties and, presumably, the fourth couple Dick and Lottie Potter. Quickly realising the play was not working, Alan decided to move the action into the kitchen instead, thus removing the tedium of showing three parties. It also took Dick and Lottie out of view, who arguably might have absorbed all attention had they been left on stage. In his book on Alan, Michael Holt offers Alan’s explanation for the change: “There is far more comedy, he [Ayckbourn] insists, offstage than on. The social mask is most likely to be dropped here and the true picture of the occasion revealed.” For example, in the apparent privacy of the kitchen, Sidney feels comfortable approaching Ronald about his business plans - which is ultimately the real motivation behind the first party. Moving the action to the kitchen, as Ayckbourn himself notes, is also a simple way of dispensing with all the introductory pleasantries and social niceties that would otherwise be an obligatory part of a party.

The kitchen is generally not the centre-stage of a party and while the living rooms would have been cleaned and tidied for the guests, the kitchens are out-of-sight and act as a staging area. As a result, the kitchens of Absurd Person Singular offer additional insight into their owners and vividly illustrate the decay of society that has been argued as one of the predominant themes of the play.

The Hopcrofts’ kitchen is meticulous and modern, the Jackson’s kitchen shambolic and the Brewster-Wright’s kitchen antiquated and largely not functioning. If we examine the kitchens with regard to the characters, we see their owners reflected in them. Spotless and well maintained, over-loaded with the latest gadgets, the Hopcroft kitchen shows Jane’s obsessiveness and Sidney’s controlling streak. Nothing is out of place, everything perfect. Sidney’s aspiration to rise the social ladder reflected in the abundance of mod-cons, which - at least to his mind – reflects how he feels wealthy and influential people’s kitchens should be while implying how successful he is. Of course, no-one is taken in by this and it also reflects the sterility of the couple’s relationship. There is no warmth or human touch in this kitchen.

The Jacksons’ kitchen is a better reflection of a socially successful couple. Trendy in an under-stated way, yet uncared and unkempt. Geoffrey has no need to try and prove his success, he is not proving a point. It is also a snapshot of Geoffrey and Eva’s relationship: there is little care of this kitchen and as little regard for it as Geoffrey has for Eva and Eva has for herself.

The Brewster-Wrights’ kitchen is set in the past, the Aga cooker a reflection of a couple that has not moved with the times. The kitchen, like the couple, is dysfunctional.

As has been noted, moving the play ‘off-stage’ removed Dick and Lottie Potter, but allowed Alan full rein with off-stage characters that by the end of the play feel every bit as real as the on-stage characters. Dick and Lottie cleverly indicate the party is actually taking place and make it clear why people want to escape into the kitchen. Dick and Lottie in effect provide the reason why the first act is set in the kitchen as everyone wants to escape them. A third off-stage character is George, the dog. In the first act he is stuck in the Jacksons’ car and less important, but in the second act he takes the place of Dick and Lottie as the reason why everyone is  in the kitchen. The couples are trapped due to this practically rabid dog patrolling the hallway. The combination of off-stage characters also leads to the extremely vivid moment where Dick Potter is savaged by George. So clearly have these characters and their actions been built up, the moment is almost as vivid as had it been shown on stage.

This would be the first time Alan would write an off-stage play, but he would return to the device in later plays such as Bedroom Farce (where Dick and Lottie again lurk off-stage), Just Between Ourselves and, notably, Life Of Riley. Arguably, Alan develops the idea of the off-stage play to its limits as well in The Norman Conquests and House & Garden where the audience witness the same characters in the same period over several locales.

Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd 2007 (amended: 2012)

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