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Alan Ayckbourn interview: At home with the human heart Alan Ayckbourn, 60 today, doesn't do much for critics. The public know s better.
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Alan Ayckbourn will be surprised if he enjoys his birthday today:
"I'm not a sort of Woody Allen, a man who takes rain personally," he
says. "But I do have a feeling that you must not celebrate too much.
I always prefer giving parties for other people."
He is actually Sir Alan, the first playwright to be knighted since
Terence Rattigan. He is Britain's most prolific playwright - he was
auditioning for his 54th and 55th plays in London last week. But he
is also the most ingenious, perha...
Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles from HighBeam Research
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55 ways of making us laugh Profile: Alan Ayckbourn Humour is a serious business to a man whose plays carry uncanny echoes of his personal life.
The Independent - London
; The number of plays he's written doesn't quite match his age, but give him time. This Wednesday Sir Alan Ayckbourn's 53rd play, Comic Potential, will have its West End premiere; his 55th, House and Garden, has already been seen at his Scarborough theatre earlier this year. And there is no sign that
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Alan Ayckbourn interview: At home with the human heart Alan Ayckbourn, 60 today, doesn't do much for critics. The public know s better.
The Independent - London
; Alan Ayckbourn will be surprised if he enjoys his birthday today: "I'm not a sort of Woody Allen, a man who takes rain personally," he says. "But I do have a feeling that you must not celebrate too much. I always prefer giving parties for other people." He is actually Sir Alan, the first playwright
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`Woman' puts Ayckbourn in public's mind
Chicago Sun-Times
; English playwright Alan Ayckbourn has been called the most prolific dramatist in the world, the Shakespeare of London's South Bank, the finest feminist writer in England. He has been compared favorably to such disparate people as the Marx Brothers and Anton Chekhov. But his name is not on the lips
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Sex and Love and the Whole Damn Thing; Men and Women Battle It Out in Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd and Biting Plays
The Washington Post
; Before he won his Oscars for "Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg, who was in a position to know, aphorized, "Everybody loves a winner, but nobody loves a winner." Perhaps this is the reason Alan Ayckbourn's play-writing genius has never been widely recognized. Oh, he gets good reviews. Critics
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Ayckbourn: 'Singular' sensation: Brit scribe beloved in Blighty but still seeks auds in U.S.(Legit)(Alan Ayckbourn)
Variety
; The disparity is unique: No other British playwright is so feted at home and so unrecognized in the U.S. Alan Ayckbourn at one point had five comedies running concurrently in the West End, has written a further 66 plays (plus more than 20 revues and children's plays) and is enough of a theatrical
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Take two Ayckbourn plays fit comfortably at Goodman
Chicago Sun-Times
; `House' & `Garden' Opens Monday, to March 4 Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn Tickets, $16-$45 (312) 443-3800 When playwright Alan Ayckbourn penned his dual plays "House" and "Garden," he knew there would be few theaters in the world that would have the facilities to produce them. The new Goodman
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 "The Evening Standard (London, England)")
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Devil for the detail; Alan Ayckbourn is driven by phobias and obsessions. But, says the playwright, that's where comedy comes from.
The Evening Standard (London, England)
; Byline: FIONA MADDOCKS Devil for the detail Alan Ayckbourn is driven by phobias and obsessions. But, says the playwright, that's where comedy comes from JUST press the button and I'll start talking, suggests Alan Ayckbourn. As an opening gambit this ranks high on any interviewer's list of
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MR A'S AMAZING RECOVERY First, Alan Ayckbourn lost all feeling in his left leg. Then his arm. His reaction? 'I don't need all this. I have a play to rehearse.' He talks to Alan Strachan about his stroke and its aftermath
The Sunday Telegraph London
; MEMBERS OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION SEEM an especially dim lot among the crowded gallery of characters in Alan Ayckbourn's plays. Take the sad GP Uncle Bernard in that jet-black scrutiny of a family Christmas, Season's Greetings, who manages to pronounce a visitor dead only for the 'corpse' to groan
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A knight at the theatre Alan Ayckbourn is renowned for his acute observations of Middle England but, he insists, 'I don't write about real people'. The inspiration, he says, comes from childhood rows and his mendacious mother
The Sunday Telegraph London
; On Tuesday last, after the Queen Mother's state funeral, I went to the Aldwych Theatre off the Strand and had a good laugh. Queen Elizabeth would have approved. The play was a revival of Bedroom Farce, starring two of Her Majesty's favourite comic actors (Richard Briers and June Whitfield) and
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Ayckbourn at the double Alan Ayckbourn's cast will need to be superfit, running between two productions playing simultaneously at the National, reports ALAN STRACHAN
Evening Standard - London
; I NEARLY walked past Sir Alan Ayckbourn, in earnest conversation with Michael Frayn ("a covey of playwrights," said Ayckbourn) backstage at the National Theatre. Until recently he tended to be - how shall I say? - on the generous side of portly, but after the loss of an impressive number of stone
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