The Norman Conquests: Comedic trilogy a scathing attack on society, marriage | Ottawa Citizen The Norman Conquests: Comedic trilogy a scathing attack on society, marriage More from Patrick Langston Published on: August 24, 2015 | Last Updated: August 24, 2015 11:49 AM EST AL Connors plays Norman while Margo MacDonald plays Sarah in the production of Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests at the Gladstone. David_Whiteley Share Adjust Comment Print You’d be forgiven for suspecting British playwright Alan Ayckbourn is a closet sadist. Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests, the farcical comedic trilogy that opens the new season at The Gladstone starting Aug. 28, requires the same six actors to play the same six characters in three different full-length plays that share the same, overlapping plot set in a country house on one summer weekend.

As if that’s not sufficiently daunting for all involved, the three shows – Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden – will, in a variation on their usual brutal scheduling, each open two weeks apart at The Gladstone, then run in repertory at the beginning of October with each show getting two performances per week, and finally all be presented on Oct. 10. “It’s a huge bloody challenge to get this thing to work,” says John P. Kelly, who’s directing the Gladstone shows. The shows are a presentation of Plosive Productions and Kelly’s own company, SevenThirty Productions which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. On the plus side, says Kelly, because the characters are the same in all three plays, “by the time you get to the third play, you don’t have to do much character development.” The trilogy is about a dysfunctional family who gather over a weekend. Things get complicated thanks to sex (Norman is a man of conquests), boredom, anger, and other age-old human wants and failings. The action, as suggested by the titles of the three plays, takes place in a different part of the house each day: the dining room, the living room, the garden.

While normally billed as a comedy, the 1973 trilogy isn’t really that at all according to Kelly, who has directed other Ayckbourn shows at The Gladstone including a splendid How the Other Half Loves. Despite being funny, “These plays are scathing attacks on the middle class … on modern society and marriage,” he says. “They ask serious questions about relationships and commitment. Like a Neil Simon play, they make you wince at the same time you laugh. “I’m guessing the author is saying, ‘This is a satire on British society of the ‘70s, and if (audiences) get too involved in who goes in this door or out that one, they are missing the point.’” The Norman Conquests is a perennially popular work by the prolific Ayckbourn. Now 76 years old, the London native has written 79 plays. Many, including Sisterly Feelings and Absurd Person Singular, have been produced in London’s West End, at the Royal National Theatre and elsewhere including Broadway. His plays have been translated into dozens of languages and won multiple awards including an Olivier and a Tony. Not all have been successful.

Jeeves, a musical co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber and based on the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, was a storied flop. However, so much of his canon has remained in repertory that light-hearted speculation continues about whether Ayckbourn or Shakespeare is the most-produced playwright in the U.K. each year. Ayckbourn, known as a private man whose public honours include a knighthood, not only writes quickly but reportedly doesn’t bother with rewrites, says Kelly. If that rewrite business is true, it may be as much a result of his extensive directing experience as it is the result of his skill as a writer. He has directed in London’s West End, at the Royal National Theatre and elsewhere. For 37 years he was the artistic director of the regional Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England where he also directed and where all but four of his own plays premiered. This summer he returned to the Stephen Joseph Theatre to direct a revival of his own Confusions to help celebrate the theatre’s 60th anniversary. All that directing may mean that, more than most playwrights, he instinctively knows what will work on stage and what won’t, thereby making his writing process more efficient.

His directing also gives insight into a man whose plays can bite. In an email, Ayckbourn’s archivist Simon Murgatroyd says that during rehearsals, “Alan is quite hands off, gently guiding the actors to where he wants them to go. He’s fond of telling anecdotes, which actually are generally him guiding the actors in the right direction without necessarily telling them directly.” Murgatroyd says Ayckbourn’s great contribution to English-speaking theatre has been his championing of regional theatre. He’s lived most of his life in the seaside resort of Scarborough, encouraging and developing new writers, actors and others during his decades at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. For Kelly, Ayckbourn’s legacy will be the “respect and stature” he’s given to British farce. “He brought it to a level it had never been before.” The Norman Conquests When: Aug. 28-Oct. 10. Table Manners: Aug. 28 – Sept. 5 (previews Aug. 26 & 27); Living Together, Sept. 11-19 (preview Sept. 10); Round and Round the Garden, Sept. 25-26 (preview Sept. 24).

All plays in repertory Sept. 29-Oct. 10. Where: The Gladstone, 910 Gladstone Ave. Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests Theatre: Circle in the Square Theatre by Dan Dinero BOTTOM LINE: A thoughtful, well-written trilogy, The Norman Conquests gets funnier, and more profound, the more you see. The Norman Conquests is a trilogy by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn; written in 1973, this production is a transfer of the revival at London’s Old Vic theatre last year. The three plays all take place in one Victorian house in England over the course of a July weekend. Each play is set in a different room: Round and Round the Garden takes place in the garden, Table Manners takes place in the dining room, and Living Together takes place in the sitting room. While the plays show different times during this weekend, there are chronological overlaps, which means that sometimes, when a character leaves one room in one play, he or she appears in another room in another play. (I actually checked my watch on occasion, to see if, according to the times given for each scene, the exits and entrances actually match up in real time.

They don’t- sometimes there is a delay of 10 or 20 minutes. But it is close enough so that you don’t notice unless you’re as anal as I am). Each play deals with the same six characters. Annie lives in the house, and takes care of her mother upstairs (who we never see). Tom lives next door, and may or may not be in love with Annie. Annie’s two siblings are Reg and Ruth. Annie has asked Reg and his wife Sarah to come take care of their mother for the weekend so that Annie can go on holiday; the secret (soon revealed to everyone) is that the holiday is with Norman, who is married to Annie’s sister Ruth. There isn’t much more to the set-up; the three plays are basically concerned with the complex relationships between these six people; much of the focus centers around Norman, who just wants to be loved- by all three women. I’ll admit- this premise sounded hokey and way-too played out when I first heard it. And I haven’t been a huge fan of Ayckbourn’s plays in the past- I thought The Norman Conquests might be all just a big conceit (wow- three plays that overlap- how clever!).

But fortunately, there is a lot of substance here- the six characters are all incredibly complex, and the trilogy is not so much about finding out what happens (you know at the end of the first play you see), but about watching how it happens, and realizing how what at first seems complete is, on second (and third) glance just a small part of the picture. Director Matthew Warchus (who also directed God of Carnage this season, and Boeing Boeing last season) is largely responsible for the hilarity that ensues- he paces each play extremely well, balancing spurts of quick comedy with moments of quiet contemplation and tension. Warchus gets a lot out of physical movement; the six actors use their bodies in interesting ways, and a lot of the character development is communicated by posture and gesture. While not exactly slapstick, this is nevertheless very physical comedy at times, and all the more hilarious for that reason. But Warchus is also not afraid of silence, which makes The Norman Conquests more than just an uproarious laugh fest. These six characters are all profoundly unhappy, and the entire trilogy might be summarized as their search for happiness.

If there is a leading role, it is Norman; played by Stephen Mangan, Norman is incredibly normal-looking for a man-whore, and he often borders on downright unappealing. He is not well-dressed, not in good shape, and needs a shave- all of which makes his seductive powers that much more interesting to watch. Amelia Bullmore plays Ruth, Norman’s wife, a woman who hates wearing her glasses- her attempts to set up her chair in the garden are a high point in Round and Round the Garden. Paul Ritter is Reg, who fights constantly with his wife Sarah, played by Amanda Root. Jessica Hynes is Annie, who is clearly exhausted and looks like she hasn’t brushed her hair in months. My favorite actor was Ben Miles, who plays Tom, a rather dim vet who often seems more concerned with Annie’s cat than he is with Annie herself. All six actors are excellent, and their ensemble work together is as good as their individual performances. Each character is strengthened by comparisons with the others; for example, as we learn more about the insufficiencies of Tom and Reg, we understand more why Norman, despite his physical appearance, is such a tempting alternative for Annie and Sarah.

The plays are staged in the round, so any seat in the house is fine. I’d suggest seats on the “sides” of the oval (the 200 sections) or else near the stage. I saw each of the play’s first NY preview performance, so the sound may improve, but there were times when the audience was laughing so loud that I couldn’t hear a few lines. But judging by the laughter, I’d say The Norman Conquests will appeal to many people- it is very definitely a series of three comedies, albeit comedies with some serious, poignant moments. So now for the important questions: do you need to see all three plays? If you only see one, which one should you see? And if you’re seeing all three, does it help to see them in a certain order? I saw Round and Round the Garden first, then Table Manners, and then Living Together. You don’t need to see all three plays- each stands well on its own. However, I appreciated Round and Round the Garden more once I saw Table Manners, and while I probably enjoyed Table Manners the best, this may not mean everyone will.

It is just as likely that I liked Table Manners so much because I already knew these characters from Round and Round the Garden, but the characters still had more surprises than they had for me in Living Together. Which means, someone who sees all three might like the second play the best, whichever one that is. Or not. So if you just want to see one because you want to have some idea of what people are talking about, I’d say it is a toss-up- see whichever one fits your schedule the best, or whichever one you can get the best seat for. That said, if you’re interested enough to see one, I’d suggest that you consider seeing all three. Although you might expect the three plays to become repetitive, since they all cover the same characters in the same situations, they are anything but repetitive. In fact, the plays somehow become better, and even funnier, as you see more. For example, once you see Ruth squinting around in one play, you start laughing the minute she walks on stage in the next play.

If you decide to see all three, one option is the “Trilogy Day”- Table Manners at 11 AM, Living Together at 3 PM, and Round and Round the Garden at 8 PM. This might suggest that this is the “preferred order”- since this is also the order they are listed in the playbill. However, this probably has as much to do with the set demands (the garden set has a different floor than do the sitting and dining rooms) as it does with anything else. Of course, the publicity will tell you that the plays can be seen in any order, but is this really true? For what it is worth, Round and Round the Garden both “starts” and “ends” the play- its first scene happens first in time (5:30 PM on a Saturday), and its last scene happens last (Monday at 9 AM). So I guess an argument could be made for seeing this one either first or last. But ultimately, I don’t think it matters too much. Each play tells you enough about what is going on so that any play can be seen first.

I’d say it is more important to try to see all three fairly close together- if all three in one day sounds too exhausting, then maybe try to see one a night for three nights. (For those who saw Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia trilogy, this is a much less daunting prospect- The Norman Conquests is not only funnier, but shorter- by about 2-3 hours.) Because the three plays that make up The Norman Conquests work by building on each other, if you see one too far apart from the other, you might forget some of the ways in which they overlap. And while this isn’t necessary for the enjoyment of any one play, it is what makes the trilogy so enjoyable. In other words, if you are going to see the trilogy, treat it as a trilogy to get the best bang for your buck. For those who aren’t sure, there is a discount offer in the playbill; once you see one play, you can go back to the box office and buy tickets to the other two (the box office is conveniently open during intermission and after the show).

So unless this discount (when I went it was $49) goes away after the trilogy opens officially on April 23rd, it would seem as if buying a ticket to one play to see if you like it doesn’t mean you will necessarily spend more money on all three than those who buy the trilogy all at once (indeed, at $49, this would seem to actually save you money). One final note- when I left Round and Round the Garden, I was somewhat ambivalent- I would have been perfectly fine just seeing that play. It was only after seeing the second play (in my case Table Manners) that I understood what I missed in the first play- so much so that I wanted to go back and see Round and Round the Garden again after I finished the trilogy. So a note of warning- you may not love the first play you see, at least, not at first. Ultimately, The Norman Conquests is to some extent an event- there are those (myself included) who will go if only to say that we saw all three plays. But for everyone else, The Norman Conquests is still worth seeing.

Yes, some on a tight budget, or in New York for a short time, might understandably prefer to spend their money and time on three unrelated plays. So I won’t say to skip everything else to see The Norman Conquests. That said, this is an extremely enjoyable trio of plays- it is thoughtful comedy, but incredibly accessible. It is a terrific production with an all-around hilarious cast, directed by one of the best comedy directors today. Good comedies are rare on Broadway, and although I haven’t seen Warchus’s other Broadway hit God of Carnage yet, I’ve heard from several people that The Norman Conquests is better written. So if you’re looking for a comedy and don’t mind missing the “stars” in God of Carnage, The Norman Conquests is worth checking out. (The Norman Conquests plays at the Circle in the Square Theatre, 1633 Broadway, on 50th St between Broadway and 8th Avenue. The three plays are performed through July 25th, and occur on a rotating schedule, so the performance schedule varies.

In general, there are shows Tue at 7 PM, Wed at 2 PM, Wed through Fri at 8 PM, and on weekends there are “Trilogy Days”, in which all three plays are performed- at 11 AM, 3 PM, and 8 PM. See normanconquestsonbroadway.com for the complete schedule. Running time for each play is approximately 2 hours 20 minutes. Tickets for one play are $107-$112, and the entire trilogy costs $256. There is also student rush for $27, available the day of the performance. Tickets are available online at telecharge.com) The Battle for The Norman Conquests | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com The Battle for The Norman Conquests Features By Smith Galtney April 9, 2009 - 6:11PM Tweet Perhaps the only things you know about the Broadway revival of The Norman Conquests are that 1 it’s an English comedy, 2 it’s really long and 3 it’s about pivotal event in England’s history. Yes, yes, and no.

Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy classic could be the only epic trilogy capable of making you laugh hysterically for nine whole hours. And while it’s not about Normandy’s 1066 invasion of England, this story of a lascivious librarian, his five friends and one truly horrible weekend getaway is historic in its own way. Here’s the Backstory of why the creator of this 33-year-old comedy classic is both the Stephen King and Rodney Dangerfield of English theater and what New Yorkers will get from taking in his rarely produced trilogy in its entirety. Suburban Beginnings England’s most popular living playwright was born in Hampstead, a suburb of North London, on April 12, 1939. His father, Horace Ayckbourn, was the lead violinist for the London Symphony Orchestra. His mother, Irene Maud Worley, wrote for women’s magazines and published short stories and novels under the pseudonym “Mary James.” Her son called her “Lolly.” “I spent a lot of my time in her company as a child and she would sit tapping away at her typewriter,” he said earlier this year in The Telegraph.

“If she’d have been a baker, I would probably have started rolling out pastries.” For the record, Lolly and Horace were never married. When she left him shortly after World War II, she filed for divorce from her first husband in order to marry a rural bank manager named Cecil Pye in 1946. Alan’s new family included a stepbrother, Christopher, and “home” was now in rural Sussex. The Pye clan lived variously in Billingshurst, Wisborough, Horsham, Uckfield, Hayward’s Heath and Lewes. The marriage of Lolly and Cecil, bumpy from the start, only got rockier. “I was surrounded by relationships that weren’t altogether stable,” Alan later told The New York Times. “The air was often blue, and things were sometimes flying across the kitchen table.” A boarding school boy, Alan wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge prep school when he was 10. At 12, he earned a scholarship to attend Haileybury, one of England’s leading co-ed schools that counts Rudyard Kipling and Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan among its alumni.

He toured the Netherlands in a school production of Romeo and Juliet, and in 1956, toured the U.S. and Canada in Macbeth. At 17, convinced it was time to pursue a career in theater, Ayckbourn left Haileybury early and immediately got a three-week job with the company of soon-to-be-knighted thespian Donald Wolfit. In 1957, he became an actor/stage manager at the Library Theatre in Scarborough, the U.K.’s first professional theater in the round. Artistic director Stephen Joseph challenged the young actor to write and direct, and Ayckbourn’s debut play, The Square Cat, opened in the spring of 1959. The theater-in-the-round setup would become an integral element in Ayckbourn’s work, and to this day, Scarborough remains home. “I remember I got off the train packed with holidaymakers and this bracing air and smell of chips,” he later wrote in The Times of London. “Because I was an inland child living in north Sussex, one of the great treats as a child was a trip to the seaside— so, dear reader, I bought the sweet shop. I came to the seaside and stayed.

I thought, ‘This can’t get better.’” Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays From here on, the ultra-prolific career of Alan Ayckbourn becomes difficult to encapsulate. Capping off his acting career in 1964, he became an acclaimed director Arthur Miller proclaimed his staging of A View from the Bridge as definitive, served as artistic director for a number of English theaters including the National, collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber 1975’s Jeeves, produced radio drama for the BBC, taught at Oxford as the Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre and earned his own knighthood in 1997 for his services to the theater. Then there’s his written work: At present, Ayckbourn has completed 72 full-length plays, plus more than 20 revues and plays for children. The Telegraph went so far as to anoint him “the most successful-in-his-lifetime playwright there has ever been, including Shakespeare.” Neil Simon, the American playwright most frequently compared with Ayckbourn, might disagree with that assessment. His many hits include Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, Absent Friends, Woman in Mind and, of course, The Norman Conquests.

Built like an epic yet defined as a farce, The Norman Conquests consists of three separate, unified yet independent plays: Living Together, Table Manners and Round and Round the Garden. Each involves six friends and one very complicated weekend in a country house, and each tells the same story within the same time frame, yet from a different area of the house dining room, living room, garden. An exit in one play is an entrance in another, as the conceit goes, and while Ayckbourn designed the trilogy so that each play can be enjoyed individually and in any order, his cleverness is irrefutable when it’s viewed as a whole. Watching all the pieces connect feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube—if solving a Rubik’s Cube made one laugh out loud for nine hours. In typical Ayckbourn fashion, the synopsis for The Norman Conquests doesn’t look like much on paper. Here’s how the playwright summarizes Living Together on his website: “The events of one weekend as seen from the Sitting Room. In which Reg is driven mad by Tom... Tom tells Annie a thing or two... Annie nearly comes to blows with Sarah... Sarah sees a different side of Norman... Norman sorts things out with Ruth...

Ruth discovers the charms of a fireside rug... and in which nobody enjoys playing board games.” If that makes your average episode of Seinfeld seem like a plot-driven mystery, allow us to elaborate: Norman is a not-very-quiet assistant librarian who’s plagued by bad luck and worse judgment. After failing to seduce his sister-in-law, he heals his wounds by making a play at his other sister-in-law. As hijinks ensue and the audience feels relief this isn’t their country house, Ayckbourn sneaks in many moments that are less ha-ha funny and more about hard truths. “When I started out, there were serious plays where the lighting was desperately dark and the tempo turgid, and comic plays where madness prevailed and everyone talked like Dick Van Dyke on speed.” Ayckbourn told The Guardian in 1992. “What I’ve tried to do is bring these elements together, which is a bit like dancing on the edge of a razor blade.” Man of the Moment Written in 1973, The Norman Conquests debuted on London’s West End the following year and became an enormous hit.

On December 7, 1975, it opened on Broadway at the since-destroyed Morosco Theatre in a production starring Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Estelle Parsons and Ken Howard. The trilogy played through June, receiving a warm review from New York Times critic Walter Kerr but no Tony Award nominations. In 1977, the plays were turned into a miniseries starring Tom Conti, nominated for an Emmy for Ayckbourn’s script. And what of Ayckbourn’s reputation? Hugely famous in England but not so well known here, the playwright has been looked at in some quarters as the Stephen King of the theater: a commercially successful writer who specializes in a genre comedy that pundits love to snub.

In 1999, The Independent reported that Ayckbourn’s work had inspired only two American and one English doctoral theses, and that the writer of the English thesis was told by his professor, “If only Ayckbourn were dead, it would be easier to rate him.” As the playwright himself has cracked, “Most young writers would say they were influenced by Scrobadov, a rare Polish playwright who wrote one play and drowned himself, rather than an Establishment figure like me.” An additional challenge: Ayckbourn designed his scripts to be performed at Scarborough’s in-the-round theater, and most playhouses around the world feature the more traditional proscenium-arch setup. So while his hit comedies earned a spot in the pantheon of perpetually revived plays, Ayckbourn kept a tight hold on The Norman Conquests, absent from both the West End and Broadway for more than three decades. “He actually had withdrawn rights to most of his plays over the last five to ten years,” says Matthew Warchus, director of such Ayckbourn-esque comedies as Boeing-Boeing and God of Carnage.

“He’s a very, very good director himself, so I think it’s complicated for him to see his plays taken in a slightly different way.” What Goes Around Comes Around One of the fans of the original Broadway production of The Norman Conquests was none of than two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey. “I was 13 years old and a young drama student and fell in love with them as plays,” he says. Once he was appointed artistic director at the Old Vic, the legendary theater co-founded by Laurence Olivier, Spacey placed Ayckbourn’s trilogy at the top of his wish list, with Warchus as director. To get the playwright’s approval, he pledged a costly renovation of the historic theater. “We were aiming to make people who’d been to the Old Vic feel like they’d never been there before, that they couldn’t believe what we’d done,” says Spacey—as if producing three plays in repertory, which required the highest level of commitment not only from actors but from the audience, too, wasn’t stress-inducing enough. “I have enormous faith in Matthew and enormous love and affection for the plays,” says Spacey. “But if it had not gone well, can you imagine?

We had completely reconfigured the theater and it didn’t work!?!” It did, obviously. Critics rhapsodized over the theater’s makeover and fawned over the play. Audiences turned it into a commercial blockbuster. And Ayckbourn, who suffered a stroke in 2006 but quickly returned to work at his beloved theater in Scarborough, received a special Olivier Award from Spacey for lifetime achievement in early March. A Broadway transfer of the entire production wasn’t so complicated, since Circle in the Square could provide the in-the-round experience. “There’s something so daring and dangerous about actors having nowhere to hide and characters therefore having nowhere to hide,” says Spacey. “There’s this kind of exposure.” Adds Warchus, “It immediately removes the trap of middle-class, middle-of-the-road theater. The wallpaper, the French windows, all the things that make a play look more conventional. Take those away, and you just have an island of clarity and agony.” Warchus doesn’t just call The Norman Conquests a highlight of his already-impressive career, but the highlight. “I realize it’s is a strange thing to do, to ask people to see three plays with the same characters in the same setting,” he says.

“But there’s a promise in return. The people who do see these plays will remember them for the rest of their lives.” See for yourself now that Norman’s back in New York! Alan Ayckbourn's Official Website Articles / Research The Norman Conquests: Behind The Scenes Behind The Scenes offers a glimpse at some rarely known facts regarding the writing of Alan Ayckbourn's plays with material drawn from the Ayckbourn Archive at the University Of York and the playwright's personal archive. The plays were not written as The Norman Conquests - the title by which the trilogy is now known wasn't used until a year after the play opened in Scarborough to promote its London premiere at the Greenwich Theatre. Interestingly, this also indicates different perceptions of the audience for the play. When Alan Ayckbourn decided to write a trilogy for the 1973 summer season at Scarborough, he did so in the knowledge that it couldn't be promoted exclusively as a trilogy and that every play had to stand independently of the other. This was because the theatre relied on the town's summer tourist trade and Alan was not convinced holiday-makers would give up three nights of their week to see all the plays.

As a result, although it was advertised the plays worked better together, it was also stressed that they did not need to all be seen to enjoy the plays. When the trilogy transferred to London, it was felt more appropriate to market it as an event and as a trilogy - London audiences seeming far more likely to support the idea of returning to the theatre multiple times. Hence the plays became The Norman Conquests for the London premiere. The Ayckbourn Archive at the University of York contains correspondence from the original Norman, Christopher Godwin, revealing why Norman appears so late in the play Table Manners. This was because Table Manners was the first play to go into rehearsals and Alan knew Christopher would not be available for part of the first week of rehearsals. Hence the huge build-up to Norman!

As Christopher Godwin writes (to the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round's press officer Jeannie Swales on 8 February 1993): "Norman wasn't in the first scene [of Table Manners] because I was finishing a contract in Leicester (I think) and I came in two days late and went straight into that first huge speech." Midway through the run at the Library Theatre, Christopher Godwin's wife gave birth to their first son during a performance. At the end of the evening, Alan Ayckbourn announced the news to a shocked 'Norman' and the audience. In a conversation with Alan Ayckbourn's wife, Heather Stoney, on 8 August 2014, she confirmed that it is only by luck that The Norman Conquests became one of the playwright's greatest successes rather than being forgotten and withdrawn. After the play's initial production in Scarborough, there was interest from London producers, but none of them were interested in taking the trilogy as a whole and each had a different choice of which play they wanted.

Unwilling to not have it produced as a a trilogy, Alan put the plays away and genuinely did not expect they would be produced again; history tells us that when Alan's plays have followed this path, they tend to be either forgotten and unproduced or withdrawn. It was only the request by Eric Thompson to Alan if he had anything to read whilst in hospital, which led to Eric reading the scripts and announcing he could stage them in Greenwich, thus kick-starting starting the trilogy's remarkable journey. Although The Norman Conquests proved to be a huge success in London, it was initially doubted that a trilogy could succeed in the West End (Alan turned down several offers to produce the plays either singularly or as a pair). The novelty of a trilogy in the West End and the unexpected success can be seen when a press officer for the Globe Theatre was reported in 1974 as saying: "It's the first time I can remember plays being presented like this, but the idea has really caught on. We are playing to packed houses and the advance bookings are excellent. Many people have booked for the three plays at the one time." Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.

All material © Simon Murgatroyd or Alan Ayckbourn except where noted. Portrait of Alan Ayckbourn by Andrew Higgins. Contact Me The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth’s sister Annie, and Tom, Annie’s next-door-neighbor. The plays are at times wildly comic, and at times poignant, in their portrayals of the relationships among the six characters. Each of the plays depicts the same six characters over the same weekend in a different part of a house. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden in the garden. Each play is self-contained, and they may be watched in any order, some of the scenes overlap, and on several occasions a character’s exit from one play corresponds with an entrance in another.

The plays were not written to be performed simultaneously, although Ayckbourn did achieve that some twenty-five years later in House & Garden. The plays were first performed in Scarborough, before a season in London, with a cast that included Tom Courtenay as Norman, Penelope Keith as Sarah, Felicity Kendal as Annie, Michael Gambon as Tom, Bridget Turner as Ruth, and Mark Kingston as Reg. The first major London revival of The Norman Conquests was presented at The Old Vic Theatre in 2008 with Matthew Warchus directing a cast including Stephen Mangan as Norman, Jessica Hynes as Annie, Ben Miles as Tom, Amanda Root as Sarah, Paul Ritter as Reg and Amelia Bullmore as Ruth. The Old Vic auditorium was transformed to a theatre in the round, known as the CQS Space, especially for this production. Broadway The plays originally premiered on Broadway in 1975 for 69 performances at the Morosco Theatre, directed by Eric Thompson and featuring Richard Benjamin, Ken Howard, Barry Nelson, Estelle Parsons, Paula Prentiss, and Carole Shelley.

The 2008 Old Vic production opened on Broadway with the London cast at the Circle in the Square Theatre on 7 April 2009, official opening 23 April, and scheduled closing on 25 July 2009.[1][2] Television Adaptation In 1977 the plays were adapted for television by Thames Television. Penelope Keith reprised her role as Sarah. The rest of the cast featured Tom Conti as Norman, Penelope Wilton (who had played Ruth in the original 1974 London stage production)[3] as Annie, Richard Briers as Reg, David Troughton as Tom and Fiona Walker as Ruth. The three films were directed by Herbert Wise and produced by Verity Lambert and David Susskind. Keith won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress for her performance.

Best Revival of a Play (winner) Best Direction of a Play- Matthew Warchus (nominated) Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play – Stephen Mangan and Paul Ritter (nominated) Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play – Jessica Hynes and Amanda Root (nominated) Best Scenic Design of a Play – Rob Howell (nominated) 2009 Drama Desk Awards[5] Outstanding Ensemble Performance (winner) Outstanding Revival of a Play (winner) Outstanding Director of a Play – Matthew Warchus (winner) Outstanding Music in a Play – Gary Yershon (nominated) Outstanding Set Design of a Play – Rob Howell (nominated) Outstanding Costume Design – Rob Howell (nominated) New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special citation, Matthew Warchus and the cast of The Norman Conquests[6] Outer Critics Circle Awards[7] Outstanding Revival of a Play (winner) Outstanding Director of a Play (winner) Outstanding Ensemble Performance (winner) Alan Ayckbourn's Official Website Articles / Research Reviews This page contains reviews of the world premiere production of Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in June 1973.

It is not a complete set of reviews as the aim of the page is to offer a flavour of how the play was originally received and to offer a cross-section of opinion. All reviews on this page are the copyright of the respective publication and / or author and should not be reproduced. Extracts from reviews of the original West End production of The Norman Conquests can be found here . The Norman Conquests: World Premiere Reviews The following reviews mark the only two publications to review all three plays in the trilogy during its original production at the Library Theatre, Scarborough. At the time, two of the plays had different titles (and it was not known as The Norman Conquests trilogy). The altered play names are Fancy Meeting You (later retitled Table manners) and Make Yourself At Home (later retitled Living Together) Fancy Meeting You In Scarborough (by Robin Thornber) "Every year for the past few years Alan Ayckbourn has written a new comedy for the summer season of theatre in the round he directs at Scarborough Library. Some of them, like Relatively Speaking, and How The Other Half Loves go into the West End.

Time And Time Again has just finished at the Comedy and last year's offering at Scarborough Absurd Person Singular, opens at the Criterion next month. Mr Ayckbourn clearly finds traditional boulevard comedy less than totally demanding. His material shows the usual preoccupation with middle-class marital embarrassments although the writing is upbeat and flip, with more than usual social awareness and psychological perception. But his real talent lies in the ingenuity with which he revitalises conventional dramatic forms. This year he's written three plays. They all deal with the same fraught family weekend, but each takes its slice of action from a different part of the house. So the first play, which opened this week, stays in the dining room. And as the characters come on and off they are walking into the plots of Make Yourself At Home, which opens next Monday and happens in the living-room, or Round And Round The Garden, which comes into the repertory next month. Each play is complete in itself and they can be seen in any order.

So Fancy Meeting You is inevitably a bit like one of those paragraphs headed, "New Readers Begin Here;" There's dumpy, frowsy Annie (Rosalind Adams) left at home looking after Mum while her bluff brother Reg (Stanley Page) and chilly sister Ruth (Janet Dale) have gone off to marry a highly-strung Sarah (Alex Marshall) and a passionately romantic Norman (Christopher Godwin) respectively, Norman invites Annie - who you will realise is his sister-in-law - to a dirty weekend in East Grinstead; and now read on. Amazingly, it works. The whole company plays with a deliciously restrained degree of zest, particularly during a disastrously high-pitched meal, or rather a row round the dining table, which is typically Ayckbourn. If the play seemed sometimes slow and eventually overlong, that's what the Scarborough season is there to find out," (The Guardian, 20 June 1973) Make Yourself At Home In Scarborough (by Robin Thornber) "I wrote down a few of the jokes to pass on to you. But you wouldn't really appreciate them. They wilt like cut blooms when you take them from their context.

It's partly because Alan Ayckbourn's new play, Make Yourself At Home, is the middle one of a series of three, all about the same family house party. I saw the first one, Fancy Meeting You, and it gave this an extra dimension of underlying chuckle, a nudge and a wink every now and then like someone at a party with a private joke. It also, of course, meant that you knew the basic structure of the plot. But the story of Norman's disastrous attempt to seduce his wife's sister has enough new twists to keep you biting your nails until the third glimpse of chaos Round And Round The Garden comes into the repertory next month. But there's more to it than that. Mr Ayckbourn's hothouse jokes go all limp and sorry when you turn them over in your hand because they belong not only to the plot but also to the cockpit atmosphere of that intense little theatre-in-the-round in Scarborough Library. This may sound high flown for what is, after all, nothing more than a light-hearted seaside comedy. But the company, directed by Alan Ayckbourn, succeeds through enthusiasm and meticulously observed acting in building up an emotional involvement that sucks you in like a whirlpool.

Ronald Herdman's plodding, naive vet; Rosalind Adams's long suffering Annie, waiting for him to propose; Stanley Page's genial hen-pecked Reg; and Alex Marshall's hyper-tense, organising wife; Janet Dale's superior Ruth, and Christopher Godwin's gangling ebullient Norman: you get to know and love - and recognise - them all." (The Guardian, 27 June 1973) Round And Round The Garden (by Robin Thornber) "So there's Norman rolling on the grass with Annie, when his wife Ruth, who is Annie's sister, comes on and so Tom, who is Annie's boy friend, grabs Ruth, because he thinks she fancies him, although she doesn't really, and then Sarah is shocked because she thought Norman was after her and poor old Reg, her husband, can't roll around with anybody because Annie and Ruth are his sisters - you make take notes if you think it will help. Round And Round The Garden is the third in a trio of new comedies written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn for the summer season of Theatre-in-the-Round at Scarborough Library.

This one deals with what was going on in the garden, while Fancy Meeting You and Make Yourself At Home which opened in repertory last month, looked at what was happening in the dining room and living room respectively, during the same weekend. Got that? Good. Each play is complete in itself and you can see them in any order. But for the next couple of weeks at least they'll be run so that you can see all three in series on consecutive nights. And taken together, as they really should be, unless you are content to be only 30 per cent muddled, they amount to a lot of laughs. Big rollicking belly laughs at the broad farce, nudging, knowing, sniggers at the way developments of plot and character are linked from play to play and quiet chuckles of recognition at the tell-tale minutiae. You might occasionally experience a nagging irritation that Mr Ayckbourn's ingenuity as both a writer and director should be spent, even squandered, on matters so trivial.

His brittle brilliance, and the closely observed and enthusiastically performed playing of Stanley Page, Alex Marshall, Janet Dale, Christopher Godwin, Rosalind Adams, and Ronald Herdman, all the acute social and psychological perception of both director and company seems wasted on a middle-class marital romp. But mostly you're too caught up in it all, too disarmed by the charm of these flawed and fallible loveable little people with their limited aspirations and lesser achievements. You're laughing too much for such carping thoughts. And then look at the audience, talk to the performers. As one of the company said to me last time, this is one place where your idealism comes back." (The Guardian, 11 July 1973) Simple Pleasure "Alan Ayckbourn, so far as I know, has never claimed that his plays - at least, those which first see the light of day at Scarborough - are anything more than enjoyable comedies. An Ayckbourn evening is characteristically one of simple pleasure, unfettered by brow-wrinkling "messages" or the sort of inner meaning other playwrights like to think their work possesses.

The idea of three separate plays taking as their theme the action of a single week-end, seen from various parts of a large house, is an ingenious one, Fancy Meeting You, the first of these, views the week-end as seen in the dining-room, into which a varied collection of very recognisable characters erupt. As with all Ayckbourn plays it is funny, fast, and entertaining, The six characters are well-observed. You and I both know people just like them. Perhaps this is the secret of Ayckbourn's success. There is little to criticise in the acting. Stanley Page, as the determinedly-cheerful husband of a prissy, self-centred wife, was excellent. Alex Marshall, the wife in question, was just like hundreds of women who use child-bearing as a passport to conspicuous suffering. Christopher Godwin, as the pathetically philandering husband, and Janet Dale, his hard-as-nails, careerist wife, both turned in faultless performances. Ronald Herdman, as the grotesque but appealing twit, Tom, got more laughs, and perhaps more sympathy, than anybody else in the cast. He deserved it.

But my favourite was Rosalind Adams, whose portrayal of the drab unmarried sister who everybody uses, was intensely skilled. The only flaw in the play itself seemed to me to be the ending, of which, though it was predictable, somehow clashed with the mood of the rest of the evening. I felt Ayckbourn was digging a little too deep into his characters. A joke's a joke, and, for the audiences the Library Theatre attracts, shouldn't be taken too far. Sad though it may be to admit it, they don't want to be made to think. By the way, two instances of audience reaction earned my intense gratitude. One was the fact that, when poor, goaded Tom finally gave his tormentor a clout, the audience cheered.

The other was the gasp which greeted one of the female character's use of a very mild obscenity." (Scarborough Evening News, 23 June 1973) Sustained Effort (by John Draper) "Having belatedly, seen number two in the Alan Ayckbourn trilogy at the Library Theatre, I can report that I found Make Yourself At Home as solidly funny as the other two, All three can be recommended to anybody who has not yet made the trip to the theatre. Much of the credit for this must go to the cast, whose energy and skill is maintained throughout all three plays. That sort of sustained effort is very hard to do, and it was interesting to see how the characters became more credible and rounded with each production. Mr. Ayckbourn was splendidly consistent, too.

For example, Alex Marshall's horrible wife and mother, revealed as a howling bitch in Fancy Meeting You is confirmed by the end of Round And Round The Garden as a one hundred per cent, gilt-edged, copper-bottomed, dyed-in-the-wool super-bitch of the sort which has sorely tried the lives of everybody around her; Ronald Herdman's sluggish witted man becomes so exasperating one wonders how he has managed to escape being strangled before now; Rosalind Adams's put-upon drudge becomes the object of deep compassion. Perhaps the greatest achievement is that the trilogy as a whole emerges as far more impressive than the sum of its parts." (Scarborough Evening News, 4 August 1973) Remarkable Ayckbourn Trilogy "Fears that Alan Ayckbourn might find it impossible to maintain the hilarious standards set by the first two plays of his summer trilogy were allayed last night at the Library Theatre. Round And Round The Garden is, in many ways, even funnier than its two precursors, though it is in other ways more thought-provoking.

And though the play has the occasional slow moment - never apparent in the previous two - and a thinnish ending, it marks a remarkable achievement on the part of Mr. Ayckbourn. For without apparent effort, or any "stretching" of material, he has made three self-contained plays out of one situation featuring the same six players in the same house on the same weekend. The situation has been explained before - the family has gathered because young sister Annie, the drudge who looks after ailing mother, plans a week-end away with philanderer Norman. Fancy Meeting You and Make Yourself At Home displayed the situation as seen in the dining-room and the living-room. Last night's play is set, of course, in the garden - and a wonderful set it is, executed by David Price. The performances, too, have been commented upon previously - but, again, the honours must go to Chris Godwin as that lovely character Norman, and to Ronnie Herdman, as Tom, the vacillating vet. Now that all three plays have had their premieres they will, from Thursday, run in sequence on successive nights until the end of the month. Don't miss them. Last year the Sunday Times said of Mr.

Ayckbourn that there was probably not another playwright in the country who had his new works premiered on a shoestring in a room above a resort's public library. Quaint, yes, but it has stopped being funny now. Surely the Library Theatre has proved itself. Surely Scarborough must soon wake up to the fact that is has as a gift what virtually amounts to a resident genius. It is a gift which could, with the right treatment, give Scarborough that sought-for out-of-season attraction. Instead, it looks as though the theatre in the round may be without even its present inadequate home next year, while other, more enlightened resorts wait to welcome it with open arms." (Scarborough Evening News, 10 July 1973) All reviews are copyright of the respective publication. All material © Simon Murgatroyd or Alan Ayckbourn except where noted. Portrait of Alan Ayckbourn by Andrew Higgins.

Contact Me Sir Alan Ayckbourn | British playwright | Britannica.com Sir Alan Ayckbourn Sir Peter Ustinov Sir Alan Ayckbourn, (born April 12, 1939, London , Eng.), successful and prolific British playwright, whose works—mostly farces and comedies—deal with marital and class conflicts and point up the fears and weaknesses of the English lower-middle class. He wrote more than 70 plays and other entertainments, most of which were first staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough , Yorkshire, Eng. Alan Ayckbourn, 1975. Tim Graham—Hulton Archive/Getty Images At age 15 Ayckbourn acted in school productions of William Shakespeare , and he began his professional acting career with the Stephen Joseph Company in Scarborough. When Ayckbourn wanted better roles to play , Joseph told him to write a part for himself in a play that the company would mount if it had merit. Ayckbourn produced his earliest plays in 1959–61 under the pseudonym Roland Allen.

His plays—many of which were performed years before they were published—include Relatively Speaking (1968), Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage (1970), How the Other Half Loves (1971), the trilogy The Norman Conquests (1973), Absurd Person Singular (1974), Intimate Exchanges (1985), Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays (1989), Body Language (1990), Invisible Friends (1991), Communicating Doors (1995), Comic Potential (1999), The Boy Who Fell into a Book (2000), and the trilogy Damsels in Distress (2002). In 2002 he published a work of advice and instruction for aspiring playwrights and directors, The Crafty Art of Playmaking. After suffering a stroke in 2006, Ayckbourn limited his activities, though he soon resumed writing. In 2009 he stepped down as artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, a post he had held since 1972.

His numerous honours include Laurence Olivier (2009) and Tony (2010) awards for lifetime achievement. Ayckbourn was knighted in 1997. Learn More in these related articles: Dorset Theatre Festival 2016: Theresa Rebeck and Sarah Ruhl premieres, Ayckbourn collaboration, Lady Day | BERKSHIRE ON STAGE and SCREEN BERKSHIRE ON STAGE and SCREEN From the Berkshires to Broadway and Beyond Menu Larry Murray / February 5, 2016 Dorset, VT – Building upon their continued reputation as a theatre where audiences can expect the unexpected, Dorset Theatre Festival’s 2016 summer season will feature a historic collaboration with Vermont’s Weston Playhouse and Northern Stage, a World Premiere by acclaimed playwright Theresa Rebeck, a Regional Premiere by award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl, and an exciting revival of Broadway’s recent Tony Award-winner Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, featuring the life and music of jazz-icon Billie Holiday.

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS: TABLE MANNERS BY ALAN AYCKBOURN June 16-July 2, 2016 In a historic collaboration with Vermont’s Weston Playhouse and Northern Stage, DTF will present Table Manners, the second play in Alan Ayckbourn’s acclaimed comic trilogy, The Norman Conquests. All three companies will share a cast and creative team. Dorset Theatre Festival’s production will be helmed by renowned director Evan Yionoulis, known to regional audiences for her recent revival of Hapgood at Williamstown Theatre Festival. The trilogy is both wildly comic and poignant, as the complex relationships amongst six characters are examined. All three plays are set during the sexual revolution of the 1970s and take place over the same weekend at an English country estate. Each play takes place in a different part of the house with Dorset Theatre Festival’s Table Manners taking place in the dining room. A statewide event, audiences will be able to purchase discounted tickets for all three productions and take advantage of special dining packages in each location. Unique Talk Back events for audiences will feature the artistic directors, designers, and actors speaking about their exciting collaboration across all three productions.

DEAR ELIZABETH REGIONAL PREMIERE July 8-July 23, 2016 Dorset Theatre Festival is excited to produce Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl, one of the most renowned playwrights of her generation. Dear Elizabeth chronicles the remarkable thirty-year friendship between two of the most celebrated and honored American poets of the 20th century: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. With postmarks from Maine to Key West, and as far away as London and South America, Dear Elizabeth is a lyrical and moving portrait of two lives that unfold in letters. A recent hit Off-Broadway at The Women’s Project, the production will be helmed by director Adrienne Campbell-Holt, known to regional audiences for her acclaimed work on DTF’s productions of Red starring Tim Daly, and The Scene by Theresa Rebeck. The production will feature a rotating cast of Broadway actors. THE WAY OF THE WORLD BY THERESA REBECK World Premiere July 28-August 13, 2016 In July, the Festival continues its commitment to developing new plays with a World Premiere of The Way of the World by Theresa Rebeck.

The Way of the World is a contemporary retelling of the sardonic masterpiece by William Congreve. Set in the demimonde of the hyper-rich Hamptons, it follows the story of a good-hearted heiress who has become prey to the attentions of an amoral party boy. After he callowly seduces her aunt, making the older woman a figure of public ridicule, their romance is dead in the water. But his insistence on winning back the moneyed heroine fuels the summer’s gossip in the land of the one-percent. Can love emerge in a world where love means nothing? While embracing a language that is completely of the moment, the play faithfully revels in Congreve’s gimlet-eyed questions about society. Theresa Rebeck herself will helm the production, bringing with her a star-studded cast. Theresa Rebeck is an acclaimed playwright who’s New York productions include recently Seminar starring the late Alan Rickman and Dead Accounts starring Katie Holmes . Most recently she is known for her hit NBC TV series-Smash.

Theresa was named one of the “150 Fearless Women in the World” by Newsweek LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL BY LANIE ROBERTSON August 18-September 3, 2016 Fresh from a Tony Award-winning revival on Broadway, award-winning playwright Lanie Robertson recreates this vivid look into the life and times of jazz great Billie Holiday. The time is 1959. The place is a seedy bar in Philadelphia. The audience is about to witness one of Billie’s last performances, given four months before her death. More than a dozen musical numbers are interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences, revealing a riveting portrait of the lady and her music. Dorset Theatre Festival’s production will be helmed by Artistic Director Dina Janis. Dina Janis enthuses, “This play is a searing portrait of a woman whose art was triumphant. It brings me back to my own roots, the world of jazz, as both of my parents were jazz players who spent a lot of time in small jazz clubs or on the road.

With the help of an amazing design team, I hope to turn the Playhouse Theatre itself into a jazz club, with table seating on the stage and in the house. Up close and personal!” New Play Reading Series July-August, 2016 Continuing its commitment to developing new plays, Dorset Theatre Festival will present three works as part of the New Play Reading Series throughout the summer at the Playhouse. Featuring both young and seasoned playwrights, the reading series offers audiences an in-depth look into the early creative process of making a play come to life. All readings feature opportunities to speak with the playwright, director, and cast after the reading. Ticket Information Subscriptions and Flex Passes are on sale March 1, 2016, offering the best seats, the best prices, and the best perks. The company will be running a save big promotion in March which offers discounts up to 39% off of single ticket prices. The Box Office is open Monday thru Thursday from 1-4 PM, and can be reached by calling (802) 867-2223. Share this:

Question: The trilogy of comedy plays known as "The Norman Conquests" were written by which playwright ?
Answer: ALAN AYCKBOURN