Show & Tell: History
Show & Tell is Alan Ayckbourn's 90th produced full-length play, written during the summer of 2023 and will premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in autumn 2024.With the Post-Covid pattern of Alan Ayckbourn premiering two new works a year - one at The Old Laundry Theatre, Bowness-on-Windermere, and one at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough - there seemed the possibility his 90th work would premiere in Bowness-on-Windermere rather than at the venue where the majority of his work has premiered over the decades.
However, given 2024 also marked his 65th anniversary as a playwright, Alan laid to rest any concerns Scarborough would not host this major playwriting milestone by announcing he would premiere only one new work in 2024 with his 90th play, Show & Tell, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre during the autumn.
Having acknowledged in recent years that he felt unable to write specifically contemporary plays and that, henceforward, his work would either be period pieces drawn from within his life-time or the future set speculative-fiction works, he announced Show & Tell would be a celebration of theatre drawing upon some of his experiences and memories.
As a result, although ostensibly set in the modern day, this is a play which looks back to the past through the experiences of a small theatre company scraping by, much as Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre did in its early days when Alan first joined the company. The piece centres around a request by an elderly man for a theatre company to stage a French farce in his home for his wife's birthday gift.
Adjacent to this is the story of Jack, who commissions the performance, who is suffering from dementia and whose wife actually died several years earlier having left him and later married Jack's last remaining friend, all of which Jack is in denial about.
The play premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre from 5 September to 5 October before going on a short in-the-round tour. It received four star reviews in The Times, The Observer and the Daily Mail, praising the company and asking just how - after six and a half decades of playwriting - Alan Ayckbourn was able to still hold an audience so well.
As of writing, the play has not been published.
Article by Simon Murgatroyd. Copyright: Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.