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floors expressed through mimed movement up and down flat staircases. This means that the downstairs living room, upstairs master bedroom and attic bedroom all occupy the same level, with actors frequently next to each other when their characters are on different floors in the story. (Stage exits lead to other off-stage rooms.) It takes place in London.
336:, due to concerns of overexposure, doubts that a cast with high-profile names would be as effective as the ensemble casts normally used at Scarborough, and partly a feeling that West End audiences were used to his earlier comic plays and not his newer darker plays. However, Ayckbourn's regular producer
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The play is set in a dilapidated
Victorian three-storey country house, reputedly a former bordello and said to be haunted by a deceased prostitute. According to the set design favoured by the author, all three floors are represented on stage at a single level, with the actors' movements between the
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production was staged this way, the subsequent West End transfer was an end-stage performance, which was considered by
Ayckbourn to compromise the effectiveness of the three-floor setting. As a result, the eventual transfer to Broadway in 1991 and the return to London in 2010 both used theatres in
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Ayckbourn was reportedly very unhappy with the London production, feeling both that the set, end-stage rather than in-the-round, did not work ("it looked a bit like a furniture store"), and that the director, Michael Rudman, had turned an ensemble farce into a star vehicle for
Dinsdale Landon as
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Arm-twisted into engagement with Mark; having left him at the altar once, she has been persuaded to come back to him after her arrest for suspected solicitation; feels trapped into always being part of other people's dreams (including Mark's fishing tackle
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Roland (in the process overshadowing what
Ayckbourn viewed as the central role of Tristram). The opening night reception and the reviews were lukewarm. The production nonetheless ran for nine months, from 2 September 1980 to 6 June 1981.
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Roland's solicitor; inarticulate and unassertive; unwittingly causes absolute havoc. For
Ayckbourn, for all of Tristram's apparent ineffectuality, his is the central role in the play
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Former dancer, retired as a result of her marriage; now in perpetual indecision about whether to leave her husband; her effort to do so sets off much of the action in the play
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Ayckbourn has revived the play himself on two occasions. In 1990, with a relatively short period after the ill-fated London production, it was revived at the
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The play takes place over two acts, both with continuous action. The first act takes place one evening, and the second act takes place the following morning.
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Elizabeth's brother, attempting to save his one-sided relationship to Kitty and fulfil his dream of opening a fishing tackle shop
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has also had numerous performances from other theatre companies. It has also enjoyed success abroad; it was reported by
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persuaded him to go ahead with a London production. Following the lack of success of the West End productions of
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is generally considered to be a play that only works effectively in the round. While the original
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The director was Alan
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The play was eventually premièred on
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that, with 462 performances, it was the most performed play in
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Ayckbourn reportedly had reservations about transferring the production to the
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the round. (There is also said to have been an end-stage production of
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that actually did create a three-storey house on stage.)
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Unlike most of
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http://takingsteps.alanayckbourn.net/TS_Productions.htm
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http://takingsteps.alanayckbourn.net/TS_Background.htm
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593:Alan Ayckbourn Plays. Accessed on 9/8/12 at:
581:Alan Ayckbourn Plays. Accessed on 9/8/12 at:
548:Production history on official Ayckbourn site
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370:on 2 September 1980 with the following cast:
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563:A Pocket Guide to Alan Ayckbourn Plays
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173:There are six characters in the play:
161:is a 1979 farce by British playwright
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904:A Small Family Business
890:A Chorus of Disapproval
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813:Just Between Ourselves
753:Absurd Person Singular
704:Christmas v Mastermind
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264:was premièred at the
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401:Kitty – Wendy Murray
257:Scarborough première
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1179:Things That Go Bump
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995:Communicating Doors
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718:Relatively Speaking
561:Allen, Paul (2004)
468:Orange Tree Theatre
443:Leslie – Bill Buell
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1264:A Talk in the Park
1252:Drinking Companion
1165:Improbable Fiction
1109:Snake in the Grass
876:Intimate Exchanges
855:Season's Greetings
697:Standing Room Only
565:Faber & Faber
454:Other performances
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410:New York première
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323:Music – Paul Todd
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88:Original language
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725:The Sparrow
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252:Productions
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1284:Categories
1243:Confusions
960:Callisto 5
792:Confusions
711:Mr Whatnot
690:Dad's Tale
490:References
360:Peter Hall
230:proscenium
178:Elizabeth:
169:Characters
122:chronology
48:Characters
38:Written by
1230:Countdown
526:, Faber,
483:The Stage
428:Roland –
380:Roland –
300:Leslie –
282:Roland –
226:the round
209:Tristram:
120:Ayckbourn
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1102:RolePlay
1096:FlatSpin
1090:GamePlan
1077:Whenever
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184:Roland:
104:Setting
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91:English
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53:Roland
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190:Mark:
61:Kitty
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
