:00:07. > :00:14.disfigured years ago in a gun incident. Now it is time for
:00:14. > :00:16.HARDtalk. My guest on HARDtalk is often
:00:16. > :00:26.diskette TAS described as the most performed living playwright in the
:00:26. > :00:31.world. A revival of the play 'Absent Friends'. After more than
:00:31. > :00:36.50 years of writing and directing what is it about Alan Ayckbourn and
:00:36. > :00:46.his betrayal about relationships that can still filled theatres
:00:46. > :01:08.
:01:08. > :01:14.Welcome to HARDtalk. Another play, another opening night and I imagine
:01:14. > :01:21.that when you have had has many new productions as you have, but to
:01:21. > :01:27.become quite relaxed about it. Have you? Know. Never. Writing a new
:01:27. > :01:33.play is always a challenge. I have a huge backlog of work. He been
:01:33. > :01:37.just going to one, particularly one like 'Absent Friends' where I am
:01:37. > :01:42.not at the helm. I have traditionally always directed my
:01:42. > :01:46.own work. In this case I have stepped aside he leads a wonderful
:01:46. > :01:53.young director do it for me. Of course to get nervous for everybody
:01:53. > :01:58.else. There is something so imprisoned making about seeing a
:01:58. > :02:07.production with that your hand on it. The process of reading the
:02:07. > :02:13.reviews. Is that still difficult? It needn't be. But you still go
:02:13. > :02:20.rushed to see the papers? No. I remember the very first play of
:02:21. > :02:28.mine which opened in the West. The first review that came out, I
:02:28. > :02:36.remember it, it was written by a man who is now no longer critique
:02:36. > :02:44.you. He wrote the solitary worse review of a play of mine. I've read
:02:45. > :02:49.it. It said I did not laugh at all. So I just laid down and cried a
:02:49. > :02:58.little. Then afterwards someone rang me and said congratulations on
:02:58. > :03:04.the reviews.e reviews.gle other one was fabulous. I made a vow to never
:03:04. > :03:09.read reviews. Do you still not freedom? No. At the centre the
:03:09. > :03:14.atmosphere around the house. Were people I tiptoeing like someone has
:03:14. > :03:24.died aged she and they are not very good. When people are bouncing and
:03:24. > :03:25.
:03:25. > :03:33.cheering into the run AC which is good. We have to take the reviews
:03:33. > :03:38.with a bit of salt. You have 76 four-length place.In your 70s. You
:03:38. > :03:42.had a stroke quite recently. It leads to the question of why you
:03:42. > :03:49.keep up the pace that you do. You are remarkably prolific as a
:03:50. > :03:57.playwright. I think I am like those ocean liners that take seven miles
:03:57. > :04:03.to stop. My impetus is carrying me through. I have been driven by a
:04:03. > :04:08.small theatre I'd run in North Yorkshire for so long. The
:04:08. > :04:16.expectation there is a new play every year, which I have provided.
:04:16. > :04:23.I still have that... I am going through the motions. I need to
:04:23. > :04:29.write the play. Do you want to write the play? I need to. It is a
:04:29. > :04:33.needing two. It is a requirement of life. I have never been without a
:04:33. > :04:41.play in my body since I was 17. should talk about the plays
:04:41. > :04:46.themselves. 8 Alan Ayckbourn playing his immediate the
:04:46. > :04:55.recognisable offence of your work. While you are the mark the --
:04:55. > :05:00.remarked -- remarkably. Everybody knows that what you will get his
:05:00. > :05:06.couples that any sense torturing each other emotionally. Is this a
:05:06. > :05:15.fair characterisation? They have gone darker as time goes on. I
:05:15. > :05:23.started writing quite lightweight place. They were mostly McCague the
:05:23. > :05:29.plot driven. As I went on and got to place like 'Absent Friends' I
:05:29. > :05:33.began to dig a little deeper. If you dig deeper on your characters
:05:33. > :05:40.obviously the darkness comes out. Most people inside have some kind
:05:40. > :05:48.of angst in them. If they do not they are not worth writing about. I
:05:48. > :05:58.have explored more and more. I always took the Jane Austen
:05:58. > :05:59.
:05:59. > :06:04.approach. Writing about the people my way forward. He was still making
:06:05. > :06:11.a social commentary on the Times? write about the men and women may
:06:11. > :06:17.see around be. With a player like 'Absent Friends' it is very much a
:06:17. > :06:27.child of the 70s. He could not updated. He would start asking all
:06:27. > :06:27.
:06:27. > :06:35.kinds of questions. Why do none of the women have jobs? To be in the
:06:35. > :06:39.revival scour you get 21st century actresses saying, why is this --
:06:39. > :06:49.why is she was into him in this way? Why wouldn't she tell him to
:06:49. > :06:53.
:06:53. > :06:58.shut up? Is that make them. Pieces? I would like to think that it is a
:06:58. > :07:05.social document. This is how we were. What has happened in the last
:07:05. > :07:09.30 or 40 years is quite considerable. The shift in the
:07:09. > :07:16.balance of the sexes has been quite considerable. You say to write
:07:16. > :07:20.about those around you. He also go through your own experience. He
:07:20. > :07:25.referred to the importance of your mother. From the sound of it she
:07:25. > :07:32.was an extraordinary character and quite an eccentric. She was very
:07:32. > :07:41.eccentric. She was a writer. Not a play right but a prose writer. She
:07:41. > :07:49.rode for magazines. Looking back on her she was my mother. I thought
:07:49. > :07:57.all mothers were like her. I thought they'd all broke China in
:07:57. > :08:00.the morning, Coast Main and typed away until lunch. As they get all
:08:00. > :08:07.that I look back on my child would and realise I was living with a
:08:07. > :08:12.unique person. If my mother had been a brilliant pastry chef at we
:08:12. > :08:18.probably have followed in her footsteps. But since she wrote I
:08:18. > :08:22.thought that was the way to earn a living. You say she cursed men.
:08:22. > :08:29.There was due to a series of relationships she had, not least
:08:29. > :08:38.with your father. My one regret is that I never knew my father very
:08:38. > :08:42.well. They used to go and visit him. He was a great fireless. He was the
:08:42. > :08:52.leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. My big regret is that I
:08:52. > :09:01.
:09:01. > :09:09.never saw him play. He had given up He said he laughed with him as you
:09:09. > :09:13.laughed with nobody else. If I had met him in a crowd and nobody had
:09:13. > :09:22.told me. Within ten minutes we would have been laughing at the
:09:22. > :09:26.same things. That is where I got my humour from. He was part of this -
:09:26. > :09:32.some other things you write about our relationships. Things everybody
:09:32. > :09:42.is familiar with. It must impart something of the relationships your
:09:42. > :09:42.
:09:43. > :09:46.mother had. In the holidays she used to drive me around with her.
:09:46. > :09:56.She would go off to the hairdressers and they remember the
:09:56. > :09:56.
:09:56. > :10:00.terrible smell of ammonia. But also Listening to Women talking. Small
:10:01. > :10:05.children and not really listening. They're just discounter well.
:10:05. > :10:09.Except that I had everything and I am very careful not to speak in
:10:09. > :10:14.front of small children because they are recording machines. They
:10:14. > :10:21.will play it back to you been used to come. Do you think that is why
:10:21. > :10:25.you're often described as a feminist writer? I think so. I'd
:10:25. > :10:34.New Labour wins world and it was very slow to. Do you think of
:10:34. > :10:42.yourself as a week -- feminist writer? Yes. Yes I do. It is not a
:10:42. > :10:49.big powerful stance, but I realised quite early on in my life that
:10:50. > :10:58.women did not have ever read it lost. The plays I was recording in
:10:58. > :11:04.the 70s reflected this. Quite ironically I thought women did not
:11:04. > :11:10.have much of a deal. I thought I had better corrected or at least
:11:10. > :11:15.reflected. He mentioned that job place over time have got darker. He
:11:15. > :11:22.have attributed that to the effect you had a stroke. Did it make a
:11:22. > :11:31.difference to what you're writing? I was getting darker before the
:11:31. > :11:35.stroke. What happened with the stroke was that when I woke up - he
:11:35. > :11:40.always think you're immortal. When something happens you think
:11:40. > :11:44.somebody has got by a number of there. The first thing I was aware
:11:44. > :11:50.of that I did not have a single idea in my head for the first time
:11:50. > :12:00.since I was 17. I had no idea for a player. A moment of panic came over
:12:00. > :12:03.
:12:03. > :12:10.me. Then I said to myself I have a directing career. Weeks and months
:12:10. > :12:18.passed and then middle germs such a degree of force of new ideas
:12:18. > :12:27.started to come in through the gate. That was a few years back and five
:12:27. > :12:32.or six days later. It mixes all the more remarkable that to say he did
:12:32. > :12:35.not intended to be brighter. Although you tell about a mother it
:12:35. > :12:40.was our only when Stephen Joseph who was a matter of viewers said,
:12:40. > :12:45.if you do not like the path as an actor he should write some. Haji
:12:46. > :12:50.not thought before that that you should write? I watched my mother
:12:50. > :13:00.right. I started trying to write short stories. I was rubbish at
:13:00. > :13:03.
:13:03. > :13:12.that. By the time I got to boarding school my prep school when I was 10.
:13:12. > :13:20.I adapted, plagiarised a famous book. They adapted it for myself to
:13:20. > :13:25.play the comical side kick. They are wonderful school stories. The
:13:25. > :13:29.agreed to stage it at the school. And then I'd have won this
:13:29. > :13:37.childhood diseases like chicken pox. I was stuck in the sanatorium on
:13:37. > :13:42.the first night. Might I middle much of that performance was
:13:42. > :13:52.leaning out of the window and saying to a friend, how was it? He
:13:52. > :13:54.
:13:54. > :13:59.I said, oh that's it. It was never done again. I started playing
:13:59. > :14:04.around by the time I went to public school. I was writing a little bit.
:14:04. > :14:11.What does seem odd is that in that long career of writing plays, you
:14:11. > :14:19.have not being taken by the lure of Hollywood or television? It isn't a
:14:19. > :14:28.low were to you? There are two reasons to that. I was born into
:14:28. > :14:33.theatre. I'm really a Renaissance man in theatre. I do a lot of
:14:33. > :14:39.recording and all the sound for my new shows. I did the lighting for
:14:39. > :14:46.them. I have also worked in all branches of theatre. I know that
:14:46. > :14:51.business inside and out. I do not know it well enough to do
:14:51. > :15:00.everybody's job, but I said me know when they're trying to snow me all
:15:00. > :15:03.bluff me. If you think of the reach, or the money or the acclaim that
:15:03. > :15:13.could come with reaching a wider audience, had the never been
:15:13. > :15:19.tempted by the idea of television or film? Well, I think I know where
:15:19. > :15:25.the power lies in film. It probably lies in the producer, director, the
:15:25. > :15:32.writer is somebody you stick at the end of the title. Certainly, I
:15:32. > :15:38.would have liked to be a French director. A film-maker, whatever
:15:38. > :15:44.they are called. I would make my own films. It is about keeping
:15:44. > :15:48.control. That is one of the reasons that that a certain point in 2002
:15:48. > :15:58.you bend your plays from being shown in London's West End. You
:15:58. > :15:59.
:15:59. > :16:03.were annoyed that the attempt of one of your productions, damsel in
:16:03. > :16:10.distress, but also because of the use of an obsession with using
:16:11. > :16:18.Hollywood stars? Yes, that obsession. It is very natural. As
:16:18. > :16:22.theatre gets more expensive, commercial theatre, and today, the
:16:22. > :16:27.money it cost to put on a show commercially, just a simple little
:16:27. > :16:32.stage play, like 'Absent Friends' is massively more expensive. The
:16:32. > :16:41.ticket prices reflect this. Management hang on to the edge of
:16:41. > :16:48.their seats. They look for safe passage. If your ship looks rocky
:16:48. > :16:54.at the start of the mast, you must let it flow through. Those people
:16:55. > :16:59.only, for me, they unbalance a play. I write all of my plays as if they
:16:59. > :17:05.are written for a tiny little company in the north-east of
:17:05. > :17:09.England and have always been written for a company. Normally,
:17:09. > :17:16.they are team players. If you look at a player like 'Absent Friends',
:17:16. > :17:26.it has six parts. Five of them are equal parts. You cannot say there
:17:26. > :17:29.that is the star part. When you look at the audience figures, the
:17:29. > :17:34.Society of London has audience figures, they credit the big names,
:17:34. > :17:39.the big Hollywood names as attracting people. They attract
:17:39. > :17:48.audiences to the theatre batter helping the business. It is working.
:17:49. > :17:55.Yes, it is. It is not my sort of theatre. I much prefer to watch a
:17:55. > :18:02.show, take a serious television series like like these terribly
:18:02. > :18:08.popular Danish shows. They have wonderful cars and beautiful acting.
:18:08. > :18:16.There is no expectation from anyone if you do not know them. -- Peter
:18:16. > :18:20.forecast. I do not know if it is a good guy or a bad guy. I wonder
:18:20. > :18:26.what Colin Firth is doing in the corner with very few lines. Of
:18:26. > :18:33.course, he is the bad guy. You get a little tilt on it. It is not a
:18:33. > :18:42.lot, but it is just enough. But what the play to be seen for what
:18:42. > :18:45.he tears. You did not sustain that then? You gave in? I have never
:18:45. > :18:54.directed a show in the West End myself. I have let them be done by
:18:54. > :19:03.others. I have just concentrated on the new ones. For instance, this
:19:03. > :19:08.last year entering our grounds, it is my very latest since
:19:08. > :19:15.Neighbourhood Watch. It is a play that is very far removed from
:19:15. > :19:23.'Absent Friends'. It is about their response from my Joe Public to the
:19:23. > :19:27.riots and protecting themselves. I have already written 76, which is
:19:27. > :19:35.called 'Surprises', which I would do in the summer. That is my next
:19:35. > :19:39.project. Do you mind that over the years, you have never got the
:19:39. > :19:46.critical respect that some of your contemporaries have? You have
:19:46. > :19:56.commented on it before, others have had certain a claim that you have
:19:56. > :19:58.
:19:59. > :20:05.not. -- acclaim. The so-called comic drama test often do not get
:20:05. > :20:15.it in our lifetime. People realise long after we are dead, he was
:20:15. > :20:17.
:20:17. > :20:27.quite funny. Their last much longer. The good play is last longer -- the
:20:27. > :20:28.
:20:28. > :20:32.good plays. They are much more relevance. We can wait. I wonder
:20:32. > :20:37.why you think that tears? Is it because you write comedy, because
:20:38. > :20:44.you write for the provinces, because you write about the middle
:20:44. > :20:53.classes? What is it? It is all of those. The early thing that makes
:20:53. > :20:59.me boil is that people say it is just a comedy. Do you realise how
:20:59. > :21:05.much skill and talent it takes to be a comic actor? Any fool can be
:21:05. > :21:10.tragic and see it -- standing there weeping their socks off. There is a
:21:10. > :21:16.lot of control of physical and verbal and instinct, which you are
:21:16. > :21:21.born with. It is the same with writing. People used to say to me,
:21:21. > :21:28.do you want to write a serious play? I said, all of my plays a
:21:28. > :21:35.very serious. I take them seriously. Without the committee, Norris. That
:21:35. > :21:44.is what brings the audience closer to your characters. You laugh with
:21:44. > :21:52.them, and for them. T E talk about Molly air, I wonder if you feel
:21:52. > :22:02.angry that perhaps there is an underestimation of your talents? --
:22:02. > :22:08.I heat you talk about Morley air. People see through it all. They see
:22:08. > :22:18.through to the basis. A Guardian critic has likened it to Chekhov?
:22:18. > :22:18.
:22:18. > :22:24.like that. One of my great heroes. No, I think it is sort of a funny
:22:24. > :22:27.thing. If you write a good comedy and you also have a serious intent
:22:28. > :22:32.underneath, half of you is saying that they are not supposed to see
:22:32. > :22:41.the serious intent, they are supposed to focus on the committee.
:22:41. > :22:45.The serious intent will hit them later. -- focus on the comedy. A
:22:45. > :22:55.man said that he enjoyed the play, had a very good laugh, but if I did
:22:55. > :23:01.not know what I was laughing about, I think that that is a nice time
:23:01. > :23:09.bomb of a play. The next project for you, I wonder what city is that
:23:09. > :23:15.would make you think that you have unpacked something else to think
:23:15. > :23:20.about, what would it be? The new one is about ageing. That is not
:23:20. > :23:27.surprising. Once I start writing things there is a lot of people
:23:27. > :23:34.writing about that. In the papers, people are talking about the NHS
:23:34. > :23:38.and far too many old people in society. One of my characters says
:23:38. > :23:48.I'm 120 Isolde my doctors say if I'm lucky I will have another 60
:23:48. > :23:55.Goodyears. -- by M 120 years old. Longevity is probably my next
:23:55. > :24:00.project. The process of being in the rehearsal room is one that she
:24:00. > :24:06.loved and will stay at? Being in rehearsals with a group of like-
:24:06. > :24:14.minded actors is a wonderful thing for an increasingly elderly man,
:24:14. > :24:19.because of the energy with the young actors. I said once this year