Alan Ayckbourn

Just Between Ourselves review – Ayckbourn’s marital malaise comedy has a proto dark side

While it might have been revealing to 1970s audiences, this domestic drama featuring cliche characters and a wavering tone fails to pack the same punch

Arifa Akbar

03, Apr, 2025 @1:13 PM

Show & Tell review – Alan Ayckbourn’s clever, very funny 90th play

A ‘sprightly comedy’ isn’t all it seems in this beautifully performed drama, which the playwright directs

Clare Brennan

15, Sep, 2024 @10:30 AM

Show & Tell review – Ayckbourn’s latter-day Lear blusters around the front room

When the retired MD of a department store books a theatre company to perform at his home, relationships and reality begin to unravel

Mark Fisher

12, Sep, 2024 @9:58 AM

Bedroom Farce review – deliciously funny production of Ayckbourn’s 1975 classic

A fine ensemble cast deliver plenty of laughs and more in Robin Herford’s terrific production of the playwright’s intertwined tale of three couples

Clare Brennan

25, Aug, 2024 @10:30 AM

‘My first play was terrible!’ Alan Ayckbourn on his dazzling career – and writing his 90th play

As he hits an extraordinary landmark, the playwright relives his first drama, which made him £30, and recalls bouncing back from the stroke that left him desolate and devoid of ideas

Michael Billington

05, Aug, 2024 @4:00 AM

Alan Ayckbourn was ahead of the curve in predictions of AI-created TV soaps | Letters

Letters: Yvonne Whalley on the rise of AI actors. Plus Mike Peacock on Donald Sinden’s Othello

25, Feb, 2024 @6:47 PM

Letter: Peter Wilson obituary

Harland Walshaw writes: Peter Wilson took The Woman in Black from the cafe of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, to the West End, where it ran for more than 30 years

Harland Walshaw

14, Nov, 2023 @2:48 PM

Michael Gambon: an actor who let his heart and soul crack open

A star with incredible presence, Gambon brought heft and delicacy, mischief and feeling, to the stage and screen

David Jays

28, Sep, 2023 @12:26 PM

Michael Gambon, star of Harry Potter and The Singing Detective, dies aged 82

The Olivier award-winning actor, whose major film roles included Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, has died

Chris Wiegand

28, Sep, 2023 @11:39 AM

Constant Companions review – Ayckbourn’s sex robots show our need for messy humanity

Ayckbourn has fun imagining the hazards of malfunctioning android lovers and misbehaving auto-maids – but there’s a deeper message too about human desire

Mark Fisher

13, Sep, 2023 @9:21 AM