Word: ayckbourn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Alan Ayckbourn...
Maybe not. But if you think we might be living in a godless, meaningless dream world or if you just didn't think Hair was enough of a trip, you should check out Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind this weekend at the Currier House Fishbowl...
...CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL. Alan Ayckbourn, known as Britain's Neil Simon for his send-ups of suburbia, is at his shrewdest in this backstage tale of amateur theatricals, at Washington's Arena Stage...
...Ayckbourn is often described as the Neil Simon of Britain. Both are prolific (Ayckbourn, 48, has written more than 30 plays), popular with mainstream audiences, observant of middle-class absurdities and almost compulsively funny, no matter how dark the underlying theme. The key difference: Simon has a forgiving, generous spirit toward his characters, while Ayckbourn is increasingly merciless. Audiences pause amid laughter and abruptly realize that the landscape is blasted. Ayckbourn borrowed this technique, if not much else, from Chekhov, and at his best -- as in Season's Greetings, Time and Time Again and Woman in Mind -- uses it just...
...shallow bourgeois fantasy of upper-class life, disturbing not only because the wife yearns for this escape but because she fills it with such empty pretense. In one harrowing scene, she gradually loses the / conviction that these are her fantasies and comes to fear that she is theirs. Ayckbourn and Meadow are powerfully assisted by Channing, a 1985 Tony winner, who handles her bravura role with understatement. Poignant and persuasive, hers is the performance of the New York season...