Word: distressingly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...culprit, arrested by local police, is a rival whose eatery suffered because the Heshengyuan snack shop was more popular. Such culinary skulduggery isn't new: earlier this summer the owner of a rice-noodle shop in the southern province of Guangxi poisoned a competing shop's broth, causing gastric distress for 57 diners. Other restaurateurs routinely pay off health inspectors to close down rivals. All this has left many Tangshan residents wary of dining out. "From now on, I think I'll stay home and eat," says He Liangjun, a cobbler who frequented the Heshengyuan eatery. Only problem is, neither...
...fifth decade as a playwright, Alan Ayckbourn is one of British theater's senior knights. But the 63-year-old author of such bittersweet comic masterpieces as House/Garden and The Norman Conquests remains as productive as ever. His latest, Damsels In Distress, is a trilogy of self-contained plays that share the same cast but are unrelated save for the Thames-side apartment in which they...
...risky way to write. You need rules to motor that inspiration." Scholarly in tone, the book provides what he calls 101 "Obvious Rules" for successful writing and directing. Having laid down the law, how well do his own plays follow them? Pretty closely, on the evidence of Damsels in Distress...
...year," according to Rule No. 23. Ayckbourn is adamant that playwrights must take this long to consider what will work on stage. "You've got to plan the practicalities," he says, "such as how dialogue will work within a set, where an audience will be looking." In Damsels in Distress, the choice of actors' triple roles is a great example of such structural ingenuity. Saskia Butler plays three types of tough women - a teenager determined to survive, a fight-happy commando and a bossy suburban housewife with a vulnerable core...
Damsels In Distress is an uneven but enjoyable triptych, which easily accords with its author's "Obvious Rule No. 101: No one ever set out to do a show with the intention of giving you a bad time...