CONFUSIONS

A student edition of five one-act plays by Britain's most popular playwright.Ayckbourn's series of plays for 4-5 actors typify his black comediesof human behaviour. The plays are alternately naturalistic, stylisedand farcical, but underlying each is the problem of loneliness. TheMother Figure shows a mother unable to escape from baby talk; in TheDrinking Companion an absentee husband attempts seduction withoutsuccess; in Between Mouthfuls, a waiter oversees a fraught dinnerencounter. A garden party gets out of hand in Gosforth's Fete whilst ATalk in the Park is a revue style curtain call piece for the fiveactors.. Whether the comedies concern marital conflict,infidelity or motherhood and take place on a park bench or at a villagefete, the characters are familiar and their cries for help instantlyrecognisable. "Principally he is respected as a radical re-inventor of form" Dominic Dromgoole