“WE have to remember there are still good things floating about in the world today, though it’s often hard to see them,” says Alan Ayckbourn. “But the good is still there if we look for it.”
You can do that in the Scarborough knight’s 91st play, Earth Angel, premiering from September 13 to October 11 at his regular seedbed of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where he directs a cast of Elizabeth Boag, Iskandar Eaton, Stuart Fox, Liza Goddard, Russell Richardson and Hayden Wood.
Ayckbourn’s comedy digs deep into one of life’s greatest mysteries: what makes someone a good person, and in this day and age, can you ever really be sure?
Meet Gerald, who has lost his wife of many years. Amy was the light of his life, almost heaven-sent, and while it can be tricky thinking of life without her, he must put on a brave face, accept help from fussy neighbours and muddle along as best he can.
However, a mysterious stranger turns up at Amy’s wake, who seems a nice enough chap, washing the dishes and offering to shop for Gerald, but is he all that he appears? Cue conspiracy theories. Could he be a killer or a man from Mars maybe?
“I invite people to join in the conjecturing in this play because most of us are now conditioned by watching streamed dramas on Netflix and Amazon Prime to look for the bad guys from the start,” says Sir Alan.
“I think that the good sometimes might just fall through the floorboards because it might be mistrusted. No-one is safe now from this intense scrutiny.
“We used to live in a world where we admired someone and thought we could leave the world in their hands because we trusted them, but now, when someone introduces themselves as a politician, we think ‘liar’. It tends to be pillocks that rise to the top and make themselves appallingly visible, though there are still some ‘nice people’ in politics. But we’ve lived through strange times, like Covid, where some people are now saying it was a total con.”
Amy, once a folk singer, is depicted in the show poster in stained glass, with a microphone, and is described as an “Earth Angel” in the vicar’s eulogy. “One of the guests at the funeral wake says he thought Gerald’s wife was too nice, but when they’re ‘too nice’, you support them, don’t you?” says Sir Alan.
Now 86, he has completed his next play already and is in the process of writing play number 93. “I have trained as a sprinter, but I’m now presented with a marathon course. I’m now restricted to one production a year, directing one play a year, after a year’s worth of preparation, and at last being allowed to breathe life into it in the rehearsal room, hearing it read for the first time by the cast on August 11. I like to hear it, like hearing a bar of music, and you can’t tell if it works until you hear the whole thing.”
After more than 90 plays, Sir Alan says: “I try not to repeat themes, though I do repeat structures – and the next one is totally different: my first venture into a courtroom drama, but not a conventional courtroom drama as it takes place 100 years hence. It’s one of my futuristic plays with a lot of AI in there.
“The concept that androids are inbuilt with the ability to destroy humanity is built into most science fiction, and here an android is being put on trial for the murder of a 13-year-old girl, and on this case all sorts of legal precedence depends.”
These days, Ayckbourn tends to write of the past and the future, less so of the present, but Earth Angel bucks that trend. “I once said that, at the age I am, my view has to be either backwards or forwards, but very rarely do I stare straight out of the window, but that’s what I’ve done for Earth Angel,” he says.
“Last year I was looking back [in Show And Tell, his ‘love letter to theatre’]; in next year’s play, I’m looking forward. I’m fascinated by the fact that we’re within a stone’s throw of creating images of ourselves in artificial form but with a totally different outlook, with no sense of life expectancy.”
As for his cast, three – Iskandar Eaton, Russell Richardson and Haydon Wood – are working with Ayckbourn for the first time. “I still contend that 80 per cent of a successful production is the casting,” he says.
“I always try to keep at least a third of the cast for any play new to me. If you go into the rehearsal room each time with the same old faces time after time, there can be a tendency towards complacency and taking it for granted.”
Alan Ayckbourn’s Earth Angel runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from September 13 to October 11, then on tour until November 8. Scarborough box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.