Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present: Facts
Key facts relating to Alan Ayckbourn's Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present.○ Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present is Alan Ayckbourn's 83rd play.
○ The world premiere was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 10 September 2019.
○ The play replaced the as-yet-unproduced play Men, Meals & Me which was originally intended to be premiered during the summer 2019 season. When Alan wrote Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present, it better suited the Stephen Joseph Theatre's summer schedule.
○ Its inspiration goes back to the 1960s and an idea Alan has frequently mentioned in interviews of writing a farce which would run backwards called Ecraf.
○ Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present premiered during Alan Ayckbourn's 80th birthday year and the 60th anniversary of his playwriting debut in 1959; appropriately the play begins at an 80th birthday party.
○ It is set over the course of 38 years, one of the longest spans of time covered in an Ayckbourn play after the 60 years of A Brief History Of Women.
○ The play features one actor playing all four of the significant women in Adrian's life; Alan has previously used this device for Brian's girlfriends in Joking Apart, although there they are all deliberately intended to resemble each other.
○ Like many of Alan Ayckbourn's plays, it features several key off-stage characters, most notably Adrian's Uncle Hal and his sister, Sonia, who both play significant unseen roles in scenes three and four.
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