Why you can’t improve on Ayckbourn – Chichester Festival Theatre

Nigel has done a couple of Ayckbourns before: “I was in the 25th anniversary production of Bedroom Farce in the West End with June Whitfield and Richard Briers, and it was great to work with Alan Ayckbourn himself. We had a bit of a problem with direction and Richard phoned Alan up and said ‘Come down and have a look at this, will you’ and Alan sorted the whole thing out in three days. That was my first meeting with Alan. He certainly doesn't mince his words, but he was great.

“And then I did A Small Family Business at the National and now this one and there was something very Ayckbourn about them all, and I absolutely don't mean that in a pejorative way. The thing that he does so brilliantly is that he can take ordinary lives and make a really funny comedy and at the same time bring out really dark humour and dark human elements. This one is about a woman having a breakdown. He makes it very funny but it is also very poignant. He clocks into suburbia and the Little England and he brings to the stage a lot of the lives of the people who are probably sitting there watching the play. He just delves into these lives and that's what makes it all so relatable.”

And yes there is an art to playing Ayckbourn, Nigel believes: “You must never try to think that you are cleverer than him and that his characters need little embellishments. Alan said the most brilliant thing to me in rehearsals once. He said ‘With this drama you need to get on the train and don't wave out the windows.’

"What he was saying was ‘Don't think that you need to make it funny.’ It's the most brilliant note. He was saying ‘I trusted in you and now you trust me’ He is saying ‘We have cast you because we think you are good and because we think you are right. Now you have to trust us in turn.’ David Mamet said that actors are ‘just there to say my lines’, and that is not what Ayckbourn is saying at all. He is just saying ‘Don't put extra layers on it.’ That's a great writer’s insight, and he is definitely right.”

Nigel is playing Gerald in the play: “I am Susan’s husband and I am a vicar and actually Alan Ayckbourn says Gerald is very nice but he is very self-absorbed. He is nice but he does have his flaws. He is a bit pompous and is a bit self-obsessed.

"He wants to make life lovely for all his parishioners but ignores the fact that his marriage is breaking down and the fact that he's ignored his wife for 20 years. I had never heard of this particular play before but Julia McKenzie did it in the West End to great acclaim and I would say it's one of his best and that it deserves to be done more. It’s perhaps in his second tier but it's certainly a great part for a woman. For me every writer has a golden era. I have just done a Brian Friel play called Faith Healer and Friel had a golden period of a few years with plays . They are phenomenal plays. Arthur Miller had the same and David Mamet had the same and I think Alan Ayckbourn did as well. This one falls into his golden era.”