In Conversation with Alan Ayckbourn | National Theatre

[@honeyjbc1]

Thank you so much for this. The National Theatre is my favorite theater in the world. The best actors, productions, directors and plays. I was especially happy to hear some mention of Michael Bryant in this interview because he was my favorite actor in the world and was my original draw to get to the National in the early 1980's. Alan Ayckbourn has offered me so many thrilling moments in the theater and on television. I love his dangerous comedy. Either I am laughing so hard it hurts and I just can't go on or suddenly I am scared because it is all getting too close and in a moment any of the hilarity can turn into something scarily familiar. I have seen the plays over and over with different casts and they always work. whenever we came over to London, Ayckbourn plays were on the menu. This interview is fabulous. My only quibble is that I don't want these plays pigeonholed to be either left or right politically. A Family Business is m,erely about human nature and it is just as dangerous when it starts with the employee who steals the paper clips from the corporation and says, oh, they won't miss them, as it becomes writ large in a what's in it for me way. These traps have always existed as choices long before Thatcher - Voyssey Inheritance, etc.(sp?) And I don't think it is about only one political persuasion and to try to push it into that does the play no good service, as far as I am concerned. I love Ayckbourn and I am so glad his prime coincided with mine. Thank you National Theatre for offering us the opportunity in the States to see so many of your productions and for having all of this enrichment in videos and articles on you website. Oh, how I wish you could have had this in the days when My beloved Mr. Bryant was on stage.

[@AHalfBaritone]

I've been going to the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough for the last few years. This is proper theatre; intimate, personal, communal. WONDERFUL!

[@chaosdream21]

This is a treasure