Alan Ayckbourn: Actor

Alan Ayckbourn's Roles

1955
Romeo & Juliet

1956
Macbeth
The Strong Are Lonely
The Corn Is Green
It's A Wise Child

1957
South Sea Bubble
She Stoops To Conquer
Flare Path
The Happiest Days Of Your Life
The Rainmaker
An Inspector Calls
The Ornamental Hermit
Under Milk Wood
Life With Father
Mademoiselle Jaire

1958
Darling
Henry IV
Cards Of Identity
Captain Carvallo
Dial M For Murder
Love And Chance
Man With A Flower In His Mouth
Martine
Ring Of Roses
Squaring The Circle

1959
The Birthday Party
Bell, Book And Candle
Easter
Frankenstein
The Square Cat

1960
Then...
The Sacrifice of Isaac
The Way of the Cross
Viennese Interlude
'Prentice Pillar
Wuthering Heights
Love After All
The Ark
Soldier From The Wars Returning
Five Finger Exercise
Dad's Tale

1961
Victoria Regina
Five Finger Exercise
Soldier From The Wars Returning
Little Brother, Little Sister
Standing Room Only
Stranger In The Family
The Bed Life Of A Mad Boy
The Boys And The Girls
Love Undertaken

1962
Follow The Lover
A Doll's House
Hamlet
O'Flaherty V.C.
Usher
The Birds And The Well-Wishers
The Rainmaker
Death At The New Year
The Birds And The Well-Wishers
O'Flaherty V.C.
The Caretaker
Usher
The Rainmaker
Christmas V Mastermind

1963
The Rehearsal
Waiting For Godot
An Awkward Number
A Man For All Seasons
The Rainbow Machine
Miss Julie
The Caretaker
Two For The Seesaw
The Dumb Waiter
The Collection
Ted's Cathedral
Gaslight
The Prisoner

1964
The Jew Of Malta
The Doctor And The Devils
Two For The Seesaw
Much Ado About Nothing

2020
Anno Domino
Haunting Julia

2023
Truth Will Out
Alan Ayckbourn never set out to be a director and playwright. As a young man, he had his eye on journalism before a fortuitous encounter while at school at Haileybury with one of the masters, Edgar Matthews. He inspired Alan's first real interest in theatre and encouraged him as an actor, casting him in a European tour of Romeo & Juliet and a North American tour of Macbeth. At the age of 17, Alan left Haileybury and with two contacts from Matthews in hand, he began to look for work in the theatre.

He began his first job immediately after leaving Haileybury, joining the renowned actor-manager
Donald Wolfit's company in a production of The Strong Are Lonely at the Edinburgh Festival. The production needed someone who could play a sentry and stand at attention for upwards of an hour and Edgar Matthews had promised this was not a problem as Alan had been part of the Cadet Force at Haileybury. Alan was employed as an assistant stage manager with a cameo acting appearance as a sentry and spent three weeks with the company at the festival before returning home.

At which point, the second contact Edgar Matthews had given Alan came into play. Melville Gilham at the
Connaught Theatre, Worthing, employed Alan for six months as a student Assistant Stage Manager. Alan was able to work in and experience a variety of different departments in the theatre, which included some valuable acting experience with a couple of small roles. It was common at the time for ASMs to get small walk-on parts in plays and they were frequently utilised as under-studies.

After six months, Alan's funds ran out and with a good grounding in theatre, he looked for professional employment. This came at the
Leatherhead Theatre Club where Alan was employed by Hazel Vincent Wallace as an actor and stage manager. Whilst working there he met Rodney Wood, another stage manager, who took him to London to see Studio Theatre Ltd performing in-the-round at the Mahatma Gandhi Hall. It was a fortuitous turn of events which would have huge repercussions for Alan as Wood had been asked to join the company in Scarborough for the summer and he asked Alan to join him as an Acting Stage Manager with the promise of more acting roles.

Impressed by what he had seen, Alan agreed to join Studio Theatre Ltd at the
Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, for its 1957 summer season. There he met Stephen Joseph, the man who would become a mentor and the most influential figure in the young man's career and life. Alan stage-managed for the summer season as well as acting in two plays, before taking a job at the Oxford Playhouse for the winter months having been offered work there by Milos Volanakis. Alan spent most of the winter performing and Volanakis hoped he would stay with the company for its summer season. However, Stephen Joseph had contacted Alan asking him to return to Scarborough for the 1958 summer season. Alan decided to return to the coastal resort, where he stayed until 1962.

Between 1958 and 1962, Alan was employed primarily as an actor and became increasingly prominent within the company. This coincided with Stephen Joseph commissioning Alan to write his first play in 1959 (after Alan had complained about the quality of the roles he was playing) and his first steps into directing in 1961. His playwriting and directing would increasingly begin to dominate his theatrical career.

However, it cannot be over-emphasised that Alan's initial forays into writing were largely as a showcase for his own acting abilities.His first professionally commissioned play,
The Square Cat, featured a lead role - which he played - which required singing, dancing and guitar-playing (none of which Alan could do well) as well as a character with two entirely different personas.

In 1962, Stephen Joseph founded the UK's first permanent theatre-in-the-round venue at the
Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent (Scarborough had been home to the country's first theatre-in-the-round company as the Library Theatre was a seasonal venture). Alan, along with many of the 1962 Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre acting company, decided to go with Stephen to Stoke-on-Trent and became a founding member of the Victoria Theatre where he worked as an actor, director and writer until 1964. At which point, he left the Victoria Theatre to concentrate on his playwriting career as a consequence of his play Mr Whatnot being optioned for a West End production. Having given up acting and left the Victoria Theatre, Mr Whatnot promptly proceeded to be a disastrous flop leading Alan to join the BBC as a radio drama producer in 1965.

Alan's final professional stage-acting role was Jerry in William Gibson's
Two For The Seesaw. Having left the Victoria Theatre in early 1964 and just prior to working for the BBC, Alan - and his future wife Heather Stoney - were contacted by Spotlight in a search for actors familiar with William Gibson’s play. A production was being staged at the Civic Theatre, Rotherham, and there had been problems with the original two actors. Heather and Alan were both employed having previously performed the play at the Victoria Theatre in 1963. Alan's experience with this week-long production was quite negative, largely due to the inexperience of the stage manager - who happened to be Bill Kenwright, the same man who would go on to become one of the UK's most successful theatre producers. To all intents and purposes, this was the end of Alan Ayckbourn's acting career and at the time he finished, he was probably one of the most experienced in-the-round actors in the UK and had performed in more than 70 different professional plays in nine years.

There was one further unexpected stage role though in 1969, when an unfortunate accident during the world premiere run of his play
How The Other Half Loves led Alan to take to the stage once more....

"Jeremy [Franklin] went to Kirkbymoorside for the day and tripped on the pavement. Bob Peck wasn't available to take over [the role of Frank] as he was on the beach, so I did it, and it was my very last time on the stage. I did it for five nights and Jeremy was quite reluctant to come back as I was quite into it. I had to take the script on stage on the first night and I was so enjoying it and was so confident by the last scene that I found the last couple of pages had fallen out of the book. There was I, ready for the triumphant finale with my wife... I looked at her [Elizabeth Sladen], she looked at me, and so I began to ad-lib and she began to try to ad-lib, so it was an actor's nightmare. She was thinking, 'Not only is he the director and writer, now he's ad-libbing and I have to ad-lib with him.' I knew we had to finish it! Afterwards we then tried to write the lines down and from the improvised ending came what is now the proper ending... though Robert Morley may have added another."
Alan Ayckbourn

During 2020, Alan made an unexpected return to his acting roots as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic which swept the world and closed all the UK's theatre. As a result of these extraordinary circumstances, he found himself returning to acting and playing all the male voices for the world premiere - as an audio-stream - of his 84th play, Anno Domino. The play was recorded at his home - with his wife, Heather Stoney, playing all the female roles - before being released online by the Stephen Joseph Theatre for an exclusive period. Later that year, he would also produce a recording of his 1994 play Haunting Julia performing all the male roles which was also streamed any the SJT over Christmas.

Article by Simon Murgatroyd. Copyright: Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.

The Actor section of www.alanayckbourn.net is indebted to The Michael T Mooney Archive for material relating to Alan Ayckbourn's acting career at the Oxford Playhouse and the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent.