Alan Ayckbourn: Actor

Madamoiselle Jaïre (1957)

Production Details

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Author:

First performance:
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Director:
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Costumes:
Mademoiselle Jaire
Michel de Ghelderode

12 November 1957
Oxford Playhouse
End-stage

Minos Volankis
Francis Thomas
Francis Thomas
Character
Jaire
Kaliphas
A Neighbour
Jaire's wife
A Joiner
Cloribus
Antiqua Makabena
Jacquelin
Marieke Vos
Marieke Pouf
Marieke Crok
Man with Red Hair
Blandine
A Carpenter
His Apprentice
Lazarus
A Street Singer
An Old Man
The Rabble Monger
Actor
Edgar Wreford
John Rees
Marie Seaborne
Pat Keen
Christopher Hancock
Malcolm Rogers
Dona Martyn
George Roubicek
June Speight
Sheila Gill
Claudine Morgan
Joss Ackland
Ruth Meyers
Ian Curteis
Alan Ayckbourn
Joss Ackland
Christopher Hancock
Michael Simpson
Ian Curteis

Quotes & Notes

Alan Ayckbourn worked at the Oxford Playhouse following his first summer season at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1957. He was part of the Playhouse company for the autumn / winter 1957 season until Stephen Joseph asked him to return to Scarborough for the summer of 1958. Despite the Playhouse hoping he would stay on, Alan decided to pursue his theatrical career in Scarborough.

"At the end of that season [his first summer season at the Library Theatre, Scarborough] a certain director from Oxford, a man called Milos Volanakis, had been up to see a couple of the shows and had liked my performances - at least, I put it down modestly to the idea that that's what he'd liked. He wanted me to audition for Oxford Playhouse, which he ran with Frank Hauser. I was always to be fated like this, to be drifting from one job to another. I never, in all my years of acting, was ever unemployed. Once I started at Worthing, I didn't stop: Worthing, Leatherhead, Scarborough, Oxford, Scarborough....

"I went to Oxford, and again fell right into a very, very nice situation. I was very lucky there, because once again there was a big, talented company, a marvellous man running it - Frank Hauser, who was again a man genuinely interested in young talent who went out of his way to help - and it was a theatre that was on the up at the time. I suppose if I'd auditioned for it, I'd never have got in. I did Under Milk Wood there, and I played the romantic juve with Mai Zetterling. In fact we did a lot of exciting things that were good for a boy at that age."
('Conversations With Ayckbourn', 1981)
All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd.