Alan Ayckbourn: Actor

Cards Of Identity (1958)

Production Details

Play:
Author:

First performance:
Venue:
Staging:

Director:
Design:
Cards Of Identity
Nigel Dennis

April 1958
Oxford Playhouse
End-stage

Frank Hauser
Michael Richardson
Character
Captain Mallet
Beaufort
Mrs Paradise
Jellicoe
Mrs Mallet
Dr Towzer
Stapleton
Miss Tray
President
Dr. Bitterling
Miss Black-Planorbis
Dr. Scavenger
Youth
Mother
Vinson
Custodian
Radio Commentator 1
Radio Commentator 2
Father Golden Orfe
Bank Manager
Actor
Joss Ackland
Alan Dobie
Pat Keen
Richard Butler
Rachel Roberts
Christopher Hancock
Alan Ayckbourn
Ruth Meyers
Robert Bernal
John Boyd-Brent
June Speight
Gilbert Vernon
Gilbert Vernon
Lee Fox
Ian Curteis
Michael Simpson
Lee Fox
Michael Poole
Harold Lang
Lee Fox

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.