Relatively Speaking: Facts
Relatively Speaking
Play Number: 7World Premiere: 8 July 1965
Venue: Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: Television; Radio
Cast: 2m / 2f
Run Time: 2hrs
Synopsis: Ginny goes to the house of her older lover in order to end a relationship and retrieve some compromising letters. Matters are complicated when her current partner also turns up and meets the wife of the lover, believing her to be Ginny's mother, leading to misunderstanding and confusion.
Note: Originally produced under the title Meet My Father.
- Relatively Speaking is Alan Ayckbourn's 7th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Stephen Joseph - was held at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, on 8 July 1965. It was his first plat for the venue in four years.
- The London premiere - directed by Nigel Patrick - was held at the Duke of York's Theatre on 29 March 1967. It closed on 3 February 1968 and is considered Alan Ayckbourn's first major West End success.
- It was originally produced in Scarborough under the title of Meet My Father. Its title was changed when it was optioned for the West End by the producer Peter Bridge who insisted on a 'less provincial' title.
- The world premiere production was heavily cut by Stephen Joseph with approximately a third of the play excised, most of which was then restored and revised for the West End production.
- It was commissioned by Stephen Joseph with the instruction to create a "well-made play" following Alan's first West End transfer and flop, Mr Whatnot.
- Although frequently described as a farce, it is more accurately of the 'high comedy' genre.
- It is the first Ayckbourn play to mention his fictional town of Pendon which is the location of a number of his plays including Time & Time Again, A Chorus Of Disapproval and Improbable Fiction.
- It was the final Ayckbourn play not to have its world premiere directed by the author himself.
- Alan struggled with the climax of the play until, during the pre-West End tour, his later agent Tom Erhardt suggested he bring the play back to the mysterious slippers of the first scene.
- The West End production made an impression upon Noël Coward who sent Alan a telegram which read: “Dear Alan Ayckbourn all my congratulations on a beautifully constructed and very very funny comedy I enjoyed every moment of it = Noël Coward.”
- Relatively Speaking was the first Ayckbourn play to be published. Despite being given to the publishers Evans in 1967, the play took more than two years to reach publication.
- Relatively Speaking was both the first Ayckbourn play to be broadcast on television (in 1967 with scenes recorded from the West End premiere) and the first Ayckbourn play to be adapted for television (1969). It is also the only play to have been adapted twice for British television - both times by the BBC - in 1969 and 1989.
- Alan Ayckbourn’s first directed the play with an amateur production by Leeds Art Theatre in 1970 at Leeds Civic Theatre.
- The play was not professionally produced in New York until 1984. Its American premiere was in 1970 at Westport Country Playhouse.
- Alan Ayckbourn has revived the piece professionally twice. The first time in 1977 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, and the second time in 2007 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, to mark the 40th anniversary of its West End debut.