Relatively Speaking: Articles

This section contains articles about Relatively Speaking. Click on the links in the right-hand column below to access the relevant article.

Despite being one of his most popular and performed plays, Alan Ayckbourn has written very little about the characters of Relatively Speaking. In the Ayckbourn Archive held at the University of York, there is a short piece of personal correspondence though in which he talks about both how the play should be acted and handled.

Playing Greg

Greg is a total innocent and has to be played completely truthfully. Indeed this applies to the play as a whole.

The moment actors start to 'comment', appear knowing or over-state, the piece ceases to be funny.

To be strictly correct, it is not a 'comical farce'. To use an old-fashioned term - it is 'high comedy'. Rather different.

There have been and often are some dreadful productions of his plays and it's usually because actors or the director feel the play needs a helping hand. They signpost furiously, innocence goes out of the window and everything becomes laboured.

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