Alan Ayckbourn: Unproduced Plays

Given the longevity of Alan Ayckbourn's professional writing career, it would be surprising if there had not been some unproduced plays. This page contains details of completed plays which are currently unproduced.

This page also serves to acknowledge the existence and providence of the plays prior to inclusion into the Ayckbourn Archive at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York; this allows the playwright to assert there are no lost or undiscovered works within the Archive.

A Case Of Missing Wives

A Case of Missing Wives was finished on 16 October 2016 and was scheduled to premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, during 2017. However, Alan wrote A Brief History of Women shortly afterwards and offered both plays to the SJT with the Artistic Director Paul Robinson choosing A Brief History of Women.

The play is a six-hander police procedural set in the fictional town of Dreadcliff and the experiences of a young female Detective Constable transferring from Sussex to this strange town in Yorkshire. Alan would later recycle some of the ideas and characters into his 82nd play Better Off Dead, which makes it unlikely A Case Of Missing Wives will ever be produced.

"I went to Bowness-on-Winderemere to dwell on A Case Of Missing Wives and decided I was less than 100% happy with it. As a result, I came back and wrote another one - A Brief History of Women - and then subsequently revised A Case Of Missing Wives to make myself happier with it! I then had two plays and I offered them both to Paul Robinson [Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre] and I said, take your pick. He chose - as it happens - A Brief History of Women. They’re both totally different. I’ve seldom written two plays so close together and really you’d never know it as they’re totally different. But I had A Case Of Missing Women in my head for a very long time. It takes the form of a police procedural really but - having said that - it’s stuffed with my usual themes: how much do men understand women and women understand men? So in that sense, it’s sexes as usual.
"It’s quite fun, I think the only thing I lifted from it for A Brief History Of Women was a very stern silent central character - which i think is the only link between the two plays. In A Case Of Missing Wives, it happens to be a young girl, a detective constable who’s transferred from Sussex to to Yorkshire and finds the cultural shock of Yorkshire male detectives slightly shocking; I mean southern male detectives are pretty rough stuff, but up here my mythical town of Dreadcliff, it's full of very dinosaur like men, who think that the girls are just there to make the tea. The chief super who welcomes her is a woman, herself from the south, and she says "It's my duty to welcome you to Dreadcliff and I'm sure you’ll have s successful time but, as a woman, God help you."
Alan Ayckbourn (Interview with Simon Murgatroyd, March 2017)

Men, Meals & Me

Men, Meals & Me was written during 2018 with the intention of being produced during the 2019 summer season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

However, scheduling issues and the size of the company for the proposed productions for the 2019 summer season led Alan to write the four-hander Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present in its place. This was produced in repertory with a revival of Season's Greetings.

Men, Meals & Me is an eight-hander and borrows the central conceit of the 1981 revue, Me, Myself and I in which the central character is represented by three actors playing different aspects of Jenny Portal-Walker.

As of 2020, Alan Ayckbourn hopes Men, Meals & Me will be produced in the future.
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Truth Will Out

Truth Will Out was written during autumn 2019 and was both scheduled and advertised to receive its world premiere production during the summer of 2020 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic, which closed all the UK's theatres during March 2020, led to the SJT cancelling its entire 'produced' summer season including Truth Will Out. In its place, Alan Ayckbourn pulled a previously unproduced play, Anno Domino, off the shelf and produced it as an audio stream for the SJT.

Truth Will Out is a nine-hander which centres on a talented young boy hacking into an online diary and how his actions have massive unforeseen ramifications for him, his family, his school, his town, his country… the world?

Alan Ayckbourn expects Truth Will Out will be produced at some point in the future.

Small Mercy

Small Mercy was written during February 2019 with the initial intention of being produced during the 2020 summer season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.

The play is a seven-hander set in 2021 (or thereabouts) and explores online media and how it can be manipulated and exploited. The play unusually underwent several revisions which saw the role of the central character of Mercy eventually become a character seen only on video.

Later in 2019, Alan Ayckbourn went on to write Truth Will Out and - with a choice of plays - the SJT went with Truth Will Out for the, eventually cancelled, 2020 summer season.

As of 2020, Alan Ayckbourn hopes Small Mercy will be produced in the future.
Article and research by Simon Murgatroyd. Copyright: Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.

The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door was written as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020. As a result of the global outbreak, all the UK's theatre's were closed during March 2020 and Alan's latest play, Truth Will Out, was cancelled at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. As a result, Alan went onto to produce an audio stream of a previously unproduced play - formerly featured on this page - called Anno Domino.

As soon as Alan had finished working on Anno Domino in early May, he immediately began writing a new four-hander called The Girl Next Door, which was completed in late May. Whilst few details are currently known, the fact it is a four-hander suggests it was written with the post-Coronavirus state of theatre in mind.

However, almost immediately after writing, the playwright lost faith with the play due to a noted similarity in concept to the television series Goodnight Sweetheart, which the playwright had never seen. The similarity seems to have actually only been the concept of someone travelling between the present day (during the Covid-19 lockdown) and the same street during Word War II. Whether the playwright will ever return to The Girl Next Door is unknown.