Alan Ayckbourn: Early Plays
Prior to his first professional commission, Alan Ayckbourn recalls he wrote approximately a dozen one act plays between his first professional acting job in 1956, aged 17, and the premiere of The Square Cat in 1959. Very little is known about any of these plays and only a handful of them are still in existence.Relative Values
Relative Values is an early unproduced and unpublished one-act comedy by Alan Ayckbourn and credited to his pseudonym Roland Allen; the play probably being written in 1960.The action takes place in a house in a village and centres on the Spragg family as they prepare for a visit from their recently bereaved and abrasive aunt from America. Her blunt interference in the family’s life leads everyone to re-evaluate their own relationships and lives for the better.
Considering other works of the period and fact it is credited to Roland Allen, it seems likely Alan Ayckbourn wrote the play for consideration by one of Scarborough's amateur companies - Follow The Lover and Love Undertaken being two other one act plays from their period which were produced by amateur companies. For whatever reason, Relative Values - as far as can be ascertained - was never performed.
An original manuscript for The Season is held in the Ayckbourn Archive at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York.
Relative Values quotation
Harold: What’s happened to your face?
Molly: I’ve got make-up on.
Harold: Looks like you’ve forgotten to wash it.
All research for this page is by Simon Murgatroyd and should not be reproduced without permission.