Comic Potential - A Play (French's Acting Editions) - Softcover

Ayckbourn, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0573110611 ISBN 13: 9780573110610

Publisher: Samuel French, 2006

Synopsis

A hilarious satire of television and a touching romantic comedy, it begins in a television studio where a hospital soap opera is being taped. One actor starts speaking gibberish; he is an "actoid" a robot and his programming is off kilter. Adam, the young nephew of the producer and an aspiring writer who worships the director (once a great movie director and now a broken down has been), is on the set. Adam starts chatting with Jacie Tripplethree, the actoid (serial number JC333) playing the nurse and finds, to his surprise, that not only can she carry on a conversation but, due to what she calls a fault in her programming, she has a creative imagination. Adam wants to build a new television series around her but the studio will not hear of it. He also finds he is falling in love with the charming robot! Will Adam get the green light on his series? Will love prevail? Jacie is one of Ayckbourn's greatest characters; her portrayer won all of London's major acting awards.

About this title

Review

'As with all Ayckbourn's best plays you are watching a comedy-farce and suddenly find that tragedy comes out of the woodwork and grins at you...Like all serious comedies, "Comic Potential "hurts you with the sheer exuberance of its laughter and liberates you with its seriousness...The master of Scarborough is still on top form."--"Sunday Times"
"He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Moliere."--Sir Peter Hall
He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Moliere.--Sir Peter Hall"

As with all Ayckbourn's best plays you are watching a comedy-farce and suddenly find that tragedy comes out of the woodwork and grins at you...Like all serious comedies, "Comic Potential "hurts you with the sheer exuberance of its laughter and liberates you with its seriousness...The master of Scarborough is still on top form. "Sunday Times"

He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Moliere. Sir Peter Hall"

As with all Ayckbourn's best plays you are watching a comedy-farce and suddenly find that tragedy comes out of the woodwork and grins at you...Like all serious comedies, Comic Potential hurts you with the sheer exuberance of its laughter and liberates you with its seriousness...The master of Scarborough is still on top form. Sunday Times

He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Moliere. Sir Peter Hall

"

"As with all Ayckbourn's best plays you are watching a comedy-farce and suddenly find that tragedy comes out of the woodwork and grins at you...Like all serious comedies, Comic Potential hurts you with the sheer exuberance of its laughter and liberates you with its seriousness...The master of Scarborough is still on top form." --Sunday Times

"He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Moliere." --Sir Peter Hall

About the Author

Alan Ayckbourn was born in London in 1939 to a violinist father and a mother who was a writer. He left school at seventeen with two 'A' levels and went straight into the theatre. Two years in regional theatre as an actor and stage manager led in 1959 to the writing of his first play, The Square Cat, for Scarborough's Theatre in the Round at the instigation of his then employer and subsequent mentor, Stephen Joseph. Some 75 plays later, his work has been translated into over 35 languages, is performed on stage and television throughout the world and has won countless awards. There have been English and French screen adaptations, the most notable being Alain Resnais' fine film of Private Fears in Public Places. Major successes include Relatively Speaking, How the Other Half Loves, Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, A Chorus of Disapproval, The Norman Conquests, A Small Family Business, Henceforward . . ., Comic Potential, Things We Do For Love, and Life of Riley. Surprises was first presented at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and subsequently at the the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in 2012. In 2009, he retired as Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where almost all his plays have been and continue to be first staged, after 37 years in the post. Knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre, he received the 2010 Critics' Circle Award for Services to the Arts and became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards.

About this edition

• Publisher: Samuel French
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0573110611
• ISBN 13: 9780573110610
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136