Alan Ayckbourn: Plays 5

Paul Godfrey is “so good, so nervy and alert with imagination and intelligence” (Sunday Times). Includes the plays:

Inventing a New Colour

“Godfrey’s appealing first play is, with its ominous signs of disjunction, like a surrealist painting”(Guardian)

Once in a While the Odd Thing Happens

“A fictional-biographical account of Benjamin Britten…lyrical, poetic prose, sinuous, swift, eloquent and dramatic” (Sunday Times)

A Bucket of Eels

“Danger gives Paul Godfrey’s wonderful play its drama. Six young people enter a Freudian forest of their own imaginings” (Financial Times)

The Blue Ball

“An enquiry into the magic of space exploration…a rather interesting, idiosyncratic and well written play” (Observer) is an imaginative investigation of the experience of Space researched by the playwright among the astronauts themselves. This ambitious play questions the politics of a culture in which the wondrous is rendered mundane and what seems commonplace is rendered absurd. The Blue Ball was commissioned by the Royal National Theatre and received its premiere at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1995.

This edition of Miller’s play The Price features an extensive introduction by Jane K. Dominik which includes: a chronology of Miller’s life and times; a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the definitive edition of the play.

The play concerns two brothers who must return to the home of their deceased father prior to its destruction to dispose of the furniture crammed into the attic. Exhibiting many features characteristic of Miller’s work including sibling rivalry, confrontation with the past and with their memories, the effects of the Great Depression and the war in Vietnam, the pursuit of a dream, and the responsibility one must assume for one’s own life, The Price is recognised as one of Miller’s major works.