The First 40 Years: 1973
This is part of a series of articles looking at the first 40 years of the Stephen Joseph Theatre (1955 to 1995) from the perspective of the theatre's Archive. The articles were first published in the SJT Circular newsletter.1973: Staging A Conquest
by Simon Murgatroyd1973 is a slightly problematic year when looking at the history of Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre.
It marked Alan Ayckbourn’s first full year as Artistic Director and was - for the period - a remarkable steady year with no major crisis or issues.
In fact, arguably, the most notable event of 1973 at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre was the world premiere of one of the classic pieces of 20th century playwriting, The Norman Conquests. Which is a subject which has practically been written to death! However, The Norman Conquests also marks the start of something which has become an integral and essential part of the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s history.
The event play or, as Alan dubs it, event theatre. Plays which celebrate theatre and which - for various reasons - celebrate the liveness and uniqueness of the theatre experience. Plays which, essentially, can’t work in any other medium - or at least not provide anything like the experience seeing it live provides.
“I believe that a regional theatre needs to include something out of the ordinary every so often. Just to remind everyone that the theatre's still there!”
Not that the move to event theatre was a deliberate choice by the playwright as The Norman Conquests is, by all counts, an accidental creation. Not seriously intended nor planned, it came about as the result of possibly a moment in jest with a journalist.
"At the end of the [1972] Scarborough season the local press boy came bounding up the stairs and asked what I'd got planned for next year. I said dunno, might finish up with a trilogy. So there was a note in the paper, "Trilogy Eagerly Expected." I didn't put a denial in. I thought since the Gods have said that, let's have a go. “
Thus - much to the surprise of the board of Scarborough Theatre Trust - Alan launched the first of his first event pieces, which was unequivocally ambitious in largely dedicating a summer season to three inter-related plays, which - conceivably - might never find an audience due to the Library Theatre being heavily reliant on Scarborough’s tourist trade at the time.
“I was aware that it would be optimistic to expect an audience like this [predominantly tourists] necessarily to be able to give up three nights of their precious holiday to come to our one theatre. Any suggestion that it was essential to see all three plays to appreciate any one of them would probably result in no audience at all. Similarly, were the plays clearly labelled Parts One, Two and Three, any holidaymaker determined to play Bingo on Monday would probably give up the whole idea as a bad job. The plays would therefore have to be able to stand independently yet not so much that people's curiosity as to what was happening on the other two nights wasn't a little aroused.”
Indeed this is the only production of the trilogy which did not emphasise the roiling nature of the experience or the fact that ultimate satisfaction requires the audience to see all three parts of the play. It was only with its subsequent transfer to London that this aspect of the trilogy became prominent - and it was only at this point the plays were referred to The Norman Conquests as the title was not used for the original Scarborough production.
Despite this and the perceived risk of a trilogy during the summer season, The Norman Conquests was a hit beyond any reasonable expectations at the theatre - audiences apparently embracing the multi-part aspect of the narrative as as reported by The Stage newspaper on 9 August 1973.
"In the first six weeks of the summer season of theatre-in-the-round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, Alan Ayckbourn's comic trilogy of plays - Fancy Meeting You, Make Yourself At Home and Round And Round d The Garden - has broken all box office records at the theatre and will continue in repertoire until 15 September."
The first of many ‘event plays’ had been launched at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre. Over the following decades, these events would help to define the SJT and its ability to risk-take as well as celebrate the uniqueness of theatre.
Just less than a decade later, Alan would again challenge every aspect of the SJT with his epic Intimate Exchanges. A play which extrapolated how the tiniest choices we make can have the most profound effect on the directions our lives take.
“The play is about those tiny decisions we all make in our lives that lead to bigger consequences. It's a huge concept and is very difficult as there are just two actors playing a total of 10 roles. All the characters are very different and it is a feat of memory for the actors to learn about 16 to 17 hours worth of dialogue. After a production like this you don't have a nerve in your body because it can't get any worse!”
Such is the scale of Intimate Exchanges that it has only been staged twice in its entire since its premiere - and both times at the SJT in 1982 and 2006.
The next true ‘event’ was in 1989 to celebrate Alan’s 50th birthday when he wrote The Revengers’ Comedies, a play in two parts running for more than five hours!
“I'd made it to 50, so I thought I'd give people a present. You can't have an 'event' every year, or they become ordinary - but every two or three years, I like to do something a bit different. I wanted to do a big show, an event and you need to really challenge yourself now and again, otherwise you tend to churn out the same stuff. These feature two of the most complex people [Henry & Karen] I have ever written because I have been allowed to write them out over such a period of time.”
The highlight of the 1989 summer season - which attracted audiences and attention from throughout the world - Saturdays became a focal point when both parts of the play would be presented separated by a break which saw picnics set up in the ground of the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round.
Ten years later, Alan would create the spiritual successor to The Norman Conquests with House & Garden with two plays performed by one cast in two auditoria simultaneously; famously this had been his original concept for The Norman Conquests in 1972, but which took until 1999 to actually realise.
“I wrote the plays simultaneously to mark my 60th birthday, and I honestly thought it was a bit of fun. I'm always looking for ways to make theatre live. The most important thing to me is that it's an incredibly live event. Theatre is constantly being questioned these days - people ask what its relevance is when we've got such good virtual reality machines. Essentially the thing that distinguishes it is that it's live.”
The event nature of the piece was emphasised with the fete around which the plays revolve spilled out into the foyer at the climax of the play - a third part in which the audience and company interacted and met.
Arguably the most recent piece of event theatre was the Damsels In Distress trilogy in 2001 which saw repertory returned to the SJT with a single company performing in three plays connected only by the same set and a over-riding theme.
“It's a huge venture, occasionally nerve wracking but always exciting. I suppose all that live theatre's meant to be, really.”
The trilogy of GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay was another huge success for the SJT and even saw the entire Scarborough company transfer to the West End the following year.
And like the plays before it, the treats of the season were the days when an audience could spend an entire day in the theatre watching all three plays within a single day.
For all those people who have seen these often epic plays, there can be few who have not forgotten the experience. It is something to look back on and to hope there may be events like this in the future - all of which can be traced back to an off-hand comment back in 1972!
Article by and copyright of Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.