Invisible Friends (eBook)
80 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-32577-1 (ISBN)
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.
Alan Ayckbourn's play is about a very ordinary teenager called Lucy. With her father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out - that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted - as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.
The Baines house. 5.00 p.m. Visible are a ground-floor living area, and the kitchen leading off that. Stairs up lead to a corridor with bedrooms leading off it. The visible rooms are Lucy’s room, small and tidy. She is that exception to the rule, a young teenage girl with an excessive love of orderliness. Besides the bed, it has a small desk/work table, an easy chair and a wardrobe/cupboard. A notice board filled with her private lists and favourite sayings and quotations.
Next to hers is her older brother Gary’s room. By complete contrast this room is a tip. Clothes strewn everywhere, an unmade bed, cluttered tables and chairs. Prominent among all the clutter is Gary’s pride and joy, his hi-fi equipment. At the start, GARY is lying on his bed atop a mound of clutter that he hasn’t bothered to move, listening to something loud and aggressive. Something, fortunately, that we’re unable, as of now, to hear. GARY, in appearance, almost exactly matches his room.
Downstairs in the living area, drab and also rather untidy. WALT, Gary’s and Lucy’s father, lies slumped fast asleep in an armchair, facing the TV which has on an early-evening news programme. We can’t, at present, hear this either. Looking at WALT, we can understand who GARY takes after. Overweight and unkempt, WALT asleep is almost as unprepossessing as WALT awake.
In the kitchen, JOY, wife and mother, is preparing tea. She does this, as she does everything in life, with a great sense of sorrow. Seldom can anyone have been more unsuitably named. She sighs to herself as she moves about the kitchen. We hear none of this though, for we are as yet still outside the house. LUCY now appears from along the street, carrying her school bag. She stops as she reaches her house. Faint traffic and perhaps a little urban birdsong.
LUCY: (To the audience) It all started the Friday I came home from school to tell my family some exciting news. By the way, my name’s Lucy Baines. That’s my mother there in the kitchen. And my father pretending he’s watching the telly but actually he’s fast asleep. And that one upstairs, that’s my older brother – known usually as Grisly Gary. Anyway, you’ll meet them soon enough because unfortunately they all feature in this story I’m going to tell you. As soon as you have met them, you’re immediately going to wish you hadn’t met them. I mean, they’re all right. I suppose. Sometimes. Very, very, very occasionally. Like every fifth Christmas in June, they’re all right. It’s not that they’re cruel to me or anything. I think they actually do love me, really, though you’d never know it most of the time. They’re just so – gloomy and glum. Like you know that saying: ‘Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow We Die’? Well, my Dad’s version of that is, ‘Tomorrow We Die, So What Are You Looking So Cheerful About?’ I mean, I don’t expect them to leap about laughing all day long but, well, on a day like this for instance, when I came home on this particular Friday with this terrific news – it would have been nice to have had a really warm welcome.
(She goes through the front door.)
(Calling as she goes) Mum! Mum!
JOY: (Immensely cheerily) Lucy, you’re home at last! How lovely to see you!
LUCY: Hallo, Mum.
(They embrace.)
JOY: Oh, you’re looking so bonny. Have you had a good day at school? Tell me all about it.
LUCY: Wonderful, I’ve had a wonderful day. I have to tell you, Mum, it’s so exciting – I’ve been chosen for the school swimming team.
JOY: (With a cry of delight) You haven’t!
LUCY: I have! The relay and the 200 metres backstroke.
JOY: Backstroke! Oh, that’s just wonderful. We must tell your Dad. Dad!
LUCY: Oh, don’t wake him up …
JOY: No, I must. He’ll want to know. Walt! Walter!
WALT: (Waking up cheerfully) What’s that? What’s all this?
JOY: Dad, listen to this, listen to this news …
WALT: (Playfully) Did I doze off? I must have dozed off.
JOY: (Affectionately) Yes, you did, you know you did, you old devil. And now you’re awake you can just listen to Lucy’s news.
WALT: News? What news is this? Come on, out with it, young Lucy.
JOY: Tell him your news.
LUCY: I will when you’ll let me get a word in. Dad, I’ve been picked for the school swimming team …
(WALT stares at her, speechless.)
(Shrugging modestly) That’s all.
WALT: The school swimming team?
LUCY: Yes.
JOY: Backstroke and relay.
WALT: (Rather overcome) Backstroke and relay?
LUCY: Yes.
(WALT moves to LUCY and hugs her fiercely. He is obviously deeply moved.)
WALT: I’m so proud, girl. I’m so proud of you. This is the proudest day of my life.
JOY: And mine, Dad. And mine.
WALT: Where’s that lad Gary, then? We must tell Gary.
JOY: Oh, yes. We must tell Gary. (Calling) Gary!
WALT: (Calling) Gary!
(GARY, at the sound of their voices, springs off his bed and starts downstairs eagerly.)
LUCY: Oh, don’t disturb him.
JOY: No, he’ll want to know …
WALT: The lad’ll want to know …
JOY: (Calling) Gary!
WALT: (Calling) Gary!
GARY: (Having come downstairs) Yes? What is it? (Overjoyed)
Hallo, Lucy! Are you home from school already?
LUCY: Hi, Gary.
GARY: Did somebody call? What can I do for you?
JOY: Tell him your news, then.
WALT: Tell him your news.
LUCY: I’ve been picked for the school swimming team.
JOY: Two hundred metres backstroke …
WALT: And the relay.
(A fractional pause, then GARY steps forward, picks up LUCY and whirls her in his arms.)
GARY: (As he does this) YIPPEEE!
(A huge crowd starts cheering.)
JOY: Hooray!
WALT: Bravo!
(The briefest burst of vigorous brass-band music. Before festivities can get under way, LUCY disengages herself from the riotous group and steps back outside the house again. Under the next, the others...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 12.2.2015 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater |
| Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett | |
| Schulbuch / Wörterbuch | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-571-32577-7 / 0571325777 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-571-32577-1 / 9780571325771 |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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eReader: Dieses eBook kann mit (fast) allen eBook-Readern gelesen werden. Mit dem amazon-Kindle ist es aber nicht kompatibel.
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Buying eBooks from abroad
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