'You might as well have put Madonna on stage eating spaghetti'

WORLD famous playwright Alan Ayckbourn is proving true to his threat that he is seriously considering boycotting London's West End theatres with his plays in future.

His latest comedy Sugar Daddies has its world premiere next month at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre, where Ayckbourn is artistic director. Previous productions have transferred straight to the West End, but the man knighted for his services to theatre admits he's planning to tour his play instead and has no London dates pencilled in.

Asked about his boycott threat he says: "I don't know if I want to go into the West End any more. I had a dust-up with them last year because I felt they didn't advertise my Damsels In Distress trilogy very well and they weren't doing things right.

"I really don't mind if it does or doesn't, if someone offers to take it I'll consider it. As far as I'm concerned the people I want to see it, particularly now we're touring, will see it. I seem to have become very hot on the touring circuit and I've had to stop too many tours of my stuff going out.

"I've got 65 plays now. That's a lot of work to dig into. Some of it I wouldn't like to see dug up again. There are 45 which are eminently revive-able, some of which haven't been seen for years like A Small Family Business (currently being re-staged at Leeds' West Yorkshire Playhouse)."

The man who is second only to Shakespeare in terms of demand for productions, admitted during a lecture at London's Apollo theatre last year that he was furious that two parts of his trilogy had been "condemned to the dustbin".

He accused the West End of having an obsession with hiring Hollywood stars to boost audience numbers and singled out Madonna for criticism.

Ayckbourn said of her performance in David Williamson's Up For Grabs: "You might as well have put her on stage eating a plate of spaghetti and put a rope round her chair instead of putting her in a theatre where she wasn't at home and was struggling. These celebrities can't do it."

He admits he doesn't want to be part of a system producing one-shot plays with a single big name in them.

His new play, Sugar Daddies, has the highly unusual storyline of a 21-year-old girl having a strange relationship with an 81-year-old man dressed as Father Christmas.

The female lead is Alison Pargeter, who was ironically in all three of the Damsels In Distress plays. Ayckbourn strayed into Last Of The Summer Wine-style casting by recruiting an 80-year-old actor to play the part.

He explains: "Rex Garner used to be quite a matinee star in his day. But he's spent the last 30 years in South Africa doing plays there and he's just come back. He came to see me and he said 'I hear you're doing a play called Sugar Daddies, I'm here if you need a Sugar Daddy.

"He was the genuine article, not a bloke being made up to look 80 but a genuine 80-year-old. The older you get the less ageist you get. I'm not prejudiced against old people, as long as they can run around the stage a bit I'm very happy.

"They're a lot less trouble because they don't go clubbing at the end of the night and have to be bailed the next morning."

Garner's stand-in will be somewhat younger. And the theatres of Stoke-on-Trent and Bolton lie ahead for Sugar Daddies rather than the West End, which Ayckbourn has dubbed "ossified, lethargic and incapable of producing new work".

Undaunted by his run-in with London, Ayckbourn is also busy finishing a musical, called Orvin - Champion Of Champions, with Denis King for The National Youth Music Theatre. This will run during August (7-23) with a cast of 40 youngsters between 20 and ten years of age.

The 65th play from his prolific pen has a title, My Sister Sadie, and will be Ayckbourn's now traditional family entertainment piece for Scarborough at Christmas.

Concerning the theme of relationships in Sugar Daddies, Ayckbourn comments: "I meet lots and lots of new people as a director and some of them are quite young and God knows what they perceive me as, 85 or something. You find yourself trying to be what they'd like you to be and I can feel them trying to do the same. They expect a bit of gravitas from a director who's been around for 40 years and I try to provide it. After about three days I'm arsing around again.

"The only person that never perceives themselves as growing old is yourself. Bits of you start acting up a bit, but really and truly you feel nearer 20 than 50. It's only when some girl smiles at you and you think 'that's nice' and she offers you the seat on the bus you think 'oh ok, the smile was for the poor old git who could hardly get on the bus'."

* Sugar Daddies runs at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough from July 17 to August 2 and then August 25 to September 13. Box Office: (01723) 370541