Solid gold

AT a time when many are destined for retirement, bowls in the park or a suntrap abroad, Alan Ayckbourn is working harder than ever. The artistic director of Scarborough's marvellous Stephen Joseph Theatre, who was knighted for services to the industry, has juggled a sell-out run in New York while directing his 69th play back at home and organising a year of 50th anniversary celebrations for the seaside venue.

At 65, Ayckbourn continues to look forward and will be giving his golden touch to his 70th work from January next year. "I think things have been quite hectic of late, but I think you thrive on it, you either look forward to ending your job or if your job happens to be a hobby then you are one of the lucky ones," he explains.

The omens look good for Ayckbourn who has just guided a Scarborough cast in his play Private Fears In Public Places through the new Brits Off Broadway season to critical acclaim and packed houses.

The New York Times is promising a pilgrimage to the North Yorkshire seaside town after promoting the cause of Scarborough as "a mecca for admirers of first-rate, frill-free acting".

"I'm still waiting for them to arrange the visit," he jokes. But, the maestro of middle-England mirth is elated that not only does the US continue to help make him the world's second most-performed playwright behind Shakespeare but American Equity is keen to see him direct a home-grown cast.

"It was wonderful that New York happened in this year of all years. This was a bit special for all of us particularly as it was a Scarborough company as opposed to a hybrid of Brits and Americans. It was terrific for the cast because they were on Cloud Nine," he says.

The invitation from the 200-seater 59 East 59 Theatres in the Big Apple came about, as Ayckbourn observes wryly, "thanks to a widow (Elysabeth Kleinhans) having a bit of money, an interest in the arts and deciding to open her own theatre... the way Americans do". A delicatessen became the venue and the Brits Off Broadway festival was born with Ayckbourn given pride of place in the second running of the event. "By chance we had a play which I didn't think was too big and too costly to move because we were chancing our arm a bit in the air fares and salaries. Thanks to the reviews we didn't have any problems, audiences were queuing around the block. I said to the theatre 'are you going to do it again' and they said 'yes, when we recover'," laughs the playwright about his comedy-drama which feature the lives of three couples which become entangled by fateful decisions. "We also see people in public and people in private and how different they are. How the waiter who serves you becomes the centre of their universe when they go home... because we're all walk-on parts in other people's lives," Ayckbourn observes. "I also told the cast they weren't to change the accents a bit, just play it a little slower because we were talking a foreign language to this lot."

WE had a suburban cockney and one broad Scottish accent and I knew that Americans are notorious for jumping into subtitles at the first opportunity," adds the man who found time to create a 25-minute Tiny Time Tales work for the under-sixes called The Girl Who Lost Her Voice, which has begun running on Saturday mornings until September 17. He's still a little wary of allowing celebrity American actors loose on his work when Private Fears In Public Places is revived in New York with an all-US cast next year.

"Hopefully we'll get some good equivalent actors to the ones I use in the UK because the trouble is when you recruit one celebrity you have to have them all," Ayckbourn says.

He also talks with fondness about celebrations of the theatre in the round started by Stephen Joseph above the town's public library in 1955 before a temporary home at the former Boys' High School in 1976 saw a precarious existence until 1988 and development of the former Odeon Cinema site which took until 1996. "Of the 50 years, and I've been around for 48 of them, there will be a decade celebrated each night for five nights (Aug 9-13) and I'll be inviting special guests like Christopher Godwin and Malcolm Hebden, if they can release him from Coronation Street for the night," explains the artistic director who is promising a few of his own "unreliable" anecdotes.

His favourite story of the 50-year history remains the leasing of the High School taking so long that the SJT's architect "borrowed" a set of keys and set off a gang of workmen without permission.

"I recall being ordered to a site meeting with council solicitors and standing in a hard hat outside the building with jackhammers going and being asked if I agreed to no work starting until official permission was granted. I nodded and they left... and I've never understood building laws to this day," jokes the man who unveiled a plaque to his old boss at the library two weeks ago.

An exhibition from the SJT archives opens today and, on Sunday, Ayckbourn will see birthday cake and coffee handed out at a champagne reception at Castle Howard as he hosts an evening called The Difficult Business Of Making It Easy (Secrets Of a Playmaker). "I just hope my voice holds out," he says.

For once, Ayckbourn claims to be delaying writing the plot for play Number 70. "And that's not because it's a significant number but because I want to leave sufficent space between productions," he says.

As for the future, he sees the SJT still "normally" opening at 7.30pm for nightly business in 50 years time... "and that seems particularly untrue of the rest of the world where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing".

* The Stephen Joseph Theatre Company revives Ayckbourn's 1971 comedy Time And Time Again tonight until September 17.

For current list of productions, tickets and SJT anniversary celebrations ring (01723) 370541 or go to www.sjt.uk.com

Published: 28/05/2005