A Background To Joking Apart Of all the plays he has written, Alan Ayckbourn has frequently said Joking Apart is one of his favourites. Alan has always been protective of the plays he feels have not received the attention they deserved and Joking Apart suffered from being ill-served in the West End and was over-shadowed by the more successful Bedroom Farce. At a result, it initially did not gain the recognition and attention it has subsequently received as a particularly incisive look at relationships which is as relevant now as it ever was. Joking Apart was the third of Alan’s ‘winter’ plays, written during the Christmas period for a New Year premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough. It suffered none of the problems which afflicted Alan's previous play Ten Times Table, which the author had got half-way through before deciding to rewrite much of it. It was inspired by someone asking Alan why he never wrote plays about happy couples; of course the obvious answer is there is little drama in happiness and contentment. However, the idea caught Alan’s imagination and he began to wonder if there was a play to be made from it; particularly if the play was not actually about the happy couple, but focussed on the people around them and how a 'perfect' relationship only highlighted their unhappiness and failings. The perfection of Richard and Anthea’s relationship merely serves to emphasise the imperfections of everyone else’s relationships. As Alan has noted, the mistake with anyone producing or watching Joking Apart is to presume the play is about Richard and Anthea. It is not. If it is about anyone in particular, it is Sven, but more than that it is about the 'normal' people surrounding Richard and Anthea, whose lives are so affected by the golden couple. Apparently one of Alan's other inspirations was someone telling him about a vicar friend, who had lost his faith. This became the basis for Hugh, whose faith is tested by his mistaken belief of the possibility of a relationship with Anthea. Hugh's personal struggle with his feelings for Anthea, his deteriorating relationship with his wife Louise and the realisation he has thrown away everything for nothing is particularly affecting, especially as it encompasses a genuine crisis of faith which Hugh ultimately has to confront. Not only was Joking Apart unusual in dealing with a contented couple, but it was also the first Ayckbourn play to encompass an extended time-span. The play is set over twelve years and gave Alan the luxury of showing relationships over the long-term and the effects and repercussions of actions over time. It is extremely rare for Alan to set a play over such a long period of time and this alone makes it a fascinating part of the Ayckbourn canon. Joking Apart was written in December 1977 and premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough on 11 January 1978. The garden set was created with real grass as apparently it was cheaper to use grass than astro-turf on stage! Alan remembers the play was an enormous success in Scarborough and played to full houses for its four week run. It then went on a short UK tour before returning to Scarborough for another five weeks as part of the theatre's summer repertory season. Alan has said the three winter plays (Just Between Ourselves, Ten Times Table and Joking Apart) saw him venture into darker territory than normal and the Scarborough audiences took to them very quickly, giving them a validation and success which was largely not repeated in the West End productions (although it would come later particularly in the cases of Just Between Ourselves and Joking Apart). Alan's regular London producer Michael Codron optioned the play for the West End during its initial run at Scarborough and it opened at the Globe Theatre on 7 March 1979. Alan's agent Margaret Ramsay was particularly keen for Penelope Keith, who had been in the acclaimed London production of The Norman Conquests, to take the role of Anthea but it instead went to acclaimed actress Alison Steadman with Christopher Casenove as Richard. One member of the Scarborough company transferred to the West End with Robert Austin reprising his role of Sven, which drew almost unanimous praise and acclaim. The play was directed by Alan Ayckbourn, only the second time he had directed in the West End following Ten Times Table the previous year. Unfortunately, it was not a great success despite some good notices and winning the Play And Players Award for Best Comedy. Alan felt the play did not transfer at all well to the proscenium arch, whilst Michael Codron felt the reasons for its lack of success was a combination of a poor summer in the West End and a 7% rise in VAT that year. The play closed on 7 July, just four months after opening and, with the exception of the musical Jeeves, was the shortest run an Ayckbourn play had had in the West End since his first West End transfer Mr Whatnot in 1967. Both reasons for the play's lack of success are legitimate, but there is a stronger case put forward by the critic Michael Billington, who has proposed the problem with the lack of success of the 'winter' plays in London was more to do with the audiences. He has argued the West End audiences were far less open to viewing Alan's plays as anything but light comedy and laughter. As a result, they did not so readily embrace the darker turn of his work, which had proved so successful with Scarborough audiences and subsequently in other regional reproductions. The play has been adapted for the radio by the BBC and was broadcast in 1990. Unfortunately, this has never been commercially released and has rarely been repeated since. In 2002, Alan returned to the play, reviving it at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. It was well- received and ran in repertory with Alan's latest play Snake In The Grass which shared the same set as Joking Apart (hence both plays feature a tennis court and a summer house). Joking Apart has become increasingly popular over the years and is a frequently performed part of the Ayckbourn canon by both professional and amateur companies. Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd 2010 References 1. ^ http://jokingapart.alanayckbourn.net/ Glossary of tennis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A • Ace: a serve where the tennis ball served is served in and not touched by the receiver. Aces are usually powerful and generally land on or near one of the corners at the back of the service box. • Action: another word for spin. • Ad court: the left side of the court of each player. • Advantage: when one player wins the first point from a deuce and needs one more point to win the game. • Advantage set: an advantage set, as opposed to a "tie-break set" is won by a player/team having won six games with a two games advantage over the opponent(s). Final sets in the singles draws of the Australian Open, the French Open, The Championships, Wimbledon and the tennis Olympic event as well as the Davis Cup are all advantage sets. • All: is used by the chair umpire to announce scores when both players have the same number of points or the same number of points: 30–all (30–30), 15–all (15–15), etc... When both players are at 40, the preferred term is "Deuce". • All-court: A style of play that is a composite of all the different playing styles, which includes baseline, transition, and serve and volley styles. • Alley: the area of the court between the singles and doubles sidelines, also known as the tramlines. • Alternate: a player or a team that gains acceptance into the main draw of a tournament due to a main draw player or team withdrawing, when there are no qualies with potential lucky losers. • Approach shot: a shot used as a setup as the player runs up to the net, often using underspin or topspin. • ATP: Association of Tennis Professionals, the men's professional circuit. • ATP Champions Race: The ATP points ranking system that starts at the beginning of the year and by the end of the year mirrors the ATP entry system ranking. The top eight players at the end of the year qualify for the Tennis Masters Cup, not used starting from 2009. • Australian formation: (in doubles) a formation where the server and partner stand on the same side of the court (deuce or advantage court) before starting the point B • Backhand: hitting the ball with the back of the racquet hand facing the ball at the moment of contact. A backhand will often be hit by a right-handed player when the ball is at the left side of the court, and when it's on the right side of the court if the player is left-handed. • Backspin: (also known as slice or underspin), is a shot such that the ball rotates backwards after it is hit. The trajectory of the shot involves an upward force that lifts the ball (see Magnus effect). • Backswing: the portion of a swing where the racquet is swung backwards in preparation for the forward motion to hit the ball. • Bagel: winning (or losing) a set 6–0. With the shape of the "0" being evoked supposedly by the round shape of a bagel. See Breadstick. • Ball Boy (or Ball Girl or Ballkid): a child tasked with retrieving tennis balls from the court that have gone out of play.