Confusions - Couverture souple

Alan Ayckbourn was born in 1939 and has over seventy plays and productions to his name. He worked all over the world but has focused on the West End where he has also run his own theatre company. Major successes include, Absurd Person Singular (1975), a black comedy often considered his most perfect work. It was first performed in 1972 at the Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough, where Ayckbourn was artistic director between 1972 and 2009. Other plays include: Bedroom Farce (1975), the title of a two-act comedy, first performed in 1977 at the National Theatre; Just Between Ourselves (1976); Way Upstream (1982); A Chorus of Disapproval (1984); Woman in Mind (1985); A Small Family Business (1987); Man Of The Moment (1988); House & Garden (1999); and Private Fears in Public Places (2004). He has won many awards including seven Evening Standard awards as well as a Tony in 2009 for best revival for The Norman Conquests.

Confusions, a series of plays for four-to-five actors, typifies Alan Ayckbourn's particular brand of black comedy on human behaviour. The plays are alternately naturalistic, stylised and farcical, but underlying each is the echoing problem of profound loneliness.

From a devoted and isolated mother, to her unfaithful travelling salesman husband, through a solicitous waiter to well-heeled diners and an utterly shambolic garden fete, human frailty is laid bare as one hilarious situation after another unfolds. Each of the plays connects to the next through one of its characters until the final one is reached when four people sit alone on park benches.

From high farce to poignant observation; the laughs, however dark, keep coming. This new edition was published to coincide with the first ever revival of the play, staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 9 July 2015.