Saturday Night, If It's Alright!

Saturday 27th June. 7.00 a.m. The heat has gone down considerably, but it's still unbearably hot. Currently, the digital thermometer reads 29º c, so a good deal hotter than usual, whatever usual is these days.

I have completed another play and I'm making little tweeks to make sure it runs for around 120 minutes and it has some sort of authinticity as it's set in Norfolk, so some of the characters would speak in the very distinct dialect.

Saturday 4th July. 9.20 a.m. Another warm day. We have had a few cooler days, but the weather forecast is coming in very hort again. I have to say, it is not something I enjoy because it can increase my blood pressure, and, since I have a heart condition, not something I am keen to experience.

Tuesday 7th July. 3.10p.m. It's not as hot as it was about a week ago. Currently the digital thermometer reads 31 c. 

I have written a couple more plays, this time in the style of Alan Ayckbourn. If you are not aware of his plays, where have you been for the last 50 or more years? He has written somewhere in the region of 90 plays, which has to be some kind of record. They are usually about very ordinary people doing very ordinary things. His first big success was 'Relatively Speaking' which I did the book for when I was an A.S.M. at Liverpool Playhouse in the early 1970s. Then, we did 'How The Others Half Love' at Century Theatre in Keswick, and then I did the book for another of his plays, at Ipswich Theatre in the mid 1970s, 'Time nd Time Again.' His work is usually premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough and often gets a West End production.

I am using his blueprint as the basis for several of my own plays, which are comic but can then have a certain melancholic feel to them, which makes for great theatre and have more depth to them than merely being funny. I think, having beeen involved with the production of some of his plays, I have a good idea ho they work, how, although at first sight they may seem simple, there is far more to them than you might imagine.

The central character in"Time and Time Again" was played by an actor called Chris Godwin, who created the character when the play was premiered at Scarborough, so he knew how to play Leonard. Alan Ayckhourned himself came to Ipswich to see our production and made the comment that OUR production was far better than the West End version, quite an accolade for out little production.