Social, Historical and Cultural Aspects of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular

Social, Historical and Cultural Aspects of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular

This is an essay about the social, historical and cultural aspects of

Alan Ayckbourn's 'Absurd Person Singular'. I have studied the

playwright and the time period in which it was written, in order to

get an overview of what influenced his ideas. I came across a synopsis

when researching to give some indication of Ayckbourn's intentions:

o We visit three couples in their kitchens on the Christmas Eves of

three successive years. First the 'lower-class' but very much

up-and-coming Hopcrofts in the bright new-pin, gadget-filled kitchen -

anxiously giving a little party to their bank manager and his wife,

and an architect neighbour. Then the architect and his wife in their

neglected untidy flat. Lastly, the bank manager and his wife in their

large, slightly modernised, old-Victorian style kitchen. (Ayckbourn

gives us detailed descriptions of the kitchens which reflect class and

the prediction that electronic household items are the way of the

future.)

Running like a darker thread through the wild comedy of

behind-the-scenes disaster at Christmas parties is the story of the

advance of the Hopcrofts to material prosperity and independence - and

the decline of the others. In the final stages, the little man is well

and truly on top, with the others, literally and unnervingly, dancing

to his tune. This synopsis clearly suggests a time in England when the

class system was on its way out and people from different classes were

beginning to socialise together. Aycybourn wanted to shock people by

illustrating this change.

I then researched Ayckbourn's life to...

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... doesn't.

In Absurd Person Singular I feel that Ayckbourn is showing how

misinterpreted a religious festival such as Christmas can be. He

portrays the reality that lies behind closed doors and represents

Christmas as he feels it will be in a decade's time. There is no

longer a religious issue behind Christmas as people are simply

materialistic. He says that he hopes he is presenting real-life

situations, but with a diverse perspective on them, which I think he

successfully does as he simply presents he reality behind closed

doors. Ayckbourn's plays are as influential as is his capability to

scrutinize predictable, everyday middle class people, and nevertheless

to truthfully identify their fight to uphold these idyllic lives, at

the same time as clearly living the conflict and situations that so

many have to face.