'Ayckbourn is at his most serious when he is at his funniest'. For my coursework I am to provide information to support this statement, from the two plays 'Drinking Companion' and 'A Talk in the Park', both by Alan Ayckbourn.

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Confusions Coursework                                                                                                             Nick Jones

‘Ayckbourn is at his most serious when he is at his funniest’. (Michael Billington)

For my coursework I am to provide information to support this statement, from the two plays ‘Drinking Companion’ and ‘A Talk in the Park’, both by Alan Ayckbourn.

  • The main qualities that each character has is a sense of reality- these are the type of people that you might find anywhere you go, there is nothing unusual of special about any of them, so perhaps this makes it easy for the audience to relate to them.

  • The most comical parts of the plays are where the characters are in common situations and are encountering common problems, such as Beryl in ‘A talk in the Park’. Beryl wants other people to listen to her problems but does not want to listen to other peoples, so an element of hypocrisy enters the play.

  • What people find funny is the way that Ayckbourn shows what people are really like, by showing their flaws in each play where as most play writes do not write so realistically. It is these flaws that Ayckbourn has highlighted and they are the main storyline in each of the plays. Basically, Ayckbourn is taking average style characters putting them in a situation where they will behave normally. From the outside people may not always be, as they seem.
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I have chosen the play ‘Drinking Companion’ to study for several reasons. One of these is that the main character, Harry, is not unlike many middle aged men.

The scene is set in a 3-star hotel bar, and Harry approaches a young lady, Paula, alone in the foyer and buys her drinks continuously at the hotel bar, trying to get her to go up to his hotel room. He tries many different methods of doing this such as complementing Paula, embellishing on his job description, avoids questions about his wife and children and quickly changes subject and lies ...

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