House & Garden (plays)
| House and Garden | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Characters | Teddy Platt Trish Platt Sally Platt Giles Mace Joanna Mace Jake Mace Gavin Ryng-Mayne Barry Love Lindy Love Lucille Cadeau Fran Briggs Warn Coucher Izzie Truce Pearl Truce |
||
| Date premiered | 19 June 1999 | ||
| Place premiered | Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough | ||
| Original language | English | ||
| Subject | Politics | ||
| Official site | |||
| Ayckbourn chronology | |||
|
|||
House and Garden are a diptych (or linked pair) of plays written by the English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1999. They are designed to be staged simultaneously, with the same cast in adjacent auditoria, and were published together as House & Garden. House takes place in the drawing room, and Garden in the grounds, of a large country house. Each play is self-contained (although each of course refers more or less obliquely to events in the other), and they may be attended in either order. As is typical of his work, Ayckbourn portrays the mostly bittersweet relationships between more or less unhappy, upper-middle-class people. The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the magazine House & Garden, in which country houses and gardens are often portrayed as idyllic, peaceful places.
After performances in 1999 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, the plays were staged in 2000 at the Royal National Theatre in London with a cast including Jane Asher, David Haig and Sian Thomas, and in 2001 at the Royal and Derngate theatres in Northampton and then again in 2005 at Harrogate Theatre directed by Hannah Chissick.
Act I of each play takes place in the morning, before lunch, and Act II in the afternoon, of a single Saturday in August.
In House, Teddy and Trish Platt's marriage is breaking up because of Teddy's affair with their near neighbour Jo Mace (who is married to Giles, one of Teddy's best friends). Jake Mace, Giles and Jo's son, is in love with Teddy and Trish's politically aware daughter, Sally, although his regard for her seems not to be reciprocated. It is the day of the garden fête, and the French film actress Lucille Cadeau arrives to open it. The novelist and political advisor Gavin Ryng-Mayne also arrives for lunch, to sound Teddy out about continuing his family's tradition of standing for Parliament. Although Lucille speaks no English, everyone except Teddy seems to be able to speak French. Even so, Teddy hits it off with Lucille over lunch (his friends and family practically ignoring him because of his affair with Jo), but he completely fails to convince Ryng-Mayne that he is up to politics, and equally fails to save his marriage. We also witness Ryng-Mayne's callous upsetting of Sally. Trish, after a heart-to-heart talk with Jake, leaves for good, and Jake at last gets around, albeit awkwardly, to asking Sally to go out with him.
...
Wikipedia