Life and Beth
| Life and Beth | |||
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| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Characters | Beth Gordon Connie David Martin Ella |
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| Date premiered | 22 July 2008 | ||
| Place premiered | Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough | ||
| Original language | English | ||
| Series | Things That Go Bump | ||
| Subject | Ghosts, marriage, closure | ||
| Genre | Comedy | ||
| Setting | Beth's sitting room | ||
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| Ayckbourn chronology | |||
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Life and Beth is a 2008 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was written as a third part of a trilogy named Things That Go Bump, uniting the cast of the first two plays: Haunting Julia (1994) and Snake in the Grass (2002). It is about a recently bereaved widow, Beth, troubled by her family's misguided support and a late husband who won't leave her alone.
The history of this play dates back to 1994, when Haunting Julia was premièred. The cast was three men, but the play was dominated by Julia, once a gifted musician, now a ghost. In 2002, a female companion piece was premièred, named Snake in the Grass, with a cast of three women in a play dominated by the ghost of the father of two of them (and a much less savoury character than Julia). For some time, Alan Ayckbourn had considered writing a third play with a supernatural that combined the casts of these plays, but it was only after Susie Blake – Miriam in the original Snake in the Grass – contacted Ayckbourn about reprising her role that he said he would write this third play. This play was considerably lighter than the other two plays, and Ayckbourn considered it his equivalent to Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit.
This the first play to be written since Alan Ayckbourn's stroke in 2006. After the stroke, he doubted if he could return to writing, at some points considering giving it up and just directing. (If I Were You, the first new Ayckbourn play performed after his stroke, was written before the event.) He first revealed he was working on a new play in July 2007 Originally titled Life After Beth (it was originally set after when Beth was the dead character), the title changed prior to its completion in that summer, and it was first publicly announced that the play would be performed as part of the 2008 summer season at the Stephen Joseph Theatre December 2007. Two months later it was announced that Ayckbourn's other two "ghost" plays would also be performed in this season as part of the Things That Go Bump trilogy.
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