The Norman Conquests
Alan Ayckbourn
May 2009 · L.A. Theatre Works · Narrated by Martin Jarvis, Rosalind Ayres, and Full Cast
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4 hr 1 min
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About this audiobook
Ayckbourn’s celebrated triology The Norman Conquests - three hilarious and poignant plays depicting the same six characters in one house over one weekend, namely Norman and his romantic follies.
Table Manners:
England’s famous seducer of other men’s wives lays siege to his sister-in-law in the first “battle”. A middle-class family trying to have a pleasant country weekend is no match for Norman, who horrifies everyone by doing exactly as he likes.
Living Together:
In the second “battle” Norman gets drunk on homemade wine – and all hell breaks loose. He unleashes his merry brand of manipulative charm on the hapless guests and even his most formidable opponents go down in defeat on the drawing room rug.
Round and Round the Garden:
In the third “battle” the setting is Mother’s overgrown English garden, where something more troublesome than brambles lurks among the roses. Havoc ensues as this satirical masterpiece makes its way to a hilarious conclusion.
L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performances featuring:
Rosalind Ayres as Sarah
Kenneth Danziger as Reg
Martin Jarvis as Norman
Jane Leeves as Annie
Christopher Neame as Tom
Carolyn Seymour as Ruth
Table Manners:
England’s famous seducer of other men’s wives lays siege to his sister-in-law in the first “battle”. A middle-class family trying to have a pleasant country weekend is no match for Norman, who horrifies everyone by doing exactly as he likes.
Living Together:
In the second “battle” Norman gets drunk on homemade wine – and all hell breaks loose. He unleashes his merry brand of manipulative charm on the hapless guests and even his most formidable opponents go down in defeat on the drawing room rug.
Round and Round the Garden:
In the third “battle” the setting is Mother’s overgrown English garden, where something more troublesome than brambles lurks among the roses. Havoc ensues as this satirical masterpiece makes its way to a hilarious conclusion.
L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performances featuring:
Rosalind Ayres as Sarah
Kenneth Danziger as Reg
Martin Jarvis as Norman
Jane Leeves as Annie
Christopher Neame as Tom
Carolyn Seymour as Ruth
About the author
Many American tourists who flock to the annual Ayckbourn offering in London's West End, think of Alan Ayckbourn as Great Britain's Neil Simon. The analogy holds true to the extent that the relationship between Ayckbourn's and Simon's plays illustrates the difference between British and American theater and audiences. Both writers capture the social machinations of middle-class characters in daily situations that are made compelling simply by the addition of clever but conventional plots, dramatic intrigues, twists, and discoveries. However, where Simon's plays tend to evolve into a condition of broad pathos or comedy, luxuriating in bittersweet melodrama, Ayckbourn's offerings revel in ever increasing intricacy, sharply incisive verbal dueling, and a dark social resonance that sounds much greater depths than in Simon's drama. Ayckbourn's scripts embody boggling challenges for directors and actors as well as audiences. Intimate Exchanges (1985), for example, a sequence of plays for ten characters played by only two actors, involves numerous moments when an actor chooses to send the script off on one of two alternative directions. The Norman Conquests (1975) typifies Ayckbourn's determination to squeeze as much as possible out of a dramatic construct. The trilogy's first play, Table Manners, offers a typical Ayckbourn scenario with family traumas played against each other in the constrained setting of a dining room. In the second and third plays, Living Together and Round and Round the Garden, the audience is exposed to simultaneous layers of action that occur in two other venues, the living room and garden, when characters are not onstage in the dining room. Each play makes sense on its own, but the trilogy taken as a whole embodies a vision of this family that is larger than the sum of the individual parts. Aychbourn has also been known for rather experimental staging. The Way Upstream (1982), for example, is set on and around a boat and requires flooding the stage. Ayckbourn's later plays reflect a bleak vision of society. In Woman in Mind (1985) and Henceforward (1987), Aychbourn's characters have become increasingly complex, and he reveals himself as an intense social commentator. Other recent plays include It Could Be Any One of Us (1983), Man of the Moment (1990), and Body Language (1991). Since the 1970s, Ayckbourn has written at least one play a season; the premieres are always at a small local theater that he runs in the resort town of Scarborough. 020
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