Farce by the Book

Now in his fifth decade as a playwright, Alan Ayckbourn is one of British theater's senior knights. But the 63-year-old author of such bittersweet comic masterpieces as House/Garden and The Norman Conquests remains as productive as ever. His latest, Damsels In Distress, is a trilogy of self-contained plays that share the same cast but are unrelated save for the Thames-side apartment in which they are set.

A trilogy might seem a daunting task to most authors, but by now Ayckbourn knows his craft inside out. So much so that he has just published a how-to book, The Crafty Art of Playmaking (Faber & Faber). "I don't exclude the muse," he says. "But just letting the inspiration take you is a very risky way to write. You need rules to motor that inspiration." Scholarly in tone, the book provides what he calls 101 "Obvious Rules" for successful writing and directing. Having laid down the law, how well do his own plays follow them? Pretty closely, on the evidence of Damsels in Distress.

Many of the precepts in the book have to do with planning a show's structure — the time frame, for instance, and the number of characters. "This phase can take at least a year," according to Rule No. 23. Ayckbourn is adamant that playwrights must take this long to consider what will work on stage. "You've got to plan the practicalities," he says, "such as how dialogue will work within a set, where an audience will be looking." In Damsels in Distress, the choice of actors' triple roles is a great example of such structural ingenuity. Saskia Butler plays three types of tough women — a teenager determined to survive, a fight-happy commando and a bossy suburban housewife with a vulnerable core.

Ayckbourn's focus on narrative structure will come as no surprise to his fans. This most ingenious of plotters loves playing with ideas of how a story should go — 1982's Intimate Exchanges famously explored a multitude of different endings. And some trickery is afoot in Damsels (directed by the author). In play No. 1, GamePlan, a disturbing drama of teenage prostitution turns into a hide-the-corpse farce; in play No. 2, FlatSpin, a lonely-gal romance becomes a spy thriller; and in RolePlay a meet-the-parents dinner comedy morphs into a piercing study of social class.

In "Obvious Rule No. 1" Ayckbourn admonishes: "Never look down on comedy or regard it as the poor cousin of drama." Both GamePlan and RolePlay make this case to devastating effect. In the first, a 16-year-old's determination to raise funds through prostitution is made more harrowing by the sight of her tearfully shy friend dressed as a brothel maid. Her exaggerated make-up and outfit provoke laughter — and unease.

Rule No. 33 decrees: "The best comedy springs from the utterly serious." And so FlatSpin, pure farce about a girl whose date turns out to be a drugs squad operative, is the least funny of the three. Never rooted in reality, the stakes aren't high enough to provide the discomfort that is so often the flip side of laughter.

"Obvious Rule No. 11: Never sell your characters short in order to meet the requirements of a gag or even the plot." Here, Ayckbourn occasionally breaks his own rule. Usually, it's the production trying too hard, as when GamePlan's putative prostitute is confronted with a client who won't stop talking. The fact that her first trick is a crushing bore is funny, but the ludicrous poses she strikes to lure him to bed are not.

"Obvious rule number 5: [The audience] needs to care about your characters." One of Ayckbourn's great gifts is the ability to create people whose flaws are both maddening and charming. Best of all is the boyfriend's mother in RolePlay, superbly performed by Jacqueline King. Perpetually drunk, she mortifies everyone with alcohol-drenched insults. Yet among the hypocritical company, her honesty is refreshing. Which brings us to Rule No. 54: "Casting is everything." Ayckbourn's ensemble is uniformly fabulous. In particular Alison Pargeter moves from sniveling schoolgirl through Bridget Jones-style lonelyheart to damaged woman, impressive in each incarnation.

Damsels In Distress is an uneven but enjoyable triptych, which easily accords with its author's "Obvious Rule No. 101: No one ever set out to do a show with the intention of giving you a bad time."