Table Manners: Part I of the Norman Conquests

by Alan Ayckbourn, Rosalind Ayres (Contributor), Kenneth Danziger (Contributor)

Englands famous seducer of other mens wives lays siege to his sister-in-law in the first battle of Ayckbourns celebrated triology The Norman Conquests. In Table Manners, the action occurs in the dining room of Mothers house, where a conventional middle-class family is attempting to have a pleasant country weekend. But they are no match for Norman, the bane of the family, who horrifies everyone by doing exactly as he likes.

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Published May 10, 2014

About the author

Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a popular and prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include Absurd Person Singular (1975), The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce (1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind (1985), A Small Family Business (1987), Man Of The Moment (1988), House & Garden (1999) and Private Fears in Public Places (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.

Reviews

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Table Manners is the first play in Alan Ayckbourn's theatre trilogy "The Norman Conquests," which came out when I was in college back in the 1970s. It was a fun time to major in theatre, lots of avant garde and experimental plays to see and perform. We all played around with Ayckbourn's stuff. These three plays, about a hedonistic man who thought nothing of seducing his emotionally fragile sister-in-law under the noses of each other and their husband's is no longer as wildly funny as it was fifty years ago, but is an interesting time capsule of middle class mid 20th Century manners.

The plays were usually performed either on consecutive nights or on a long weekend day.