SOURCE: “Ayckbourn in New York,” in The Hudson Review, Vol. XLIV, No. 2, Summer, 1991, pp. 285-91.

In the following essay, Hornby praises Ayckbourn's plays.

The plays of Alan Ayckbourn have the reputation in New York of being box office poison. Fabulously successful in the rest of the world, whether in English or in translation (the Germans are especially fond of him), they have usually flopped here, when they have been done at all. One production was so bad that the audience ended up prompting the lead actor. We have thus managed to miss out on some of the most stimulating, unusual, and hilarious British plays of the past decade.

The first sign of possible change was a successful production a few seasons back of Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind at the Manhattan Theatre Club. A comedy about a woman slipping into schizophrenia (believe it or not!), it starred the droll...