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For Christmas 2000, Alan Ayckbourn teamed up
with the accomplished composer Denis King to work on
their first musical together. This would be Alan’s first true musical play
for children (The Musical Jigsaw Play featured a song and musical
elements, but was not a musical) and is possibly one of his finest
and most well-rounded family plays.
Whenever is a time-travelling play which draws its inspiration from
the likes of H G Wells, Frank L Baum, Isaac Asimov and arguably the
future-changing and alternative history stories of Ray Bradbury and Philip K
Dick. It is a narrative packed with ideas that challenges its intended
audience. The narrative has a definite feel of The Wizard of Oz to it
as Emily (Dorothy) goes on an adventure in order to return home and right a
wrong, with her companions of Oscar Fieldman (Scarecrow), the android Ziggi
(Tin-Man) and the furry beast Hoombean (Lion). The appearance of the
less-than-epic Timekeeper at the end of time is also reminiscent of the
unveiling of The Wizard in Oz.
The first production also made design nods to films and television with
references to Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Time Machine
and many others.
As with all Alan’s plays with music, the songs are an integral part of the
narrative and not only push the story forward but deal with some of the
play’s most pertinent and complex themes: Hailgreet deals with the familiar
theme of our inability to communicate and how technology is not helping this
process, while The End Of Time is practically a science lesson on the Big
Bang theory delivered in three minutes. The pairing of Alan and Denis would
be very successful and lead to several more projects in the future,
including the similarly ambitious musical Orvin – Champion Of Champions.
If Alan’s mantra with his plays for children in recent years had been not to
patronise or underestimate them as an audience, here he brought all his
experiences to bear with a play that is scary, fast-paced, demanding, funny,
ominous, intelligent and witty. It is a play that can be enjoyed on many
different levels and by all ages.
The play opened at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in December 2000 and was
acclaimed by critics and popular with audiences. It was quickly published by
Faber and has generated much interest from schools. In 2006, it was adapted
for the radio and broadcast by the BBC.
Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd 2006 |
