There are some who have pre-conceived ideas about what to expect from Alan Ayckbourn. For many, the prolific writer and director of almost 80 plays is the high priest of English middle class mores, with his work awash with disaffected suburbanites falling apart in immaculately constructed if increasingly absurdist fashion. Few would suspect the now 78 year old Ayckbourn's latest work to be a six hour flight into dystopian speculative fiction told in two parts. This is exactly what they get, however, with The Divide, which forms a major component of Edinburgh International Festival's 70th anniversary theatre programme. Set a hundred years from now, Ayckbourn's vision for The Divide imagines a world decimated by a deadly virus that makes any contact between men and women fatal for both. In a country divided by gender, men wear white for their purity, while women dress in black as a mark of their sins. Given the state of the real world right now, such a scenario looks worrying
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.