Dialogue-rich but decidedly nonliterary, the vast majority of Ayckbourn's plays satirize the manners and morés of the white middle class, its tedious and often contradictory conventions - marriage, in particular. Like Noel Coward but without the stiff-upper-lip snark, he is a mirthful mocker of those living out the drab suburban dream.
"To direct an Ayckbourn play, you really need someone who is knowledgeable about human foibles," says Richard Hamburger, emeritus artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, who is directing the Wilma's My Wonderful Day. "A good sense of humor, timing, and a propensity for precision are Ayckbourn necessities as well."
In wall-to-wall-wordy plays from How the Other Half Loves (1969) to The Norman Conquests (1973) to Time of My Life (1992), Ayckbourn has let his audiences eavesdrop on the mundane parlor conversations and neurotic bedroom natterings of Britain's burgherdom, to wildly comic effect. As critic Harold Clurman once wrote, he is "a master hand at turning the bitter apathy, the stale absurdity which most English playwrights now find characteristic of Britain's lower-middle-class existence into hilarious comedy."
And then there is My Wonderful Day.
The 2009 play, which premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, Ayckbourn's home stage, then skipped London and went straight to Broadway, is his first written specifically for a black character - 9-year-old Winnie, daughter of Laverne, an Afro-Caribbean housekeeper. More significant, it is the first time a child has had a lead role in an Ayckbourn play for adults. This isn't one of his occasional forays into children's theater - it's a catty, class-centric grown-up play with a witty child at its center.
