Alan Ayckbourn is a passionate advocate of encouraging young people to visit the theatre and his ‘family plays’ form a substantial and important part of his play-writing canon.

It is generally accepted that to all intents and purposes, Alan began writing plays with a young audience in mind in 1988 with Mr A’s Amazing Maze Plays. In reality, Alan's first play for children was written in 1960 and his experiences of this and a second family play in 1962 led Alan to declare he was not able to write plays for young children and he would not attempt to write a full-length family play for another 26 years.

Dad’s Tale was Alan’s third play and is unusual in that it owes its origins and form to several different people. It is practically the only time Alan was writing a play to order that largely incorporated other people’s ideas and needs and this can be clearly seen in the resulting piece.

Alan’s first two plays, The Square Cat and Love After All, had been popular successes for the Library Theatre and for his third play, Stephen Joseph asked Alan to collaborate with the company’s writer-in-residence, David Campton, to create a Christmas play aimed predominantly at children. This was perhaps an unusual suggestion in itself as Alan and David’s writing styles and interests were totally divergent. David Campton had already began an adaptation of Mary Norton’s novel The Borrowers and Stephen suggested this was a good starting point. Alan read the play but this became the sole extent of the collaboration as Alan was then left to write piece; an element of The Borrowers survives in the final play in the form of the Tinies, little people who steal things throughout the play.

The second unusual decision to affect the play was this was to be a joint production between Studio Theatre Ltd and the British Dance Drama Theatre. Stephen had seen the company’s work during the summer at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, and been impressed by what he had seen. As a result, he had suggested the two companies combine forces for a Christmas play. It might have seemed like a good idea, but it seems doubtful Stephen fully thought out all the practicalities of such a decision.

The first major difficulty was the lack of budget, which meant the two companies could not rehearse together. As a result, the Studio Theatre company rehearsed their scenes in Scarborough and British Dance Drama Theatre, under the direction of Gerard Bagley, rehearsed in Birmingham. The two companies were only brought together for dress rehearsals. Obviously not an ideal way to mount a production!

The co-production also meant dance had to be substantially incorporated into the script; which apparently took Alan by surprise. Alan had no experience of dance and certainly not of writing scenes for a ballet. His solution to this hurdle was by having separate dance sections which illustrated the dreams of the characters. In essence the dance scenes and the drama scenes were totally separate and the dancing could just be dropped into the play when the British Dance Drama Theatre arrived in Scarborough.

The acting company included Stanley Page making his debut at the Library Theatre; the Australian born actor would become a regular member of the Studio Theatre company and appear in the world premieres of a number of Alan Ayckbourn plays including: The Norman Conquests; Confusions; Bedroom Farce and Sisterly Feelings. Alan Ayckbourn was also in the company and played seven roles; apparently during one performance he heard a woman exclaim: “Oh no! Not him again” during one performance.

Dad’s Tale was directed by Clifford Williams who brought the two companies together for the dress rehearsals at the Library Theatre, Scarborough. There is nothing to indicate there were any major problems with the integration of the companies and the dance with the drama.

The play opened on 19 December 1960 at the Library Theatre, although its success as a family play is very hard to judge as, according to Alan, very few children attended the play. Perhaps unaware that merely mounting a show for children did not necessarily mean parties of school children would descend en mass, the production coincided with the school holidays, had very little marketing and, as a result, ended up with particularly small audiences. The play was toured to Newcastle-under-Lyme's Municipal Hall in January 1961, but it was never produced again and has never been published.
Although no-one would ever argue that Dad’s Tale is a milestone in Alan’s playwriting career, several writers have noted there is one innovation in the plot which gives a clear hint of Alan’s burgeoning talent and his desire to break the mould. In one scene, Martin and his Auntie tell the story of how their neighbour’s have responded to Dad stealing their Christmas hamper. Although they are ostensibly telling the same story, their interpretations are radically different with each other. For a children’s play – or indeed for any play of this period – the idea of breaking the narrative structure to present alternate viewpoints is quite a radical idea. Of course, alternate scenes will become a common feature of Alan’s later work in plays such as Sisterly Feelings and Intimate Exchanges.

Alan Ayckbourn wrote Dad’s Tale under the pseudonym of Roland Allen, the final play to be credited to that name. Although his next play, Standing Room Only, was originally credited to Roland Allen, when it was later revived the play was – and has since been - attributed to Alan Ayckbourn.

Copyright: Simon Murgatroyd 2008

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