Bangkok Community Theatre is holding regular weekday evening online play readings at 7:30pm. Each week we choose a new script and share it with the participants in advance.
Then we get together and read the play aloud on zoom, regularly switching up the roles so that everyone gets a chance to read, if they wish. Some BCT friends don’t want to read; they just like to listen. That’s okay, too.
These play readings are open to anyone who wants to join! Just RSVP@bangkokcommunitytheatre.com to get the link. It’s free and a great way to meet some other people who enjoy live theatre. Please join us; tell your friends.
On Tuesday, July 21st, 2020 at 7:30pm, please join us to read the first in Alan Ayckbourn’s comic Trilogy “The Norman Conquests. We will be reading “Table Manners”
ABOUT THE PLAY:
The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. Each of the plays depicts the same six characters over the same weekend in a different part of a house. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden in the garden.
The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth’s sister Annie, and Tom, Annie’s next-door-neighbour. A seventh unseen and unheard character is in the house, upstairs: the bedridden mother of Reg, Ruth and Annie.
The plays are at times wildly comic, and at times poignant, in their portrayals of the relationships among the six characters.
Each play is self-contained, and they may be watched in any order. Some of the scenes overlap, and on several occasions a character’s exit from one play corresponds with an entrance in another. Similarly, noise and commotion in one room can sometimes be heard by characters in another.
The plays were not written to be performed simultaneously, although Ayckbourn did achieve that some twenty-five years later in House & Garden.
The premise is that Annie lives in a countryside house taking care of her demanding mother, and has decided that she needs a weekend off. Reg and Sarah have agreed to come and take care of Annie’s & Reg’s mother for a week-end while Annie goes on a short trip. However, Annie is secretly planning to meet up with her sister Ruth’s charming, rakish husband Norman for an illicit weekend together (something Annie has never done before, and is unsure about). However, things go wrong when Norman shows up at the house early to pick up Annie contrary to plan, and everybody ends up at the house for the entire week-end, and various arguments ensue while the characters have differing degrees of understanding about what’s actually happening.