Bedroom Farce: In Brief
Bedroom Farce
Play Number: 19World Premiere: 16 June 1975
Venue: Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: Three-sided
Published: Samuel French, Vintage Classics
Other Media: Television; Radio
Cast: 4m / 4f
Run Time: 2hr
Synopsis: A highly-strung couple wreak havoc in the bedrooms of three other couples during a single night.
Note: Although it should not need saying to anyone who has read the play, Bedroom Farce is NOT a farce. It is a comedy or - as the playwright prefers to not to label his work - a play.
- Bedroom Farce is Alan Ayckbourn's 19th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, on 16 June 1975.
- The London premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn and Peter Hall - took place in the Lyttelton at the National Theatre on 16 March 1977.
- The New York premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn and Peter Hall - took place at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on 29 March 1979.
- Alan Ayckbourn finished writing the play on the same day his and Andrew Lloyd Webber's flop musical Jeeves closed in the West End.
- The play was initially going to feature four couples in four bedrooms rather than the four couples in three bedrooms of the final play.
- Bedroom Farce was commissioned by the National Theatre as an end-stage play (and it is considered one of Alan's few end-stage pieces), however he intended to produce it in-the-round when it had its first production at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough. Unfortunately, the set as designed wouldn't fit in the space, so it was produced three-sided.
- The London production marked both Alan's debut as a director in London (credited as co-director with Peter Hall) and the first of his plays to be staged at the National Theatre.
- The National Theatre's production is regarded as the first bona fide success at the venue which had opened on London's South Bank in 1976.
- The National Theatre's production transferred to both the West End and Broadway, where Alan received his only Tony Award nominations to date (for Direction and Best Play); although he would receive the Special Tony Award For Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2010.
- The National Theatre's production was also adapted for television as part of a six play package agreed between the National Theatre and Granada Television. So successful was the broadcast, plans were seriously considered for a spin-off sitcom Ernest & Delia.
- Revived in London in 2002, the poor quality of the production - alongside the treatment of his production of Damsels In Distress - led Alan to make the decision to put a moratorium on productions of all his work in London for several years and to permanently cease transferring his new work to the West End.
- In 2022, it was adapted for the radio by Jarvis & Ayres Production in a two-part production premiered on BBC Radio 4 on 31 December, directed by Martin Jarvis.
- Despite the title, Bedroom Farce is not a farce; in fact Alan Ayckbourn originally intended to title the play Bedroom Farce, A Comedy.
- Although published as a play text by Samuel French, Bedroom Farce was also published in the collection Three Plays (Penguin, later Vintage Classics).