A Small Family Business

by Alan Ayckbourn

Alan Ayckbourn Comedy 7 male, 5 female Multiple Interior Scenes England's master of satire is in top form in this comic morality play which was triumphantly presented by the National Theatre of Great Britain. Jack McCraken has the opportunity of a he is the new head of a family furniture business and believes he will initiate a new age of honesty and integrity. He quickly learns that everyone else involved in the enterprise has a vested intere

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

182 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1987

About the author

Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a popular and prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include Absurd Person Singular (1975), The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973), Bedroom Farce (1975), Just Between Ourselves (1976), A Chorus of Disapproval (1984), Woman in Mind (1985), A Small Family Business (1987), Man Of The Moment (1988), House & Garden (1999) and Private Fears in Public Places (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award.

Reviews

[Jules ♈ (witchyrover) · Rating 2 out of 5]

First read Meh....mehhhh.
Second read Compulsory read, again. English II is actually focused on a lot of reading. This play was slightly more interesting than the others (except Animal Farm). It's about a family man who slowly follows into corruption due to the rest of the family members. It's a sad and true story based on Thatcher's policy of laissez faire, drugs, murder and so and so on. (cause the setting is in England).
Anyway, it's short and fast paced. However, I could not connect to any characters. Sometimes you are meant to feel sorry for at least one of them, and in this play I didn't.
Anita a whore, Samantha a drug-adict, Harriet an anorexic blah blah blah, no pity for any of them.

[Duncan Maccoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play is unique, it has never been staged in the round. It has an impressive set, one which is well described in the opening pages. It was written while Ayckbourn was working at the National Theatre in London and that is where the premiere took place; it has also premiered on Broadway in New York. I saw it in Pitlochry in the Festival Theatre in the highlands of Scotland.

[maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

amo el drama familiar ajeno

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I borrowed three Alan Ayckbourn plays from the library and this is the third I’ve read in a week. I think I’ve now had enough Alan Ayckbourn, he hasn’t won me over. Ayckbourn’s reputation is intriguing: writing popular comedies, he also gained critical kudos. I’m not only finding it difficult to know why he gains the praise, but also why he’s so popular. I presume A Small Family Business works much better on the stage than it does when read off the page. I don’t find it particularly funny, but maybe it’s a different experience in the theatre. The back cover of my edition tells me it won an award in 1987 for being the best new play of the year and two of the quoted reviewers extol it as a “morality play”, one of them proclaiming Ayckbourn as a fine “recorder of social nuance.” Well, I don’t get it. A Small Family Business reminds me of the Boulting Brothers’ satiric films made in the late 1950s, things like I’m All Right Jack. These were much respected at the time, but I find the famous satire to be little more than Tory sneering at the modern world. It aims to make us feel superior, not questioning. Is that the basis of Ayckbourn? A Small Family Business is centred on Jack who is about to take over the family business – or, to be more exact, his father-in-law’s business. The play begins with a family party celebrating the event, but proceedings are interrupted by a detective who is after Jack’s teenage daughter for shoplifting. And then he finds the problem with the business is that everyone is on the take...his brother and his wife, his brother-in-law, his son-in-law, all bleeding the family business dry. That, I suppose, is why it is a “morality play”, but it is all fairly comfortable, the modern world is one where people only care about themselves and have no concern for the consequences...but we are not like that. Jack is the most interesting character, trying to do right while keeping loyal to his family. And “social nuance”? The characters seem little more than types – I’ve got nothing against genre fictions where characters begin as types but then gain more resonance, either through a growing complexity of detail or complexity of context (e.g., the best Hollywood films or Charles Dickens' novels), but I can’t find that in Ayckbourn: I can’t see anything other than easy and glib types, which makes it all very comfortable – we can relax in the way we relax when watching a sitcom. But there is also a bit of “social comment” so we can feel it is doing us good. (But I temper my dismissal knowing, as always with a play, that it might just work differently when being enacted.)

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never gets funny and ends with no resolution. Lots of characters, ages 16-75, lots of costume changes. Complicated and confusing set that represents 4 different family homes with no change in lighting or decoration. On-stage practical bathroom. Shoplifting, extortion, drug-dealing, accidental murder, cheating in business and marriage. unnecessarily inappropriate language ("Some of those yellow men." "He's more than halfway to Nancy." Physical threats to women and children. Can't tell characters apart from their dialogue. Couple caught in affair literally with their pants down. 1 actor plays 5 different Italian brothers but very little to differentiate them. Poor excuse for a comedy.

[basker ville · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very suspenseful dark comedy by Alan Ayckbourn. I loved his transitions from scene into scene, it keeps the action and movement going. Each character was thoroughly flushed out and had its own point of view. I relate with Anita the most because she has the best gear. After the unveiling of betrayls and lies and an accidental death, the family comes together. I recommend this.

[Brian McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow in its exposition, it manages to gain steam by the end of the first act. Lots of characters, rooms, and farcical dilemmas.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for a school read but nothing more.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

也有本地化，但本來故事不算極吸引，陳鈞潤也盡量把情節改為於深圳作背景，帶有多少香港和中國大陸的笑點。

[Juli · Rating 4 out of 5]

End at 7:17 a.m
Fue muy divertido de leer en clase

[Jo]

mañana rindo y estoy haciendo mis lecturas a último momento, letsss go

[Michael P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have watched this instead of reading it - too many characters and too many blended scenes for it to be engaging on the page.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy. What a play.

This play was also for my IGCSE exams.

It involves comedy, corruption, family and tragedy.

Jack McKracken is about to take over his father-in-law's furniture making company and when he informs this to his family, he makes a speech stating that it will be the most corruption-free company and even stealing a paper clip will be frowned upon. This suddenly changes when Benedict Hough, a detective, arrives at his house and tells him that his young 16 year old daughter Samantha has been caught shoplifting on a security camera. The crime is stealing a 1 pound object (if I remember correctly a mascara?) but it was a crime nontheless to Jack. For Sammy, this is unoffensive as "everybody steals" to which her mother Poppy and sister Tina admit that their pasts had involved shoplifting.

Benedict is willing to forget about the whole robbery thing if Jack gives him a job at Ayres and Graces (the furniture company. Jack is in awe as he doesn't want to do this, even if he has to send his own daughter to jail. But, as his father-in-law informs him that their designs are being stolen and that there may be spies inside the company, Jack has no choice but hire him. After this, Benedict informs him that the designs are being used by a rival firm run by the Rivetti brothers, contacts of Jack's brother Cliff. He goes to his brother's house to confront him but finds his wife Anita alone at their house with the Rivetti brothers, meaning that Cliff has been buying the furniture and selling it to the rival firm.

However, Benedict blackmails Jack which makes him talk to his family to raise more money but decide to hire the Rivetti brothers to murder Benedict. Meanwhile, Beneditc comes across Poppy, Tina and Sammy who later kill Benedict. The Rivetti brothers help to dispose the body only if they could use Ayres and Graces as a front for their drug distribution business. Jack reluctantly agrees and gives a similar speech than the one he delivered at the beginning of the play about morals but what he cannot see, and the audience can, is Sammy hiding in the bathroom and suffering from her own drug addiction which caused the shoplifting.

This play is a funny one. It involves funny scenes, hilarious quotes, embarassment and more. I'd definitley read it again.

8/10

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for today but didn't have the book photocopies so I had to get up early to go and buy them and then I read them throughout the day at work (luckily today I was on a training course and not actually working so I could read while our 'teacher' taught us -- it reminded me of high school when I could just take out my book and read if I didn't feel like paying attention to the professor) and I tried really hard to finish it (I ended up liking it a bit, actually) just to write a lousy essay because the task was boring as hell and I didn't feel like writing something exceptional. So that's that.

[Hazem Sharaf · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to study that for my high school literature class back, and I read it in the spring of 2000, a couple of months before exam. I remember it was supposed to be funny as our teacher have told us, but it didn't amuse me. I remember that was the first time I got learnt that firm means a company. I also recall that there was a naughty character named Samantha and they called her Samy.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually screamed at this book. But what happened to Samantha at the end!

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing tale and satire on Thatcherism as an honest man battles the corruption rife in his entire family.

[Xime Lage · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice funny social play