Ten Times Table: Facts

Key facts relating to Alan Ayckbourn's Ten Times Table.
  • Ten Times Table is Alan Ayckbourn's 21st play.
  • The world premiere was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, on 18 January 1977.
  • The London premiere took place at the Globe Theatre on 5 April 1978.
  • Ten Times Table was the first new Ayckbourn play to be premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, (at that point called Theatre In The Round At Westwood) after the company had left Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1976.
  • The play was originally conceived as a multi-location play, but having written half the play Alan Ayckbourn discarded much of his script and re-wrote it in the single location of the Swan Hotel ballroom.
  • It is considered the first full-length Ayckbourn play considered to be set outside a domestic home (previous plays set outside the home were either the one act plays in Confusions or the musical Jeeves).
  • The playwright considers it one of his 'winter' plays, three plays in succession written for the first time during the winter months in Scarborough. Alan attributes the darkness found in Just Between Ourselves, Ten Times Table and Joking Apart to writing at this time of year.
  • The London production marked the first time Alan Ayckbourn had directed one of his own plays in the commercial West End (the previous year had seen him co-direct Bedroom Farce for the National Theatre).
  • Ten Times Table marked the final time the actor Christopher Godwin appeared in the world premiere of an Ayckbourn play. Previously he had created some of the most memorable Ayckbourn roles in the world premieres of Time & Time Again (Leonard), The Norman Conquests (Norman), Absent Friends (Colin) and Just Between Ourselves (Dennis).
  • Ten Times Table is one of Alan Ayckbourn's plays set in his fictional town of Pendon. Other notable Pendon-set plays include Relatively Speaking, Time And Time Again, Sisterly Feelings, A Chorus Of Disapproval and Improbable Fiction.
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