Alphabetical Order
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:16th Apr '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A classic comedy from one of Britain's leading dramatists. Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy in 1975. A revised edition of the script presented at Hampstead Theatre from April 2009. MIchael Frayn work has achieved remarkable success with hit plays ranging from comic farces, such as Donkeys Years and Noises Off, to the most intelligent and gripping of stage dramas, such as Copenhagen and Democracy. Michael Frayn's other work includes the award-winning novel, Spies, and the recent work of non-fiction, The Human Touch.
A revised edition of Michael Frayn's comedy set in a provincial newspaper office, Alphabetical Order won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy when it transferred from the Hampstead Theatre to the West End in 1975.Winner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award after its long run at the Hampstead Theatre and on the West End in 1975, Alphabetical Order is set in the library of a provincial newspaper where battle is joined between the forces of order and chaos, between arid organisation in the person of the new library assistant, Leslie, and humane confusion in the person of Lucy, the much-loved resident librarian. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, Frayn draws his gallery of characters with the hilarious accuracy which can only come from first-hand experience. This edition features the author's revised version of the script presented at the Hampstead Theatre in April 2009.
'It is no barrier to the enjoyment of Michael Frayn's 1975 comedy that the kind of newspaper cuttings library in which it takes place has been superseded by digital archives... The great virtue of this enlightened comedy is that it transcends the technological revolution to deal with eternal verities.' Michael Billington, Guardian, 22.4.09 'Michael Frayn's sweet-natured comedy about an endangered regional newspaper raises wry chuckles 34 years on from its first performance... The play is a sentimental and prescient protest against those who prioritise efficiency and profit margins over human beings... Its quasi-philosophical homage to the art of cataloguing information...has arguably become more interesting over the intervening years, an inadvertent prophecy of the triumphant age of Google.' Claire Allfree, Metro, 23.4.09 'Frayn studs his script with typically wry, philosophical one-liners that slip easily off his over-analytical characters' tongues. And their goal, at first murky, turns out to be survival itself.' Dominic Maxwell, The Times, 23.4.09 'Alphabetical Order proves poignant as well as funny. It also seems astonishingly prescient... Frayn's fictional paper's fate eerily mirrors the current acute anxiety in the newspaper business where long established titles are collapsing with alarming frequency.' Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 23.4.09 'Michael Frayn's delightful 1975 newspaper cuttings-library comedy' Michael Coveney, Independent, 23.4.09
ISBN: 9781408122600
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 6mm
Weight: 110g
96 pages