Joking Apart

WAAPA delights in presenting its Acting students in Joking Apart, the brilliant comedy by one of England's most prolific contemporary playwrights, Alan Ayckbourn. Joking Apart promises to be a fine evening of theatre, the play simmers with triumphs on and off the tennis court, ongoing rivalries, petty jealousies, unrequited love and lust, and the tantalizing question, "What is happiness?" Richard and Anthea are the perfect couple, living in unwedded bliss in a restored vicarage deep in the English countryside. He is a successful businessman; she is beautiful and vivacious. Teetering between the wildly comic and deeply poignant, Joking Apart explores the unrelenting theme of natural envy as Richard and Anthea’s friends become ever more deeply resentful of the golden couple, even as they help themselves unstintingly to food, drink, and games of croquet and tennis. Of all the plays he has written Alan Ayckbourn has said Joking Apart is one of his favourites. First performed in 1978, followed by a run in the West End at The Globe, Ayckbourn returned to the play in 2002 reviving it to much critical acclaim.