Surprises: In Brief
Surprises
Play Number: 76World Premiere: 17 July 2012
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Faber
Other Media: No
Cast: 3m / 3f
Run Time: 2hr 10m
Synopsis: Several intertwined love stories set in a near future where longevity advances have significantly extended human life. But how does this affect who and how we love?
- Surprises is Alan Ayckbourn's 76th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 17 July 2012.
- It was a co-production between the Stephen Joseph Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre.
- The play was presented as part of the London 2012 Festival to mark the 2012 Olympics in London; it was not commissioned specifically for the event though having been commissioned by the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in advance of preparations for London 2012.
- Surprises was initially conceived on a far larger scale as Alan Ayckbourn initially thought it was going to be staged in repertory with A Small Family Business. Early ideas include a five act structure similar to Confusions and multiple android characters.
- Alan Ayckbourn rarely talks about specific inspirations for his plays, but in the case of Surprises, he revealed one of his inspirations was a song by the Swedish artist Silje Nergaard called Dance Me Love, which inspired Alan to write a love story.
- Surprises is one of Alan Ayckbourn's future-set science-fiction plays, which also include Henceforward…, Comic Potential and Communicating Doors among others.
- Subsequent to the original production, Alan expressed dissatisfaction with the play. This led, in 2023, for him to take second act of the play - the relationship between the android JAN and the human Lorraine - and to craft a new work around that. Constant Companions expands Jan's story whilst setting it between two other stories of human in varying relationships with androids.
- It is his third major play to feature an android as a major character following Henceforward… and Comic Potential (the family play My Sister Sadie also featured an android). It can be strongly argued, these three plays see a progression in the development of androids and their evolution.
- Alan Ayckbourn has frequently mentioned that Surprises, like many of his science-fiction plays, was loosely inspired by the 'broken' future worlds portrayed in Ridley Scott's films such as Alien and Blade Runner; one of the characters is named after Lieutenant Gorman who features in James Cameron's Aliens.
- Surprises is the first Ayckbourn play since Absurd Person Singular (1972) to feature a three act structure. The original production was performed in repertory with the 40th anniversary production of Absurd Person Singular and shares the same cast requirements.