FlatSpin: In Brief
FlatSpin
Play Number: 59World Premiere: 3 July 2001
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: No
Cast: 3m / 4f
Run Time: 2hr 10m
Synopsis: When a young woman pretends to be someone she is not, she is inadvertently drawn into a police sting to catch a criminal. But no-one is quite as they appear.
Note: FlatSpin is part of the Damsels In Distress trilogy.
- FlatSpin is Alan Ayckbourn's 59th play play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 3 July 2001.
- The London premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Duchess Theatre on 7 September 2002.
- Damsels In Distress is one of only two trilogies written by Alan Ayckbourn; the other being The Norman Conquests (1973). It is occasionally incorrectly stated that Alan Ayckbourn's three supernatural plays (Haunting Julia, Snake In The Grass and Life & Beth) also comprise a trilogy, but the playwright himself does not consider them to be a trilogy.
- The plays are set in riverside apartments in London's Docklands, where Alan Ayckbourn himself owned an apartment. The set is shared, although subtly altered for each play.
- GamePlan and FlatSpin were conceived as a duology to be played in repertory. The plays only became a trilogy when during rehearsals for FlatSpin, Alan Ayckbourn announced to the company he had had an idea for a third play for the company which became RolePlay.
- The plays were written to be performed by the same cast of seven (three male / four females) on the same set; although the set does represent three different apartments and there is no narrative link or recurring characters in the three plays.
- The trilogy marked the final time - as of writing - that Alan Ayckbourn has allowed his latest play to transfer directly to London's West End. Since 2002, no plays written after the Damsels In Distress trilogy have been performed in the West End due to Alan's anger at the treatment of the trilogy in the West End. There have been revivals of earlier work though since 2007.
- FlatSpin was described by Alan Ayckbourn as a 'Hitchcockian thriller' and is influenced by Alan Ayckbourn's love of film.
- The actress Alison Pargeter won the Best Newcomer in the 2003 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for her roles in the trilogy.
- The correct title for the play is FlatSpin - one word with the 'F' and 'S' capitalised. It is not correct to market them either as Flat Spin or Flatspin.
- Although published as a play text by Samuel French, FlatSpin was also published in the collection Damsels in Distress (Faber).