Comic Potential - by Alan Ayckbourn (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A sci-fi comedy thriller, Comic Potential is a play set in the foreseeable future, when everything has changed--except human nature

Comic Potential is set in a television studio in the near future, where the director--an alcoholic has-been--and two assistants are making a daytime soap opera of the usual appalling sort. However, the difference here is that they are using actoids--robots programmed to act--and there are no scriptwriters. Into this situation comes the idealistic Adam, the nephew of the millionaire station owner, who wants to write comedy of the quality that Chaplin and Keaton once embodied. But when Adam falls in love with Jaycee Triplethree (JC333), one of the actoids on the show, everything is turned upside down as she grows more human and the line between actoid and human diminishes. When in anguish Jaycee finally cries that she can't say anything she hasn't been programmed to say, Adam points out that no one ever says anything original anyway.

Review Quotes

"As with all Ayckbourn's best plays you are watching a comedy-farce and suddenly find that tragedy comes out of the woodwork and grins at you...Like all serious comedies, Comic Potential hurts you with the sheer exuberance of its laughter and liberates you with its seriousness...The master of Scarborough is still on top form." --Sunday Times

"He is a profoundly moral writer and . . . has reached a new synthesis between the comic and the serious-the painfully funny . . . We are a fortunate age to have had our own Molière." --Sir Peter Hall

About the Author

Alan Ayckbourn is one of England's most prolific and widely performed living playwrights with over sixty plays in his catalogue. In 1997, he received a knighthood for his services to the theater. His plays include Comic Potential, The Norman Conquests trilogy, and House & Garden. He has also written a guide for fellow playwrights, The Crafty Art of Playmaking. Ayckbourn lives in England.