Norman Conquests: Table Manners; Living Together; Round and Round in the Garden

by Alan Ayckbourn

Book Overview

This brilliant comic trilogy details the amorous exploits of Norman, assistant librarian, whose one aim is to make the women of his life happy--these women being, as it happens, three sisters, one of them his wife, who can't wear contact lenses because "life with Norman is full of unexpected eye movements." Each play stands uproariously on its own yet interlocks with the others to form an ingenious Chinese puzzle of successive relations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802131344
• ISBN13: 9780802131348
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

so clever

great to have the three plays together to see how beautiful and clever the construction is - very funny and very human

The scripts for all three fantastic plays.

In the late 1970s PBS presented a hilarious trilogy of plays called "The Norman Conquests." I've been trying ever since to find them again. And here they are! This volume contains the scripts for all three of these amazing plays. Their premise: Norman is a real charmer who seduces (not necessarily sexually) everybody he meets. Each of the three plays takes place on a different stage. It's the same story and the same six characters, but seen from what happens only in each room in each play. It's an amazing accomplishment for a writer. This book carries an introduction by Ayckbourn that explains how he did it. And he says the plays are meant to be seen in any order. But I prefer the order given here: "Table Manners" (in the dining room), "Living Together" (the sitting room) and "Round and Round the Garden." If you haven't experienced it, the videos are available now (finally!), as well. The production (the same I saw on PBS) stars Tom Conti as an unforgettable Norman.

Acute social observation. Highly comical.

Terrific work (again!) from this major British playwright showing a disasterous family weekend where a would be Casanova sets his sights on his sister in law and the whole family ultimately become involved. Although written and set in the mid 1970s it remains just as funny (if not more so) now. All of the characters are classics and there are a feast of one liners. It really needs a stage production to be done justice though.