Confusions : five interlinked one-act plays (New ed)

A student edition of five one-act plays by Britain's most popular playwright.

Ayckbourn's series of plays for 4-5 actors typify his black comedies of human behaviour.

The plays are alternately naturalistic, stylised and farcical, but underlying each is the problem of loneliness. "The Mother Figure" shows a mother unable to escape from baby talk; in "The Drinking Companion" an absentee husband attempts seduction without success; in "Between Mouthfuls", a waiter oversees a fraught dinner encounter.

A garden party gets out of hand in "Gosforth's Fete whilst A Talk in the Park" is a revue style curtain call piece for the five actors.

Whether the comedies concern marital conflict, infidelity or motherhood and take place on a park bench or at a village fete, the characters are familiar and their cries for help instantly recognisable. "Principally he is respected as a radical re-inventor of form" - Dominic Dromgoole.