Time And Time Again: West End Reviews
Time And Time Again opened in the West End in 1972. This page presents extracts from some of the major reviews of the London premiere of the play to offer an impression of how the play was received.Daily Express (Ian Christie)
"Eric Thompson directs the piece, which amusing as it often is, hardly adds up to a play."
Daily Mail (Peter Lewis)
"It looks like a conventional light comedy but it begins to suspiciously resemble Hamlet - a comic Hamlet of the cheaper suburbs…. It is a comedy of small talk, small touches and small accidents. Very dry, ironic fooling."
Daily Mirror (Arthur Thirkell)
"Author Alan Ayckbourn - who is clever at getting characters to talk at cross-purposes - has written a witty, perceptive comedy. I found it highly entertaining."
Daily Telegraph (John Barber)
"It is all very light. Alan Ayckbourn has an airy touch - he wrote How The Other Half Loves, the Robert Morley success…. but the play is so light, it slowly floats up into the air and gets lost in a series of anti-climaxes."
Evening News (Felix Barker)
"You will simply have to take my word for it. This is the most perfect light comedy we have seen for years, but it utterly eludes description…. Like the wit of Coward, the humour of Alan Ayckbourn looks nothing on paper, but on the stage it takes wings. The author can extract laughs from the slightest situation and the most unlikely lines."
Evening Standard (Milton Shulman)
"What makes the play particularly amusing is Mr Ayckbourn's ability to reproduce the inanities of middle-class small-talk and to pile one ludicrous irrelevance upon another with casual ease…. It is a very small, neat and professional comedy that should keep the Comedy Theatre busy for some time to come. I enjoyed myself."
Financial Times (B.A. Young)
"For comedy, Alan Ayckbourn is the technician par excellence…. Time And Time Again [is] a light comedy with a plot virtually confined to one simple misunderstanding but a range of dialogue and characterisation that gleams and sparkles without pause for two hours."
The Guardian (Michael Billington)
"Time And Time Again is something of a disappointment; and the reason is, I suspect, that he [Ayckbourn] has tried to write a character study rather than another frenzied comedy of multiple misunderstanding."
The Listener (Derek Mahon)
"The impossible has happened. The West End has given birth to a farce which presents the spectator with other options besides that of temporarily suspending all cognitive functions except the most basic…. Time And Time Again [is] a play which is not only genuinely funny but might even, for those who haven't long ago given up all hope, act as a guide-line for West End comedy generally."
Sunday Telegraph (Frank Marcus)
"It is Mr Ayckbourn's special talent to spin plays from barely visible material and, although it would be untruthful to deny its longueurs, his deftness of touch, much abetted by Eric Thompson's delicate direction, does not desert him here. His play is gentle, amusing and immensely likeable.,"
The Times (Charles Lewsen)
"It is clear from the delighted response of last night's audience that… Alan Ayckbourn has extended the limits of what an audience is prepared to laugh at."
All reviews are copyright of the respective publication.