Dreams From A Summer House: In Brief
Dreams From A Summer House
Play Number: 45World Premiere: 26 August 1992
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: Original cast recording
Cast: 4m / 4f
Run Time: 2hr 20m
Short Synopsis: A musical written with John Pattison. This is a contemporary spin on the Beauty And The Beast fairy-tale in which Beauty finds herself in contemporary suburbia, unable to communicate except through song. Without the love of the Beast Baldemar and away from her realm, she cannot survive but Baldemar has his hands full with bullying divorcee Amanda.
Note: A musical written with the composer John Pattison.
- Dreams From A Summer House is Alan Ayckbourn's 45th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, on 26 August, 1992.
- It was written with the composer John Pattison, who was the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round's Musical Director and who Alan Ayckbourn also worked with on the musical A Word From Our Sponsor.
- The play sees the world of fairy tale - specifically Beauty and the Beast - collide with suburban reality. As the fairy tale characters can only communicate through song, the 'real' characters have to sing in order to be understood.
- As conceived, the play was far more complex and darker in tone, intermingling not just the characters of Beauty And The Beast but also a noir novel being written by a frustrated writer.
- The play was originally titled Songs From A Tree House for a short while before Alan changed it; tickets for the original production featured the earlier title.
- It is Alan Ayckbourn's fourth full length musical.
- The world premiere production marked the first time the actress Janie Dee would work with Alan Ayckbourn. She would go on to huge success on stage and screen and would work several more times with Alan Ayckbourn; most notably in Comic Potential for which she won numerous awards including an Olivier.
- Dreams From A Summer House is one of two Ayckbourn plays in which fantasy characters cross over into suburban reality. The other is Awaking Beauty, another musical but written with the composer Denis King.
- It is one of several plays of Alan Ayckbourn which can be broadly said to be part of the fantasy genre (as opposed to, for example, the science fiction or supernatural genres). Other plays include The Champion Of Paribanou, Orvin - Champion of Champions and Awaking Beauty.
- Much of the music by John Pattison offered subtle nods to other musicals, genres and composers. This was particularly noted by many of the critics who spotted a huge variety of apparent references and influences (see Reviews).
- An original cast recording of the musical was recorded and made available commercially through the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round. Unfortunately it was only available for the duration of the production and the audio-cassette is now quite a rare Ayckbourn collectible.