| Relatively Speaking | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Alan Ayckbourn |
| Characters | Greg Ginny Philip Sheila |
| Date premiered | March 1967 |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | The bed-sitting room of Ginny’s London flat and on the garden patio of Sheila and Philip’s home in Buckinghamshire, 1965. |
Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.
Contents |
The action of the play takes place during a summer weekend in the bed-sitting room of Ginny’s London flat and on the garden patio of Sheila and Philip’s home in Buckinghamshire, outside London. The time is 1965.
Greg and Ginny are in love and planning to be married. Greg finds a strange pair of slippers under the bed and is too besotted to believe they might have been left by another man (which would also explain the bunches of flowers and boxes of sweets filling Ginny’s apartment). When Ginny goes off for a day in the country—supposedly to visit her parents but actually to break things off with her older married lover, Philip—Greg decides to follow her. Showing up unannounced before Ginny, Greg asks for her hand from the man he thinks is her father, while Philip mistakenly believes that the strange young man is asking permission to marry Sheila, Philip’s exceedingly befuddled wife. Once Ginny arrives, she convinces Philip to play the role of her father. Meanwhile, Greg still believes that Sheila is Ginny’s mother. The situation is further complicated by a series of hilarious misunderstandings until no one (including the audience) can be exactly sure who’s in love with whom.