2011 productions
13–15 October 2011
Table Manners
By Alan Ayckbourn
Table Manners centers around an extended family of two sisters and an older brother and their friends. Annie, the youngest, still lives at home tending to an elderly, bedridden mother we never see. The action begins when Sarah and Reg (Annie's older brother) arrives to give Annie the chance to escape for the weekend for a long-needed rest. Fireworks begin almost immediately when Annie tells Sarah she is going away with her sister's husband, Norman.
The central figure is Norman, who needs desperately to be loved – by anyone. It's almost hard to blame him, too, once you meet his wife, Ruth, a career-obsessed woman with little apparent need for Norman. Then to further add to the confusion Tom appears, the veterinarian neighbour whom everyone assumes is courting Annie. Throughout the play we see an extended family whose members simultaneously despise each other and yet can't get enough of each other.