The Double Beaux, 1988

Of all my plays, this little pastiche is the one which has received the most productions – three different versions so far – which is surprising given the technical demands it makes of both set designer and actors.

It grew out of the little parody I had tossed together for the company to read at the cast party after a run of Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife at the Little Theatre in Bristol. I’ve always enjoyed writing pastiche, and since the party piece seemed to go down well, I thought I’d try and work it up into something more substantial. The doubling of the leads might be gimmicky, but I felt the challenge would increase the pleasure of both the audience and the performers, and the Cabinet – which, I think, is a rather brilliant little stroke of genius, frankly – was as much a way of paring down the set as it was an operational necessity.

I first entered it in an amateur competition in Bridgwater where it received its inaugural production by the very brave One Off Productions company. The adjudicators gave it short shrift, considering it a pale rip-off of Shakespeare’s “least inspiring” comedy The Comedy of Errors. My immediate thought was that this was an unfair comparison – just because Shakespeare failed to make a success of his idea involving two sets of identical twins didn’t mean I couldn’t… But protesting would have been futile. Reference was also made to Blackadder which I suppose was inevitable (it was set in the past and had a lot of rude wordplay), but the cast won an award for the best ensemble performance, which I thought was only fair, given how hard they had to work in comparison to the other finalists, which favoured conventional sets and lots of middle-class types standing around languishing in anguish. We’ve all been there, love. At least mine gave people a few laffs while they were out, and I hope, one day, it may get the chance to do so again. Mr Mackintosh, you know where to reach me. 

As Blade with Ann R