Written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn
With Russell Dixon, Antony Eden, Frances Marshall, Laura Matthews, Laurence Pears, Louise Shuttleworth
A comedy in four parts about an unremarkable man and the remarkable women who loved him, left him, or lost him over sixty years; and of the equally remarkable old manor house that saw and heard it all happen. From his first unsettling encounter as a very young man in 1925 to an unexpected reunion late in life, Anthony Spates’ romantic progress is charted in this hilarious and gently touching comedy. The fireworks, love, and loss come at the funniest moments in this brand new classic Ayckbourn comedy.

The prolific English playwright and director Alan Ayckbourn is back at 59E59 Theaters. His funny and poignant new comedy A Brief History of Women is part of Brits Off Broadway 2018, with a cast of chameleonic character actors sporting an extravagant amount of wig changes throughout the play. A Brief History of Women spans 60 years, each of the four parts of the play being 20 years apart. The action revolves around three constants: a large manor house, an unremarkable local lad named Anthony Spates (played remarkably by Antony Eden) and love. In all four parts, Mr. Spates, surrounded by other men behaving badly, listens to, comforts or stands up for a woman, resulting in romances, some ending better than others. Part one begins in 1925. Seventeen-year-old Spates has been hired as a temporary servant to a manor nearing the end of its aristocratic heyday under the auspices of Lord Edward Kirkbridge, a brutish misogynist for whom the word socialist can bring on apoplexy. Spates receives his very first kiss from Lady Caroline Kirkbridge, after coming to her rescue during a violent confrontation with her husband in what is the darkest of the four parts of A Brief History of Women. Part t …Read more