Time Of My Life: Quotes by Other People
This page includes quotes about the play Time Of My Life by people other than Alan Ayckbourn, predominantly drawn from books and articles about Alan Ayckbourn or British theatre; it does not include quotes from reviews, which can be found in the Reviews pages."Laura Stratton is a new and original character in the Ayckbourn canon, a tough woman who has indeed been taken for granted but who has not responded by edging towards madness or even misery. She has decided very clearly and unsentimentally what is important to her and what is not. Apart form the one, not very enjoyable lapse, she has stood by Gerry all his life, but she has no intention of submerging her own interests after he is dead. She is as ruthless in managing her hapless sons (and their women) as we can believe Gerry to have been in managing the business. But we are given enough of her history, especially a sense of how attractive to Gerry she once was, for her not to be a monster but a fascinatingly rounded human being."
(Pail Allen: A Pocket Guide To Alan Ayckbourn's Plays, 2004, Faber)
"Despite the comedy, especially of the various waiters with another invented language (and culinary culture), this is a harsh play as well as a melancholy one, expressed in the occasionally savage rhetoric of which Ayckbourn is as capable as, say, John Osborne. The narrative device is brilliantly controlled and used to devastating effect, particularly when we cut from information about Adam and Maureen's break-up to their early scenes of delighted mutual discovery."
(Pail Allen: A Pocket Guide To Alan Ayckbourn's Plays, 2004, Faber)
"Aware of Adam’s desperate need for his father’s approval, Laura blackmails him with the threat of permanently displeasing Gerry, even to the point of destroying his will to live. It is a calculated act of manipulation, all the more shocking for the fact that it is Laura who turns out to be the cause of Gerry's death. Even so, she uses it to pressurise Adam even further; Stephanie tells to Glyn that "Apparently your mother told him that Maureen's behaviour on her birthday evening upset his father so deeply, that was the reason he got drunk and drove off the road!" This is one of the most sinister disclosures in the play. Like lago [in Othello], Laura is a hardened opportunist, ruthless in her exploitation of others' weaknesses. Knowing who was really responsible, she blamed Gerry’s death on an innocent party as a means of keeping her son to herself. In An Inspector Calls, Priestley allows his characters to prevent Eva Smith’s suicide, for which they might have been jointly responsible; Ayckbourn is less merciful. In his world angels do not masquerade as policemen, intervening in human affairs so as to avert disaster. Time of My Life is an accomplished tragedy not just because Laura effectively kills her husband and gets away with it, but because she succeeds in using it as a means of possessing her son for ever. By the end, Adam is living at home, without either a girlfriend or a steady job, reduced to looking after his mother's dogs. But he is also culpable for failing to resist her. He knows better than to believe that Maureen is interested only in the Stratton fortune."
(Duncan Wu: Six Contemporary Playwrights, 1995, St Martin's Press)
"While it would be an error to overlook the humour in this play, Time Of My Life is finally very bleak indeed. In An Inspector Calls, Priestley gives the selfish, destructive Birlings a second chance, the implication being that it is possible to learn from one's mistakes. Our moral blindness, he believed, can be overcome, and people can learn to behave decently to one another. Ayckbourn is a realist, not disposed, as at the end of A Chorus of Disapproval, to pander to our wishes. There is no reprieve for his characters; as in life, they have only one chance. The play’s bleakness is qualified only by the benevolent hope, expressed by Gerry, for those moments 'which you can positively identify as being among the happy moments'. It may not sound like much, but its virtue lies in its pragmatism and its belief in small, everyday pleasures. But Gerry is unredeemed by this conviction - in fact, as I have suggested, it rebounds ironically in view of what happens later. It is, however, the most Ayckbourn is willing to concede, and is typical of the reserved, conditional stance of the plays of the 1980s and early 1990s."
(Duncan Wu: Six Contemporary Playwrights, 1995, St Martin's Press)
All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd.