Invisible Friends: In Brief
Invisible Friends
Play Number: 38World Premiere: 23 November 1989
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: No
Cast: 4m / 3f
Run Time: 1hr 40m
Synopsis: When Lucy's imaginary friend Zara becomes all too real and offers to make her family disappear, Lucy is all to happy to agree. But when Zara's much worse family appears in their place, Lucy has to deal with the consequences of her actions and find a way to bring her own family home.
- Invisible Friends is Alan Ayckbourn's 38th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round, Scarborough, on 23 November 1989.
- The London premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at The Cottesloe at the National Theatre on 13 March 1991.
- Invisible Friends is considered Alan Ayckbourn's second family play after Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays (1988) and was the first of Alan's family plays to receive a major London production.
- Alan Ayckbourn's family plays often complement his adult plays and Invisible Friends is often described as a complimentary play to Woman In Mind; both feature a protagonist who creates an imaginary family to escape her real family.
- Invisible Friends is the first Ayckbourn play to feature a character who directly addresses the audience, as Lucy is not only the protagonist but also the narrator. Alan would incorporate a similar narrative device into other plays such as The Jollies and Miss Yesterday; strictly speaking Alan did use this device in his third play Dad's Tale (1960),but this play was withdrawn and is not available to produce and thus unaccessible.
- The lead role of Lucy was played in both Scarborough and London by Emma Chambers, who would soon afterwards become famous for her recurring role as Alice in the BBC television series The Vicar Of Dibley between 1994 and 2007.
- Invisible Friends is one of two plays to have been produced at the National Theatre whilst Richard Eyre was Artistic Director; both family plays. The other was Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays.
- Invisible Friends was the first of Alan Ayckbourn's family plays to have been staged in North America when Seattle Children's Theater, based in Seattle, Washington, produced the play in 1992. Subsequently many of Alan's family plays have had American productions.
- Alan Ayckbourn had his own invisible friend when he was a child, called Tim.
- Although published as a play text by Samuel French, Invisible Friends was also published in the collection Alan Ayckbourn: Plays 2 (Faber).