Ten Times Table

THE COMMITTEE FROM HELL AND A FÊTE WORSE THAN DEATH…!

What could be a more entertaining start to the festive season than one of comedy master Alan Ayckbourn’s most hilarious plays?

Set in the once grand ballroom of The Swan Hotel, Ten Times Table follows the increasingly raucous attempts of a village committee to organise the first Pendon Folk Festival. The opening of the festival, as envisaged by chairman Ray, will be a supposedly uplifting pageant based on an incongruous piece of local history, The Massacre of the Pendon Twelve.

As the disparate committee members who include Ray’s wife, Helen, a Marxist school teacher, a military dog breeder and an octogenarian secretary, break into two factions, their wrangling culminates in a scenario that mirrors the original event all too closely.

Anybody who has ever sat in a meeting will recognise the thrust and parry of rivals jostling for position over tea and biscuits in this extremely funny comedy.

Alan Ayckbourn is the author of a plethora of much-loved comedies including Relatively Speaking, How the Other Half Loves and Season’s Greetings. He was the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards for services to theatre.

Ten Times Table is the inaugural production of The Classic Comedy Theatre Company, produced by Bill Kenwright and the team behind The Agatha Christie Company, The Classic Thriller Company, and The Classic Screen to Stage Theatre Company, which have enjoyed more than 15 years of success across the UK.

The star cast will include Robert Daws (The Royal, Outside Edge, Roger, Roger); Deborah Grant (Not Going Out, Bergerac); Robert Duncan (Drop the Dead Donkey); Elizabeth Power (EastEnders) and TV and theatre veteran Mark Curry.