An Introduction To Man Of The Moment
Of all the many memorable characters Alan Ayckbourn has written in his career, Man Of The Moment undoubtedly has two of his most fascinating and extraordinary creations. In its exploration of good and evil and the way the media both manipulates and is manipulated by its audience, the play presents us with two men with diametrically opposed moralities who illustrate how in our celebrity obsessed society, the wrong man is invariably the man most rewarded and feted. It is a play which directly tackles issues of good and evil, whilst taking a satirical swipe at our obsession with the facile world of television and celebrity.
Vic Parks is the man around whom the play - and all those within it - revolve. The sheer epitome of evil, but in a realistic rather than fantastic sense, he dominates the play with his appealing charisma and barely contained violence. Standing opposite him is the unassuming and placid Douglas Beechey, a man of honest goodness and integrity, who has fallen by the wayside whilst Vic has inexorably risen to the top of the pile. Between them are two women, the television producer Jill Rillington and Vic‘s wife Trudy; the former career-obsessed and determined to let nothing get in the way of what she wants, the latter caught up in Vic‘s world and now regretting her part in it.
Man Of The Moment is a remarkable addition to Alan Ayckbourn‘s canon, coming as it does in what he terms his social period and, arguably, when he was at the peak of his popularity and critical success. It was written as his first play upon returning to his adopted home of Scarborough following a two year sabbatical at the National Theatre, during which time he had written the highly acclaimed plays A Small Family Business and Henceforward… as well as being lauded as a director for his award-winning production of Arthur Miller‘s A View From The Bridge.
The play is inspired by the Great Train Robbers, who achieved fame and celebrity for the crime of the century, whilst few cared or even remembered the train driver who had died as a result of the robbery, Jack Mills. By exploring how a villain has become a hero and a hero has been forgotten, the play fulfilled Alan‘s desire to tackle the issue of good and evil and to see whether he could write two convincing and equally interesting characters who epitomised both sides of the moral equation. It is also about Alan‘s scepticism of the media and the path he perceived television was taking - and continues to take; how fame and celebrity can be given to the most unlikely and most undeserving of people and how those same people manipulate or allow themselves to be shaped by the media.
It completes a series of plays that present Alan‘s perception of the state of the nation at that time: A Small Family Business, Woman In Mind, Henceforward… and Man Of The Moment all deal with Alan‘s disenchanted view of the contemporary world, a point repeatedly brought up in interviews of the time. For many people, it is also probably best remembered as the play with the swimming pool, which presented unique challenges for both its premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round in 1988 and its transfer to the West End at the Globe Theatre in 1990.
As a result of this - and like A Small Family Business and Henceforward… before it - Man Of The Moment is both one of the best known of Alan‘s plays from the 1980s and also one of the less seen since its London production. It is not staged as often as would be expected as it poses an immense challenge to would-be producers in the scale and technicalities of both constructing a swimming pool and being able to afford a company of 10 with a number of silent extras for the final scene of the play.
Despite this, Man Of The Moment stands as one of Alan Ayckbourn's best and most significant works of the 1980s. Its mixture of comedy and tragedy, wider social issues and personal relationships, combine with two memorable characters and an unnerving and unexpected climax to make it a classic Ayckbourn play.