Things We Do For Love: In Brief
Things We Do For Love
Play Number: 51World Premiere:29 April 1997
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: End-stage
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: Radio
Cast: 2m / 2f
Run Time: 2hr 20m
Synopsis: Nikki and her fiancée Hamish move in with Nikki's old school-friend Barbara. Hamish and Barbara's instant distaste for each other hiding feelings that could destroy an engagement and a friendship as well as having repercussions for everyone including the downstairs lodger.
- Things We Do For Love is Alan Ayckbourn's 51st play.
- The world premiere -directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 29 April 1997.
- The London premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Gielgud Theatre on 3 March 1998; it would transfer to the Duchess Theatre on 26 August 1998.
- Things We Do For Love was only the fourth play Alan Ayckbourn had written specifically for end-stage performance and the first Ayckbourn play to be performed in the end-stage at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.
- The motivation for writing an end-stage play was partly derived from a funding crisis which hit the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the months after the new venue had opened in 1996. Facing calls to cut costs and to close The McCarthy auditorium, Alan Ayckbourn instead wrote a play specifically for the end-stage space.
- One of the play's inspirations was the sex-scene from the movie thriller In The Line Of Fire in which Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo passionately strip each other, but shot entirely from floor level so we see only the characters' feet and their clothes falling to the floor. Things We Do For Love similarly features a sex scene in which we can only see the feet of the protagonists and the foot of the bed they end up in.
- Alan Ayckbourn won the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year for Things We Do For Love. He was the first and last recipient of the award which closed in the months following the initial award.
- The play was adapted for the radio by the BBC and directed by Gordon House, a veteran adaptor of Alan Ayckbourn's plays for the radio. It featured Joanna van Gyseghem, Teresa Gallagher and Cameron Stewart reprising their roles from the original Scarborough production.
- Things We Do For Love was Alan Ayckbourn's first 'adult' play for three years following Haunting Julia in 1994. Between 1994 and 1997, he had written The Musical Jigsaw Play ('family' play), A Word From Out Sponsor (musical) and The Champion of Paribanou ('family' play). It is the single longest period between 'adult' plays since he began professionally writing in 1959.
- Things We Do For Love has the distinction of being the Ayckbourn play whose title is incorrectly reported the most frequently. It is constantly referred to as The Things We Do For Love rather than just Things We Do For Love.
- Although published as a play text by Samuel French, Things We Do For Love was also published in the collection Alan Ayckbourn: Plays 4 (Faber).