THE NORMAN CONQUESTS

About the show

Norman doesn’t exactly look like one of the world’s great lovers. There’s no square jaw or twinkle in his eye. Instead he has a beard that wanders aimlessly, a penchant for puffa puffa rice and the libido of an oversexed sheepdog. Over the course of one weekend in the English country, Norman has a simple mission: to disrupt, inspire and make his extended family happy. Whether they like it or not. He’s arranged to meet Annie, stuck at home and tired of looking after her cantankerous invalid mother, for an illicit weekend away. But there’s a hitch – Annie is the sister of Norman’s to-the-point and career-driven wife Ruth. And now her oblivious brother Reg and his controlling wife Sarah have arrived to help. Add the local vet Tom and the scene is set for one hell of a weekend. Alan Ayckbourn’s award-winning trilogy THE NORMAN CONQUESTS is a comic masterpiece of three parallel plays, each tracing the unravelling of Norman and his flailing romantic ambitions from a slightly different, and often simultaneous, perspective – TABLE MANNERS from the dining room, LIVING TOGETHER from the sitting room and ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN from the bramble-filled garden. A rare treat of theatrical ingenuity, the three plays tell and retell the turbulently entertaining story with increasing nuance and humour as offstage conversations and antics from one play appear onstage in another.