Earth Angel: Articles
This article on Earth Angel by Alan Ayckbourn's archivist, Simon Murgatroyd, was published in the programme for the world premiere production of the play in 2025.Disinformation Technology
Earth Angel is many things - a love story, a mystery, an observation about loss and community.
It’s also a comment on the world we find ourselves in, a place where many of us feel increasingly uncertain about the direction society has taken and how technology seems to be increasingly alienating people rather than bringing them together.
Simon Murgatroyd sat down with Alan Ayckbourn to discuss his views on this and how it relates to his latest play, Earth Angel.
“One of the themes of Earth Angel,” says Alan, “is about the world today really. I‘ve said it several times in interviews over the years - that if Jesus Christ came back today, everyone would be trying to figure his angle!”
It’s a theme that Alan has touched upon before in plays such as Man of the Moment (1988), where a genuinely good man - Douglas Beechey - finds his honest motives questioned when he reunites with a true villain, now recast by the media as the good guy.
But Man of the Moment - whilst still undoubtedly relevant today - was written pre-internet and prefigures the thought bubbling under Earth Angel that the influence of the world wide web and social media has had a polarising effect on society, distorting perceptions of reality.
“If Jesus Christ did return, I think the internet would go absolutely wild with conspiracy theories about him. What is he doing? What is he making from it? Who’s behind him - the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, whoever?
“Jesus’s agenda wouldn't fit with people's natural ambitions and lifestyle today, which is ingrained to be totally selfish and self-interested. A Christian nation wouldn’t even recognise Jesus, they’d all be suspicious of him because he wouldn’t resemble them!”
Given Alan’s predilection for modern technology and venturing into dystopian near-futures, it’s perhaps surprising that he’s very rarely touched upon the internet or social media within his plays given how it permeates so much of our lives.
The closest he has come is in two plays seen only in rehearsed readings at special events at the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Truth Will Out (2020) in 2023 and - in a substantially altered form - last year with Father of Invention (2021) at the Mr A’s Amazing Plays weekend.
“I wrote a play called Small Mercy (2019) - which I later completely rewrote as Father of Invention (2021) - which took my views on the internet at that time to an extreme. There was a theme where somebody spread the word on the internet that the character Mercy was an alien!
“This lie spreads exponentially - despite being nonsense - and it drives her to suicide in the end. At which point, people are examining photos of the body to see if it was bleeding, if it’s really her. Saying that she looks human, but there's no sign she fell out of a window fourteen stories up. Even in tragedy, people can’t stop the conspiracies, spreading the lies. It was all very bleak, but it was my take on the world and where it was.”
Some of these ideas resurface in Earth Angel, but then - as Alan is quick to point out - the world hasn’t got any better since he wrote Small Mercy and these trends towards untruths have only accelerated.
“Many of us marvel at people who follow certain current world leaders, who talk complete bollocks - but it's bollocks that people believe, even when it's not logical. So much of what is said makes no rational sense. In Earth Angel, there’s a moment when you should think, this is complete nonsense - but it doesn’t matter if it’s nonsense, the lie prevails because it becomes so prevalent.”
And Alan’s interest in why people lap up this information manifests itself in a character many of us will be painfully familiar with.
“There’s a character I've always wanted to write, who's perpetually stuck in his iPad and he never looks at anybody, except indirectly. He films everything and when he's not filming, he's ‘researching’.
“He’s not doing anything else. He’s finding out all sorts of things on the internet, which is - of course - a very dangerous and unreliable place to be. He’s absorbing all these conspiracies and disseminating them - building even more distrust.
“Sadly, you see this type everywhere, totally engrossed in their screens. Viewing life through a phone. The ones who say, ‘I’m going to see the Taj Mahal’, but they only film it or take a photo standing next to it rather than ever looking at it directly. All so they can get home and look at themselves standing next to it, having never really experienced it. All of life becomes second-hand.
“It’s an odd perspective on life where you’re not encountering anything face-to-face, it’s always face to screen to face.”
This, he believes, has led to a point where the lack of human input and contact means some sections of society, particularly when perceiving other people who they often don’t even know, now trend instantly and often vehemently towards the negative rather than the positive.
“Earth Angel also looks at how we judge people via this prism of the internet and social media. One character is disliked by some people who find her too nice! She’s adored by many, she’s unconventional, attractive - but because she does’t fall into the conventions of the community, it gets people’s backs up.
“There’s obviously something wrong with her! What does she want? Why is she so nice? There’s all this suspicion and mistrust all because, essentially, she’s too nice.”
Pre-dating Truth Will Out - in which a teenager’s innocent actions on the internet have catastrophic global implications and Small Mercy / Father of Invention, Alan first touched upon the dangers of the internet in GamePlan (2001), but that’s practically an eternity away from the net we experience today and Alan feels its young heroines would have very different experiences and perceptions of the world around them.
“There’s a line in Earth Angel that all the lunatics are reaching out to each other with regard to the internet. But I don't think people are entirely to blame because what do they believe, what can they believe with all they see on the internet today?
“If I'd been bombarded with the amount of contradictory information at the age that the younger ones are today, you'd have to be a very strong-minded young person to hold on to what you believe to be the truth."
But even with all this to contend with, Alan feels Earth Angel is still an optimistic play and, more importantly, there is hope for the world even if it may not be just around the corner.
“I still believe that somebody, somewhere, is going to see sense in all this chaos and bring us through, but it might be a long painful journey to make it because we seem to be blundering - in this country and others - from problem to problem.
“But I think we have to remember there are still good things floating about in the world today. Although, it's often very hard to see them. It’s the wood for the trees now. But the good is still there if we look for it.”
Simon Murgatroyd
Copyright of Simon Murgatroyd 2025. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.
It’s also a comment on the world we find ourselves in, a place where many of us feel increasingly uncertain about the direction society has taken and how technology seems to be increasingly alienating people rather than bringing them together.
Simon Murgatroyd sat down with Alan Ayckbourn to discuss his views on this and how it relates to his latest play, Earth Angel.
“One of the themes of Earth Angel,” says Alan, “is about the world today really. I‘ve said it several times in interviews over the years - that if Jesus Christ came back today, everyone would be trying to figure his angle!”
It’s a theme that Alan has touched upon before in plays such as Man of the Moment (1988), where a genuinely good man - Douglas Beechey - finds his honest motives questioned when he reunites with a true villain, now recast by the media as the good guy.
But Man of the Moment - whilst still undoubtedly relevant today - was written pre-internet and prefigures the thought bubbling under Earth Angel that the influence of the world wide web and social media has had a polarising effect on society, distorting perceptions of reality.
“If Jesus Christ did return, I think the internet would go absolutely wild with conspiracy theories about him. What is he doing? What is he making from it? Who’s behind him - the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, whoever?
“Jesus’s agenda wouldn't fit with people's natural ambitions and lifestyle today, which is ingrained to be totally selfish and self-interested. A Christian nation wouldn’t even recognise Jesus, they’d all be suspicious of him because he wouldn’t resemble them!”
Given Alan’s predilection for modern technology and venturing into dystopian near-futures, it’s perhaps surprising that he’s very rarely touched upon the internet or social media within his plays given how it permeates so much of our lives.
The closest he has come is in two plays seen only in rehearsed readings at special events at the Stephen Joseph Theatre with Truth Will Out (2020) in 2023 and - in a substantially altered form - last year with Father of Invention (2021) at the Mr A’s Amazing Plays weekend.
“I wrote a play called Small Mercy (2019) - which I later completely rewrote as Father of Invention (2021) - which took my views on the internet at that time to an extreme. There was a theme where somebody spread the word on the internet that the character Mercy was an alien!
“This lie spreads exponentially - despite being nonsense - and it drives her to suicide in the end. At which point, people are examining photos of the body to see if it was bleeding, if it’s really her. Saying that she looks human, but there's no sign she fell out of a window fourteen stories up. Even in tragedy, people can’t stop the conspiracies, spreading the lies. It was all very bleak, but it was my take on the world and where it was.”
Some of these ideas resurface in Earth Angel, but then - as Alan is quick to point out - the world hasn’t got any better since he wrote Small Mercy and these trends towards untruths have only accelerated.
“Many of us marvel at people who follow certain current world leaders, who talk complete bollocks - but it's bollocks that people believe, even when it's not logical. So much of what is said makes no rational sense. In Earth Angel, there’s a moment when you should think, this is complete nonsense - but it doesn’t matter if it’s nonsense, the lie prevails because it becomes so prevalent.”
And Alan’s interest in why people lap up this information manifests itself in a character many of us will be painfully familiar with.
“There’s a character I've always wanted to write, who's perpetually stuck in his iPad and he never looks at anybody, except indirectly. He films everything and when he's not filming, he's ‘researching’.
“He’s not doing anything else. He’s finding out all sorts of things on the internet, which is - of course - a very dangerous and unreliable place to be. He’s absorbing all these conspiracies and disseminating them - building even more distrust.
“Sadly, you see this type everywhere, totally engrossed in their screens. Viewing life through a phone. The ones who say, ‘I’m going to see the Taj Mahal’, but they only film it or take a photo standing next to it rather than ever looking at it directly. All so they can get home and look at themselves standing next to it, having never really experienced it. All of life becomes second-hand.
“It’s an odd perspective on life where you’re not encountering anything face-to-face, it’s always face to screen to face.”
This, he believes, has led to a point where the lack of human input and contact means some sections of society, particularly when perceiving other people who they often don’t even know, now trend instantly and often vehemently towards the negative rather than the positive.
“Earth Angel also looks at how we judge people via this prism of the internet and social media. One character is disliked by some people who find her too nice! She’s adored by many, she’s unconventional, attractive - but because she does’t fall into the conventions of the community, it gets people’s backs up.
“There’s obviously something wrong with her! What does she want? Why is she so nice? There’s all this suspicion and mistrust all because, essentially, she’s too nice.”
Pre-dating Truth Will Out - in which a teenager’s innocent actions on the internet have catastrophic global implications and Small Mercy / Father of Invention, Alan first touched upon the dangers of the internet in GamePlan (2001), but that’s practically an eternity away from the net we experience today and Alan feels its young heroines would have very different experiences and perceptions of the world around them.
“There’s a line in Earth Angel that all the lunatics are reaching out to each other with regard to the internet. But I don't think people are entirely to blame because what do they believe, what can they believe with all they see on the internet today?
“If I'd been bombarded with the amount of contradictory information at the age that the younger ones are today, you'd have to be a very strong-minded young person to hold on to what you believe to be the truth."
But even with all this to contend with, Alan feels Earth Angel is still an optimistic play and, more importantly, there is hope for the world even if it may not be just around the corner.
“I still believe that somebody, somewhere, is going to see sense in all this chaos and bring us through, but it might be a long painful journey to make it because we seem to be blundering - in this country and others - from problem to problem.
“But I think we have to remember there are still good things floating about in the world today. Although, it's often very hard to see them. It’s the wood for the trees now. But the good is still there if we look for it.”
Simon Murgatroyd
Copyright of Simon Murgatroyd 2025. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.