Earth Angel: History

Earth Angel is Alan Ayckbourn's 91st play and premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2025 from 13 September - 11 October before touring to the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme and The Old Laundry, Bowness-on-Windermere.

Behind The Scenes: A Tribute
The play makes a reference to the school Gerald taught at prior to his retirement, Mountfield. This is a tribute to Geoff Mountfield, who died in April 2024 at the age of 86. Geoff spent his entire life in education and was the principal of Scarborough Sixth From College between 1983 and 1994 - and was the principal at the time this author attended the college. He was a well-known figure in Scarborough, particularly for his love of theatre. A great fan of Alan Ayckbourn's work, he was a board member of Scarborough Theatre Trust (which runs the Stephen Joseph Theatre) for many years. With this reference in Earth Angel, Alan paid tribute to someone who passionately supported theatre in the round in Scarborough for many years.
The first draft was written over the course of a month in January 2024 - almost two years before its world premiere production - with the final draft finished in July 2024, Earth Angel is unusual in recent Ayckbourn plays to be solely set in the present day. The playwright has increasingly noted that due to his age and lack of mobility, his plays - by necessity - are now generally concentrated on the past or the future.

Earth Angel is unusual in that it is set firmly in the present - mid 2020s UK. His last contemporary play was Better off Dead in 2018 whilst more recent plays with contemporary elements, such as The Girl Next Door and Family Album, had at least half their plot set in the past.

The obvious inspiration for Earth Angel is the titular song, Earth Angel, produced in 1954 by the American doo-wop group The Penguins. It was the group's only hit and sold more than 10 million copies. For many people, the song will probably be most familiar through its association with the 1985 film Back to the Future in which it is being played at the school prom by Marvin Berry and the Starlight's before Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) performs a time-busting version of Johnny B. Goode, which is heard by Chuck Berry as his brother excitedly calls him (if you're a fan of such things, it's a classic example of the time-travel Bootstrap Paradox).

The play's main inspiration though is the question of, as a society, do we still recognise good in the world today? It is a subject Alan has touched on before in plays such as Man of the Moment and has frequently cropped up in interviews where Alan has questioned how Jesus Christ would be perceived if he returned today with everyone probably trying to 'figure his angle!'

The play revolves around the mystery of Daniel, who appears at the funeral of Gerald's wife, Amy. Apparently unconnected to Amy or anyone else related to the family, his motives are instantly perceived as suspicious and self-serving whilst he insists he is just here to give Gerald support. The idea of someone doing good for no reward is immediately met with cynicism by the wider community and we are left to question who to believe and whether Gerald is right to support his new-found friend.

The play also delves into the online world and how it has come to dominate discourse. One of the characters, Hugh, is glued to his phone or tablet screen and rarely views the world through anything but a screen or a lense. His 'investigations' quickly devolve as the internet community weighs in on the question of who and what Daniel is with the consensus quickly building he is either a serial-killer, zombie or alien. It is a poke at the often extraordinary conspiracy theories which the world seems to have become embroiled in.
Behind The Scenes: An Easter Egg
For Ayckbourn fans, Earth Angel has an obscure but funny Easter egg hidden within it. Throughout the play, former police officer Adrian makes reference to his friend, Assistant Chief Commissioner Tommy Knuckles. Tommy is a character in FlatSpin (2000), an extraordinarily fit and inept police officer who is knocked out whilst demonstrating how tough he is. It is perhaps a subtle comment by Alan on the state of the world today that someone so ill-suited for power has gained so much of it and still spends his time golfing…
As had happened in previous plays, Alan had read a social situation and written a play quite prescient of the current situation months before it came to pass (the prime example of this being Neighbourhood Watch in 2012, which was noted for being particularly prescient about the state of the country). Earth Angel was written nine months before Donald Trump was elected President of the USA for a second time and several months prior to the landslide election victory by the Labour Party in the UK in July 2024 and the subsequent rapid rise of the Reform Party and far right extremism in the UK in subsequent months. The play, nonetheless, feels as though it could have been written during the summer of 2025 rather than a year earlier. At one point, Adrian - a retired policeman - makes a speech about the state of the country noting: "We’re living on a knife edge. All of us. That much. Between us and Armageddon…" During the summer of 2025, the far-right, populist leader of the Reform party, Nigel Farage, was noted for inflammatory speeches saying the country was "facing nothing short of societal collapse" and was in a state of lawlessness. To be precise, Alan was not specifically commenting on Farage or any particular political party - he has never been concerned with Politics in his work - but what he probably deemed a slight exaggeration of certain views when he wrote the play in 2024 had become the norm by the time of the play's production in 2025.

Earth Angel also touched upon the nature of truth in contemporary society and how do we recognise it when bombarded with so many untruths via the internet and social media? At one point, Hugo reports that Amy is reported on internet chatrooms to have slept with all of the Sixth Form's students. Gerald dismantles the lie by getting Hugo to admit he had also admitted sleeping with Amy purely so as not to feel left out. In truth, all were slandering Amy and spreading a pernicious lie.

In one interview about the play, Alan expands on this idea: "There’s a line in the play 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 what they see on the internet today? We marvel at the people who follow these populist leaders, who talk complete bollocks - but people believe even it when it's not logical. So much of what is said makes no rational sense and we reflect that in the play."

As has become more common in his later work though, Alan's tone is optimistic. Where once his plays might have ended on a dying fall or a darker turn, in a time of cynicism and anger, the playwright continues to emphasise hope. Central to this is Gerald, who - perhaps naively - takes Daniel at his word and wants to believe there is honesty and goodness in the young man and the world-at-large.

The play opened at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on Saturday 13 September 2025; unusually with a truncated preview period of three rather than five performances due to the extensive 'get out' of the venue's previous production.

Alan has always insisted that each production features at least one actor he has never worked with before in order to keep him on his toes, but Earth Angel was also unusual in half the cast were new to Alan having never previously worked with Iskandar Eaton, Russell Richardson and Hayden Wood. The rest of the company comprised of Liza Goddard, Stuart Fox and Elizabeth Boag, who had all previously worked with the playwright.

Reviews for the original production were predominantly positive, if mixed. What was particularly noticeable though was the audience reaction in comparison. Perhaps it can be attributed to an emotional versus analytical response, but the play notably had a significant affect on audiences. Not only in the debate as to who the mysterious Daniel was during the interval but also the bitter-sweet denouement which visibly affected many audience members as well as the frequent note this was a play which reflected an all too recognisable world, but which argued optimism and hope are still to be found. The audience feedback, long the most important thing for Alan, was very favourable and he was delighted the play was so well received.

Earth Angel ran at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, from 13 September to 11 October 2025 before going on a short in-the-round tour of the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme and The Old Laundry Theatre, Bowness-on-Windermere. It is expected the play will be published either during 2026 to 2027.

Article by Simon Murgatroyd. Copyright: Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.