Better Off Dead: Frequently Asked Questions

Alan Ayckbourn's Archivist Simon Murgatroyd answers some of the most frequently asked questions about Alan Ayckbourn's Better Off Dead. If you have a question about this or any other of Alan Ayckbourn's plays, you can contact the website via the Contact Us page.

Is Better Off Dead a rewrite of his unproduced play A Case Of Missing Wives?
No, A Case Of Missing Wives is a police procedural written in 2016 and intended to be the playwright's 81st play - it was instead replaced by A Brief History of Women. Alan then wrote Better Off Dead during spring 2017 recycling aspects of two of the characters from A Case Of Missing Wives, which has been indefinitely shelved. There are no other similarities between the two plays which have completely differently plots.

Is Better Off Dead an autobiographical play?
No. Alan Ayckbourn does not consider it an autobiographical play although undoubtedly there are elements of himself in the writer Algy. However, Alan has always felt all his characters are essentially autobiographical in that they come from inside him, so the play is no more or less autobiographical than any of his other plays.

All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd.