About the Play:

Torben Betts Plays One contains three full-length comedies by Torben Betts. From a playwright hailed as a successor Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the master of the middle-brow domestic comedy, comes three pitch-black comedies: A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies and Clockwatching.

A Listening Heaven is about a well-to-do family facing a terrible crisis. It begins as a comedy of manners, poking fun at middle-class attitudes to family and marriage, money and religion, art and alternative lifestyles. But the mood turns steadily more sombre as we glean information about the underlying events and their causes. It's a gradual unveiling: the full story does not spill out until the devastating climax. It was first produced in 1999 to critical acclaim at Alan Ayckbourn's Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, where Betts was writer-in-residence at the time, and his dark domestic comedy was staged with the great man's enthusiastic encouragement. (Cast: 4 female, 2 male)

Mummies and Daddies is the story of a barbecue that leads to increasingly absurd situations. Developed at the Royal National Theatre Studio, it brutally yet hilariously lays bare the soullessness of consumerism. (Cast: 3 female, 2 male)

Clockwatching traces a year in the life of a dysfunctional family. Dad is indifferent to his dying, off-stage wife. Daughter Anna has to cope with an autistic child and her hapless husband, Duncan. Her brother, Paul, is a loutish would-be pop-star whose marriage to actress Sarah is sabotaged by the latter's love for Duncan, which leads to catastrophic violence. It opened in 2001 at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond before moving to Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre. (Cast: 2 female, 3 male)

What people say:

"A wonderfully accomplished first play." — Alan Ayckbourn about A Listening Heaven

"A master of dialogue, of the silences ... a complex writer of misery pockmarked with painful comedy." — Yorkshire Evening Post

"Betts is an immensely promising talent destined for great things." — What's On in London

About the Playwright:

Torben Betts is an English playwright and screenwriter. He attended the University of Liverpool, where he read English Literature and English Language, and originally trained to become an actor, but later moved to playwriting. Early in his career he was championed by Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who invited him to be resident dramatist at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough in 1999.