About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Invisible Friends is a children's play by Alan Ayckbourn. This delight by England's most successful comic dramatist is about a very ordinary teenager named Lucy. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.

Invisible Friends centres around Lucy and her imaginary friend Zara. With Lucy's father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out — that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted — as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare.

Invisible Friends was first produced in November 1989 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male

What people say:

"An extremely funny and deeply serious play which appeals to the irrepressible child in every adult and to the insufferable adult in every child." — The Sunday Times (London)

"Ingenious and involving." — The Daily Telegraph (London)

About the Playwright:

Alan Ayckbourn, born in London in 1939, is one of the most widely performed living English language playwrights and a highly regarded theatre director. His works, mostly comedies, deal with middle-class manners and conflicts. He is a Tony, Olivier, and Moliere Award winning writer who has written 74 full length plays, more than half of which have gone on to London's West End. His contribution to theatre has been recognized with both a Special Tony Award and the Olivier's Special Award.