By the millennium, Alan Ayckbourn had written fifty-six plays and was at the height of his creativity. It had taken many years for his work to be seen as an important contribution to the canon of English drama. The early dismissing of him as being a mere ‘boulevardier', a writer of popular but trivial comedies, had all but disappeared. His reputation was now one of an accessible dramatist with steel-edged observation and an eye on the social Zeitgeist. His plays were lauded for their dramatic skill, funny set pieces, structural innovation and above all, for their bleak undertones. Of course any dramatist with this artistic longevity will go in and out of fashion. Some plays were greeted more enthusiastically than others. A few were dismissed.

He seemed unstoppable, writing at least one play a year and in some years even more. They were eagerly anticipated by West End management and even more keenly by small to medium scale regional theatres. Audiences for dark comedy clearly trusted this playwright. A new Ayckbourn play was a guaranteed income booster, a quality only surpassed in many cases by the theatre's yearly pantomime production. The restructuring of the school curriculum had led to the demise of the other box office guarantee - the annual Shakespeare production. The Ayckbourn play with its small cast and manageable technical requirements became even more important to the regions.

His continued development from 1968 to the year 2000 and beyond was sustained by a number of factors. He was fortunate in his venues, his management and in his allies. Throughout his career these elements developed and altered. After 2000 some were to change dramatically. They are worth identifying because they influenced his output in surprising ways.

Since 1971 Alan Ayckbourn had been artistic director of the Scarborough Theatre-in-the-Round. To a great extent he had control over the programming of the theatre's output, contributing both as a playwright, and as director of his own and other new work. As a small regional venue, the Stephen Joseph Theatre was subject to the same economic constraints as elsewhere and the necessity to provide a new play each year for the company fed Ayckbourn's insatiable artistic drive.