Absurd Person Singular Themes

In Absurd Person Singular and his other plays from the 1970s, Sir Alan Ayckbourn offered a scathing critique of the British middle class. For most of the early 20th century, the British class system was mostly split between the working class (families whose incomes came mostly from manufacturing-based jobs) and the upper class (families whose incomes came mostly from financial and managerial jobs, or who lived off of an inheritance). That changed following the end…

All six of the characters in Absurd Person Singular believe in the same twisted “religion”—materialism. Fanatically, they seek to accumulate physical possessions: washing machines, toys, bottles, spoons. It can be overwhelming just to think about all the useless stuff that the characters buy over the course of the play. Ayckbourn was writing his play at a time when the middle class was booming, and when the sale of nonessential products and appliances was through the…

Absurd Person Singular comments on what modern English society expects men and women to do, as the play’s middle-class characters obey strong yet unwritten rules about their gender roles. The three male characters work, while their wives do not, and tend to be more overtly associated with the domestic sphere. And yet, as a result of the structure of middle-class life, these kinds of gender roles keep getting mixed up. Men behave in stereotypically effeminate…