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Michael Fryan

When, in the late 1950s, the Cambridge Footlights Revue failed to get its usual transfer to the West End, Michael Frayn, the scriptwriter, became disillusioned with the theatre.

He turned to journalism first with the Manchester Guardian and later with the Observer.

Fortunately for us he was lured back to writing for the theatre, as he explained in his platform conversation with John Miller at the Guildhall as part of the Winchester Festival.

He is now one of our most distinguished playwrights as well as being a highly successful novelist, a combination which resembles Anton Chekhov's talents, whose plays he also translates from Russian for the British stage.

In the course of a highly diverting conversation, Mr Frayn told his audience of the fundamental difference between novel writing, where the author can explore the thoughts and emotions of his characters, and playwriting where only the speech and outward behaviour of the characters can be expressed. He talked of his special views on the theatre and his approach to it, which are the subject of the essays in his latest book, Stage Directions.

He particularly enjoys the collaboration of the playwright with his director and the actors. But when his plays are produced abroad he has no control, as in the case of a production in Germany of his play, Copenhagen, as a circus performance in which one of the main serious characters was made to turn three back somersaults!

The audience was regaled with many more enlivening insights, including the origins of perhaps his most famous play, Noises Off, and what can go wrong on stage, which gave rise to a brief but hilarious two-handed sketch with John Miller - a skit on the locket scene from Measure for Measure.

Michael Frayn is not only a great dramatist and novelist: he is a brilliant raconteur, and held his audience spellbound, leaving them wanting much more.

By Geoffrey Beetham

1:54pm Tuesday 15th July 2008

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