Alan Ayckbourn: Three Plays [1979] paperback

Funny, gripping and wrenchingly truthful, these three blackly comic plays slice into the soul of suburbia. Couples - often mismatched, sometimes disorientated - dominate the action. The settings are simple - a kitchen, a bedroom, a party - all familiar terrains where husbands and wives meet, bewildered, puzzled and angry.

'In the hilarious delineation of marital pain there is no one to touch Alan Ayckbourn' Eric Shorter in the Daily Telegraph.