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Ever Ever Land (by Michael Billington)

(In September 1997, the critic Michael Billington wrote an article for The Guardian naming his top ten British plays of the 20th century. A Small Family Business was one of the choices).

10. A Small Family Business by Alan Ayckbourn (1987).

Must have Ayckbourn. Many dramatists, from McGuinness to Mark Ravenhill, have told me how much he has influenced them. This play, in particular, offers a devastating assault on the way the entrepreneurial values we were taught to admire in the eighties lead ultimately to fraud, theft, self-deceit, even homicide. It is the modern equivalent of An Inspector Calls - only, being Ayckbourn, far funnier. It argues just as passionately as the work of more overtly political writers that there is such a thing as society. Confirms that British drama, not least in the second half of the century, - has acted in opposition to the prevailing ethos. An important test for inclusion in my highly subjective, and doubtless contentious, Top 10.

(The Guardian, 03 September 1997)