Table Manners is the dining room-set third of Alan Ayckbourn’s trio of comedy plays The Norman Conquests.
The action of each of the plays in The Norman Conquests – Table Manners, Living Together and Round And Round The Garden – takes place simultaneously and follows the same six characters in the same English country house from Saturday evening to Monday morning.
Believing it his mission in life to make women happy by showering them with love, Norman makes the most of every opportunity to seduce his sister-in-law Annie, charm his brother-in-law’s wife Sarah and woo his wife Ruth during a disastrous weekend of squabbling, eating, drinking and fondling.
The Norman Conquests: Table Manners stars Stephen Mangan in the role of Norman. Best known as Guillane Secretan in hospital comedy Green Wing, Mangan has appeared on stage in productions including The People Are Friendly (Royal Court theatre), Noises Off (Piccadilly theatre) and Hayfever (Savoy theatre).
Ben Miles (TV’s Coupling and Lark Rise To Candleford) plays Tom in The Norman Conquest: Table Manners. Miles’s other stage credits include Richard II (Old Vic theatre), My Child (Royal Court theatre) and Mary Stuart (National Theatre).
The part of Norman’s sister-in-law Annie is played by Jessica Hynes. BAFTA-nominated for her performance in the film Tomorrow La Scala, Hynes co-wrote and starred in two series of the cult Channel 4 comedy Spaced. Hynes’s stage appearances include The Plough And The Stars (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and The Night Heron, for which she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination.
The cast of The Norman Conquests: Table Manners is completed by Amelia Bullmore (The Thickness Of Skin, Road, The Queen And I), Paul Ritter (The Hothouse, Royal Hunt Of The Sun, Coram Boy) and Amanda Root (Enemies, Conversations After A Burial).
The Norman Conquests: Table Manners has seen the Old Vic theatre reconfigured to create a theatre-in-the-round space for which the plays were originally written. This is the first time they have been revived in London in 34 years. The three plays can be seen as separate productions or as a whole.
For more about The Norman Conquests: Table Manners at the Old Vic, read the First Night Feature.