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Sir Alan Ayckbourn is the only bloke to nab a Tony and an Olivier for lifetime achievements. Luckily for all of us, that lifetime and those achievements continue—with plays outnumbering years. At 72, he just helmed — and attended — the U.S. launch of Opus 75, Neighbourhood Watch, which runs until Jan. 1 at Off-Broadway's 59E59 Theaters.

Surprises — yes, he still has them — is the name of No. 76. "It's written and ready to go next year. I'll start rehearsal around Maytime and open in June. Also, I've the germ of an idea for 77, but I won't write it until October. I'm sorta on a rhythm."

Scarborough is the largest holiday resort in Yorkshire, which, he crowed, is "the biggest county in England — Bronte country, lots of moors" — so, since tourists sometimes translate as audiences for the Joseph, it was unsurprising to find him as a name-brand ambassador for a "Welcome to Yorkshire" tourism campaign.

Following a recent Sunday matinee performance of Neighbourhood Watch on East 59th Street, Ayckbourn spoke at a Q&A moderated by theatre pundit, blogger and former American Theatre Wing executive director Howard Sherman — a friend of Ayckbourn and Scarborough (he has summered in the area for the past 14 years). We took notes.

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	Matthew Cottle and company in Neighbourhood Watch.
	photo by Karl Andre Photography

Neighbourhood Watch is a natty, nutty little tale of vigilance, and vigilantes, gone wildly awry — how a silly misunderstanding over a trespassing youth turns a sleepy community named Bluebell Hill into a near-police state, replete with barbed wire, identity cards and monitoring patrols to keep riff-raff out and down the road.

Before writing a word, Ayckbourn sketched out Bluebell Hill, numbered the homes and assigned characters to live in them. "There are more off-stage characters in this play than there are on-stage, but I think it's an old trick that dramatists use quite often," he noted. "Nowadays, you have to — for the economics — but you have to create the feeling of a community by making the rest of them off-stage. And it gives it a third dimension, really. I think some of my most successful characters have never come on, starting with that famous couple in Absurd Person Singular called Dick and Lottie Potter, who are monsters. But you can write monsters off-stage and people in the audience feel, 'Thank God, we're not going to meet them.'"

As it is, a cast of eight constitutes this community — and, actually, that number was dictated by another Ayckbourn play that debuted in rep with Neighbourhood Watch. "I've always been a person who is used to being restricted in terms of what I write. Right from the early days, I knew how many actors I had at my disposal, and I always shaped my plays. Those of you observant enough to notice will see that my earlier plays had between four and six people. And, as one got more successful and went to wealthier places like the National Theatre, there then appeared 12-handers. Those are never — very rarely — done. Most theatres today can't afford to put 12-handers on so, in fact, by doing large-scale plays, you shoot yourself very firmly in the foot. So eight is a big one for me, and Neighbourhood Watch is a response to my earlier adaptation of Uncle Vanya, which I called Dear Uncle [with the same performers] and which I reset in England in the Lake District in 1935."

The London riots last August lent some uninvited topicality to the play, which was, by that point, several weeks deep into rehearsal. "My take is the people stuck in the middle — the reactors to that — so my characters are mostly what happens to a community who thinks of itself as god-fearing and well-behaved — how they react to the notional threat, or sometimes the real threat, of violence against them and their property. This is where people are reacting and saying, 'Well, we'd better protect ourselves,' but it's a devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea situation because what happens if you build a gated community and you can't choose who to lock yourself in with against those outside? Maybe there are more dangerous people living three doors down. The whole thing is slightly allegorical because it accelerates at considerable speed. They put up fences with the speed of light and get on with it."