Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn

Sir Alan Ayckbourn, one of England’s most successful living playwrights, masterfully uses farce and comedy to examine marital and class conflicts in English society.

In Absent Friends, a tea party is arranged supposedly to console an old school friend, but it reveals the troubled relationships of the others at the party.

Blending humor and poignancy, Absent Friends has been called “the saddest…and the funniest” of Ayckbourn’s plays.