Third to open in Pitlochry Festival Theatre's 2004 Summer season is Alan Ayckbourn's masterful dark comedy, A Small Family Business, directed by Benjamin Twist and Kate Nelson.

Acknowledged as one of the defining plays of the 1980s, this award-winning comedy is also regarded by many as Ayckbourn's masterpiece.

"There is a contradiction to watching Alan Ayckbourn plays, one that makes him a great writer", comments Kate Nelson, co-director: "He makes us laugh, but leaves us squirming. In A Small Family Business, however, Ayckbourn goes much further."

To the outside world, Ayres & Graces is a model family business: hardworking, close-knit and trustworthy, a valiant British manufacturer battling away in the hard-fought world of fitted kitchens and vanity units.

When founder Ken retires, his son-in-law Jack McCracken joins the family firm as MD. Before too long, however, the honest, no-nonsense Jack begins to suspect that the firm is less interested in profit margins and VAT returns than in dodgy deals and a quiet bit of nest-feathering.  But that would mean his family was involved in fraud.  And they would never do that . . . would they?

As Jack probes deeper and deeper, a group of unlikely Italian businessmen, a sleazy private investigator and a house that is never quite what it seems help to add to his mounting confusion . . .

"A Small Family Business has long been my favourite of Ayckbourn's plays. Pertinent, beautifully written and outrageously funny, of course, it also paints a vividly accurate picture of how families work - or, perhaps, don't. And then there's the very real challenge of the extraordinary set that the show demands: now that's another matter altogether . . ." said Pitlochry Festival Theatre's artistic director, John Durnin.

A Small Family Business opens on 13th May 2004 at 20.00hrs.

For more information on the PFT 2004 programme click here.