Sugar Daddies: Frequently Asked Questions

Alan Ayckbourn's Archivist Simon Murgatroyd's answers some of the most frequently asked questions about Alan Ayckbourn's Sugar Daddies. If you have a question about this or any other of Alan Ayckbourn's plays, you can contact the website via the Contact Us page.

Is Sasha and Val's relationship a physically sexual one at any point?
No and there is nothing in the play which would support this view. For complete clarification though, this is Alan Ayckbourn's own response to the question: "They don’t sleep together; he [Val] never asks for sex from her [Sasha]. So, she is able to kid herself it’s just friendship. Although it is undoubtedly a sexual friendship. Right at the very end he just holds her for a second. And that’s the only time he touches her. It allows her the dignity of having a relationship where she doesn’t feel she's selling herself short for it. She’s giving him companionship, she’s giving him friendship, but she’s not doing anything else. But they both know that... that what she does give him is an awful lot of sex in that she dresses up in fantastic clothes, swans around the room for him and behaves like some sort of prancing model, you know. She’s happy to wear the clothes he wants her to wear. It’s a strange relationship. But it’s not an uncommon one, I suspect."

I understand the play was changed following its publication, which is the correct performance text?
Alan Ayckbourn made minor alterations to the climax of the play in 2013 and this is now his preferred text for performance. If you are working from the Faber Plays 3 publication of the text, the alterations to the text can be found here. The Samuel French acting edition of the play is considered the definitive version of Sugar Daddies and includes all alterations.

All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd.