The Champion of Paribanou: In Brief
The Champion of Paribanou
Play Number: 50World Premiere: 29 November 1996
Venue: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Premiere Staging: In-the-round
Published: Samuel French
Other Media: No
Cast: 7m / 3f
Run Time: 2hr 10m
Synopsis: Loosely inspired by the Arabian Nights' tale of the Flying Carpet, it follows the adventures of Ahmed as he becomes the Princess Paribanou's champion against the evil Schaibar's champion and his former best friend Murgannah.
- The Champion Of Paribanou is Alan Ayckbourn's 50th play.
- The world premiere - directed by Alan Ayckbourn - was held at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on 29 November 1996.
- It was the first new Ayckbourn play to be staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, following the venue's opening in April of the same year. Previous Ayckbourn productions that year (By Jeeves and It Could be Any One Of Us) are considered revised revivals.
- The play was inspired by the tale of The Magic Carpet from The Thousand And One Nights (or The Arabian Nights), which Alan read to himself during a Christmas party, having received a book of the story from a grab-bag.
- One of the other motivations for writing such an ambitious and technically challenging play (which includes a flying carpet) was Alan's desire to show-off what the new theatre was capable of.
- The play is credited as being influenced by George Lucas (creator of the Star Wars saga), science fiction author Isaac Asimov, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson and the films Alan enjoyed watching as a young boy.
- Although strictly speaking Salim is an automaton, he is essentially one of a long tradition of malfunctioning robots in Alan Ayckbourn's plays such as NAN300F in Henceforward…, PADWAC in Callisto#7, Jacie Triplethree in Comic Potential and Sadie in My Sister Sadie.
- The Champion of Paribanou is one of Alan Ayckbourn's 'family' plays; these plays are written with a family audience in mind, but are considered by the playwright to be part of his full-length play canon and as significant in his canon as any of the other plays. Alan Ayckbourn's first family play is considered to be Mr A's Amazing Maze Plays in 1988.
- Alan Ayckbourn revived the play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre during the theatre's 50th anniversary year (the anniversary of the opening of the Library Theatre in Scarborough) in 2005.
- Although rarely revived, Alan Ayckbourn has said he considers it a favourite amongst the plays he has written.
- Although published as a play text by Samuel French, The Champion of Paribanou was also published in the collection Alan Ayckbourn: Plays 2 (Faber).