Alan Ayckboum's Liza Doolittle

This passage occurs in "A Self-Improving Woman," the title of one of four possible third scenes (every scene has a title) in Alan Ayckbourn's Intimate Exchanges, which consists of eight full-length plays. Since each play has two possible endings, contained in different concluding scenes, there are, in effect, sixteen plays. To see all of Intimate Exchanges requires sixteen evenings and/or matinees at the theatre. The published text fills two volumes. Intimate Exchanges continues along lines Ayckbourn had explored in Sisterly Feelings, which employs alternative scenes in the center, the flip of a coin during performance determining which scene is played. In both works, each alternative creates a different set of circumstances that eventually requires another choice. A more complex comedy, Intimate Exchanges not only progresses by means that are not arbitrary, but the decisions in the later play, which more closely derive from character, are more numerous than those in the earlier, and each decision results in alternatives with greater ramifications than the previous alternatives.