A Chorus Of Disapproval marked the 25th anniversary of Alan Ayckbourn’s career as a playwright and was his 31st full-length play. From conception it was always highly ambitious. Wanting to write a piece about amateur musicals, Alan had the idea of a play based around the operetta The Vagabond King.

The production would incorporate approximately 85 local amateur singers for the chorus (Alan’s biographer, Paul Allen, believed it was 20 people but Alan clearly states his grander intentions in Ian Watson’s Conversations With Ayckbourn).

His initial idea was to have the chorus scattered around the auditorium. About 25 minutes in, they would start singing and, in Alan’s words, cause “the person next to them to look absolutely alarmed.”

Subsequently on 9 March, 1984, the Scarborough Evening News ran a news piece advertising auditions for amateur singers with soloing experiences.