Alan Ayckbourn tops WOS Jubilee Playwrights pollDate: 7 June 2012Alan Ayckbourn has come top of Whatsonstage.com’s Jubilee Playwrights poll to find the most popular of the ‘new Elizabethans’. Ayckbourn, author of over 70 plays, claimed a whopping 38.4% of the vote, followed by Joe Orton (25.1%), Caryl Churchill (10.9%), Harold Pinter (7.9%), Tom Stoppard (6.1%), Alan Bennett (4.3%), Terence Rattigan & David Hare (2.7%), Edward Bond (1.1%) and John Osborne (0.6%). The shortlist of ten was drawn from a longlist of 60 – representing the six decades of the Queen’s reign – by the Whatsonstage.com editorial team, including chief critic Michael Coveney. A total of 622 votes were cast in the poll, which ran from 31 May to 6 June 2012.
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