There’s a moment in The Norman Conquests when actor Steve Martin shows up on the Gladstone Theatre stage carrying a wastebasket. The moment is amusing in itself, and it integrates neatly into John P. Kelly’s funny and perceptive production. But to discover the full story behind the arrival of that receptacle, you’ll have to pay a return visit to the Gladstone — and you’ll probably want to do so.

The reason is that what we’re seeing at the moment is a play called Table Manners, a single instalment of Alan Ayckbourn’s marvellous trilogy about a weekend of domestic chaos. In this one, we’re witnessing the events that occur in the dining room. Coming up in a couple of weeks is Living Together, which will introduce us to unspeakable occurrences during that same time period in the living room and also tell us more about that wastebasket. Finally we’ll be getting Round And Round the Garden, which takes us outdoors into the garden where the trilogy’s central character — a bearded womanizing librarian named Norman — will be wreaking further havoc on the lives of those about him. One hopes that the next two entries will match the quality of this opening production.

As a playwright, Ayckbourn has repeatedly been drawn to feats of structural juggling. Something unusual in his creative psyche has brought us items like How The Other Half Loves with its double image of two living rooms occupying the same space; Communicating Doors with its use of a hotel suite as a vehicle for time travel; and Absurd Person Singular which places the same group of couples in three separate kitchens on three consecutive Christmas eves. These and other plays testify to Acykbourn’s credentials as a restless experimenter. And the Norman Conquests trilogy is particularly audacious — a challenge for Ayckbourn in fitting the right pieces into the right place in his three-play jigsaw, a challenge as well to the director and actors in keeping everything working. …

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