In 1973 Ayckbourn wrote his first trilogy of plays, The Norman Conquests. It was to be a further twenty-eight years before he wrote another when in 2001 he produced Damsels in Distress. Staging three plays on one set, with a company of seven players sharing all the roles, must have suited his requirements as an Artistic Director with budgetary limitations. It is the sort of imposed limitation that inspires this playwright. As we shall see, this combination of elements was to prove problematic when the plays transferred to the West End in 2002. Alan Ayckbourn had not planned a trilogy.

The two pieces he then wrote, GamePlan and FlatSpin, were announced under the generic title Damsels in Distress. However, during rehearsals, the writer declared that he had another play in mind, RolePlay. So the two plays developed into a trilogy. With the title of the last one Ayckbourn summarized their shared theme. The Damsels in Distress plays have plots led by a female protagonist put under pressure by adopting a false persona. It has always been his ambition to write a good comedy thriller. Snake in the Grass (2002), Communicating Doors (1994), are two obvious attempts. In the pre-publicity for Damsels in Distress, Ayckbourn talked of his admiration for screen thrillers and his desire to explore the genre.