my thanks to Val for suggesting we do another Tom Stoppard. I have not had the chance to reread it yet, but from memory this is one of his more accessible and humorous plays. I am certain you will enjoy it.
As always I am stealing some text!
The Real Thing
by Tom Stoppard that was first performed in 1982. The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress and member of a group fighting to free Brodie, a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest.
The Real Thing examines the nature of honesty and uses various constructs, including a play within a play, to explore the theme of reality versus appearance. It has been described as one of Stoppard's "most popular, enduring and autobiographical plays."[1][2]
Max: "40-ish" male actor who begins the play married to Annie. Acts in Henry's new play, House of Cards.
Charlotte: "35-ish" actress who begins the play married to Henry. Appears opposite Max in House of Cards.
Henry: "40-ish" playwright who, at the beginning of the play, is married to Charlotte and conducting an affair with Annie. Both believe in love and yet approach it with cynicism.
Annie: "30-ish" actress who begins the play married to Max. She has been conducting an ongoing affair with Henry while also working as an activist for Brodie, a soldier who was arrested and imprisoned for setting fire to a wreath at the Cenotaph.
Billy: "22-ish" young actor who plays Giovanni to Annie's Annabella in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Openly shows romantic interest in Annie.
Debbie: "17" year old daughter of Charlotte and Henry who nevertheless spends very little time with them.
Brodie: "25" year old soldier imprisoned for setting fire to the wreath at the Cenotaph. Annie takes him up as a cause.
Given the subject matter of the play, I am also going to include Wikipedia's brief summary of Stoppard's own, perhaps complex, love life:
Stoppard has been married three times. His first marriage was to Josie Ingle (1965–1972), a nurse. His second marriage was to Miriam Stern (1972–92); they separated when he began a relationship with actress Felicity Kendal. He also had a relationship with actress Sinéad Cusack, but she made it clear she wished to remain married to Jeremy Irons and stay close to their two sons. Also, after she was reunited with a son she had given up for adoption, she wished to spend time with him in Dublin rather than with Stoppard in the house they shared in France. He has two sons from each of his first two marriages. In 2014 he married Sabrina Guinness.
I confess. I picked up this play thinking it was something else!! Oops. I hope you will forgive me.
It is a modern play. Very. Be prepared for a few naughty words! It deals with modern problems, with humour.
This is the 2003 Theatre Guide summary of the play (well, bits of it!)
I think we all deserve a treat. It's been a long, hot summer, everyone has been off at the Edinburgh Festival, and the only histrionic fiction staged for our delectation has been the Hutton Enquiry. Happily, we can now all have that special treat, because Henry Adams's Fringe First Award-Winning play has transferred from the Traverse to the Theatre Royal Stratford East.
This is a very fine piece of writing from the Caithness-born playwright, Henry Adams. .... It's strengths lie in its wit, its characterisation and its bizarre and topical plot. It is also belly-laughter funny. It is so satisfying to reel with laughter at some of those things we fear most.
The People Next Door deals in topicalities and stands out particularly in Scottish playwriting simply by putting a hitherto neglected minority group of black and Asian immigrants on the stage. Ipso facto it's got everything going for it.
Nigel is a half Pakistani whose father did a runner when his Scottish mother was pregnant. In his daydreams he is Salim, an ultra hip, super cool guy with considerable street-cred and the lingo to prove it. In everyday reality, he lives in a tenement on disability allowance having been diagnosed with a mental disorder. He might have a borderline personality but Nigel is warm, caring, savvy and just crazy enough to have no inhibitions about saying what he thinks. In other words he is utterly loveable.
His only friends are Mrs Mac, the old Scottish widow upstairs, and a black teenager, about as smart as they come, with an unfortunate family background. Nigel suffers from chronic anxiety, and if he thinks he is paranoid a man is just about to walk into his life to show him he's not nearly paranoid enough.
Enter Phil, a bent copper with stashes of drugs in every pocket and up his nose, and a psychosis Freud would have salivated to get onto his couch. Phil bursts into Nigel's life because he has discovered that the long-lost half-brother, the golden boy, Karim, has become an international terrorist on the wanted list of every intelligence agency in the Western Hemisphere and Phil intends to show the boys in the Special Branch that the average copper, himself in particular, is just as smart as they are.
This is genuinely a topical play,
with a serious political statement to make, if, like I do, you see the
personal as political. But it is delivered to us with a comedy that
bleeds seamlessly on occasion into farce and satire.
Following on from last month, in August we will again be re-reading a play.
Here's what I wrote in 2016.
Thank you to Rina for suggesting that we read again this modern classic. It is gripping and absorbing, I am looking forward to getting to grips with it again.
And in 2017 it drove young Harry Potter fans to distraction when Daniel Radcliffe took on, and bared all, in the lead role ... (queue raciest picture to ever appear on this blog below!)
Equus is a 1973 play by Peter Shaffer, about a child psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses.
Shaffer was inspired to write Equus when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old boy who blinded six horses in a small town in northern England. He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime, and to evoke the same "air of mystery" and "numinous" qualities as in his 1964 play The Royal Hunt of the Sun but in a more modern setting. The narrative of the play follows the attempts of Dr. Martin Dysart to understand the cause of the boy's (Alan Strang) actions while wrestling with his own sense of purpose and the nature of his work.
The original stage production ran at the National Theatre in London between 1973 and 1975.
I watched the film, Le Prenom, a short while ago and fell in love with it - an unusual situation as I don't often feel so passionate about (Belgian)French films!
And then a friend told me that the text exists in English! Hurrah!
As a result of this (and the aforementioned friend being the person behind ETCetera theatre group) I will be directing Le Prenom for next April in English and French. I am hoping that this will be good for my French as well as providing Brussels with a good version of this "interesting" play.
Le Prenom / What's in a Name
by Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte
Vincent is about to become a father. At a meeting with childhood friends he announces the name for his future son. The scandalous name ignites a discussion which surfaces unpleasant matters from the past of the group.