Our Man in Havanna

In January we will be reading Our Man in Havanna, based on the Graham Greene novel.

It might be interesting for you to know that this play, a dark but light-hearted comedy of spying in the Cold War, is based on fact!  While working in counter-espionage for MI6, Greene came across the story of a German agents in Portugal who were feeding fictitious reports to their masters back home in order to benefit financially.  One Spanish double agent, Garbo, pretended to have a ring of agents all over England and became the inspiration for Wormold: the 'hero' of the play.

Greene wrote his version of the play in 1946, set in Estonia: but it was never published.  He then felt the Cold War would be a better background for the storyline, and it was finally published in 1958.  The following year it was turned into a film starring Alec Guinness, and in 1963 into an opera!

You can hear an excerpt from the opera on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-4F7nGkS9Y

Clive Francis adapted the book into a play in 2007.

The Film

Although the revolutionary Cuban Government allowed the film to be shot in the capital, Fidel Castro complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista (the cruel former dictator who fled the country €300 million of the country's money with him) regime.

Wikipedia reports Greene as commenting:

Alas, the book did me little good with the new rulers in Havana. In poking fun at the British Secret Service, I had minimized the terror of Batista's rule. I had not wanted too black a background for a light-hearted comedy, but those who suffered during the years of dictatorship could hardly be expected to appreciate that my real subject was the absurdity of the British agent and not the justice of a revolution.

Greene's work is not celebrated in Cuba having fallen out with them due to his disapproval of aspects of the new regime's policies against certain peoples (eg Catholics, homosexuals).

The cast is huge!  It will be interesting to see how we cope with it!

December 2013 - The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie

Thank You Ladies

Firstly, my most sincere thanks to you lovely ladies for your incredibly generous gift.  I was really quite overwhelmed at your kindness - especially as I enjoy the group so much!  You are such a nice group that it really is a pleasure to have you here each month.  So, many many thanks, and those of you who walk with me will be dismayed when I tell you that I'll probably put the voucher towards a new camera that I have my eye on .....

However, I would also like to express on the blog how grateful I am to Rina for her help - I do the fun things: the planning, the suggesting, the baking - and she does the more mundane side of the readings! So thank you Rina.  Without your help the group would not be so easy for me to organise.

Thank you too to Dawn, Miriam, Margaret and Rina for their contributions to the nibbles today.  I am delighted that you enjoyed the mulled wine.  For those of you who asked, the recipe was:

• A couple of bottles of Shiraz and a fair amount of water.
• A large shake out of a bag of sugar (brown)
• 3 large cinnamon sticks
• A generous shake of ground cloves (I would have used whole cloves if I'd not run out - but if you use these don't leave them in for hours as they will otherwise drown all other flavours)
• A generous length of orange peel.  You could put in a whole orange studded with some cloves.
• The secret ingredient was a generous splash of a Polish liqueur which was a gift and too sweet for our taste - but you could use anything really!  Brandy is more traditional, but Cherry Brandy or some such liqueur would probably work well too.

Then I just heated it all up to below boiling point, and popped it in the slow cooker for about 1 1/2 hours. Or just leave it on a low light for 30 mins or so and don't allow it to boil.



Goodbye Cathy!

I feel dreadful that I hadn't realised that this would be Cathy's last play reading session.  I knew of course that Cathy was leaving, but had assumed she would still be here in January.  

Cathy - it has been wonderful having you in the group, and we are really going to miss you.  We wish you much happiness in your new home back in the UK, and hope that you will come along if ever your visits back to Brussels happen to coincide with the first Wednesday of the month.

Farewell Cathy!  We wish you much happiness and hope to see you again one day

The Mousetrap

I think you all agreed that it was worth outlining the set, as the play's complicated with lots of entrances and exits.  

Here's a picture of a set to remind us of the comings and goings!

Characters

Lifted from Wikipedia:

• Mollie Ralston – Proprietor of Monkswell Manor, and wife of Giles.
• Giles Ralston – Husband of Mollie who runs Monkswell Manor with his wife.
• Christopher Wren – The first guest to arrive at the hotel, Wren is a hyperactive young man who acts in a very peculiar manner. He admits he is running away from something, but refuses to say what. Wren claims to have been named after the architect of the same name by his parents.
• Mrs Boyle – A critical older woman who is pleased by nothing she observes.
• Major Metcalf – Retired from the army, little is known about Major Metcalf.
• Miss Casewell – A strange, aloof, masculine woman who speaks offhandedly about the horrific experiences of her childhood.
• Mr Paravicini – A man of unknown provenance, who turns up claiming his car has overturned in a snowdrift. He appears to be affecting a foreign accent and artificially aged with make-up.
• Detective Sergeant Trotter – The detective role during the play. He arrives in a snow storm and questions the proprietors and guests.

The Wikipedia article states:  Christie was always upset by the plots of her works being revealed in reviews, and in 2010 her grandson Matthew Prichard, who receives the royalties from the play, was "dismayed" to learn from The Independent that the ending to The Mousetrap was revealed online in the play's Wikipedia article.   And it does!

Many Congratulations to Jane, Rina & Margaret who guessed Who Done It!

I think it was a fun play to do at this time of year, although it was slightly longer than I had anticipated!  Given that it is the longest running play of all time, I hope that those of you who had never seen it feel you have partaken of a small piece of history!

FINALLY

Many famous actors have appeared in this play at sometime in their lives.  However, in November 2012 a star-studded cast gave a one-off performance of The Mousetrap to celebrate its 60th anniversary.  

Pictured left to right are Harry Lloyd, Nicholas Farrell, Iain Glen (back) Tamsin Greig, Miranda Hart, Julie Walters, Patrick Stewart and Hugh Bonneville  (The Daily Mail)

The Mousetrap

We will be reading The Mousetrap on Wednesday 4 December.  Please remember that the identity of the murder is a closely guarded secret, and never revealed by anyone who has seen the play.  I suggest we maintain this tradition after our reading!

November 2013: To Kill A Mockingbird

Thank you to everyone who turned out on this dreary and wet afternoon.  Special thanks to Margaret and Dawn (welcome Dawn, we all hope you enjoyed your first afternoon with us) for hot-footing it from the WIC Newcomers Coffee Morning, and to Naomi for re-arranging her day to be with us.

It was Naomi's last playreading, as she returns to the UK next week: we are truly sorry to lose you Naomi and hope that if ever your return visits coincide with the first Wednesday of the month you will come back and visit us.

Bye bye Naomi - come back and see us some time!

Today's play was a bit of a challenge - and my apologies to anyone who found it confusing with so many characters coming and going!  However, I think we all enjoyed revisiting (or visiting for the first time) this famous book which so many of us hold dear.  I think we all agreed that it is a wonderful work although somewhat emotionally draining.  I was wondering after whether she has read The Help, and, if so, what she made of it.

Harper Lee

After our discussions about Harper Lee and her reluctance to give interviews, I did a google.  I found this wonderful article which I have lifted directly from The Guardian's website. 

Article by Paula Cocozza, 28 June 2010 (link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/28/harper-lee-interview-mockingbird)  Do read this, it's wonderful (Brits will particularly enjoy the fact that the interview was with the Mail on Sunday):

It's nearly 50 years since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning novel. Famously, Lee has spent most of the time since living a quiet life, which journalists commonly describe as reclusive, chiefly because although Lee is known in her Alabaman home town, she won't speak to the press, and has never published another novel.

So imagine the excitement when the Mail on Sunday devoted two pages to the story of a meeting between its writer Sharon Churcher and the legendarily silent novelist. "When [Harper Lee's] friends agreed to give our reporter an introduction, it was on one strict condition . . . Don't mention the Mockingbird" ran the preamble. This is how the meeting went (read it slowly, to make it last):

"Nervously, I approach the novelist, carrying the best box of chocolates I could find in the small Alabama town of Monroeville, a Hershey's selection costing a few dollars. I start to apologise that I hadn't brought more but a beaming Nelle – as her friends and family call her – extends her hand.

"'Thank you so much,' she told me. 'You are most kind. We're just going to feed the ducks but call me the next time you are here. We have a lot of history here. You will enjoy it.'"

Here's the original article, which is a bit longer than the interview!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1289793/Dont-mention-mockingbird-Meet-Harper-Lee-reclusive-novelist-wrote-classic-novel-mesmerised-40-million-readers.html

However ...

I think what Jane had read was about the lawsuit Harper Lee against a small (not for profit) museum she claims is using Mockingbird to boost their profits:  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/harper-lee-monroeville-museum-lawsuit-mockingbird

Earlier this year she also sued her literary agent, claiming he has tricked her into handing copyright over to him: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/04/harper-lee-sues-agent-copyright.  The Daily Mail reported in September that this has been settled and that Lee is happy.

Links on the right of both those Guardian articles will take you to further articles about the famous recluse.

I finish with this photo of her taken in 2007.  I think it's rather cute!

Lee is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, November 5, 2007

October 2013: Tom & Viv by Michael Hastings

It was a glorious Indian Summer day, and we were able to sit outside for the first time ever!

But, well, what a difficult play to write about!  The theme of the play did not really reflect the glorious weather!  We all agreed it is one of the plays that we will remember.  We enjoyed reading it, and we felt it was a beautifully crafted piece of work, but it was not one which had us laughing out loud.

Tom & Viv in 1916

The sad story of T S Elliot's marriage to his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood.  Sad for so many reasons, not least that today Vivienne's illness would have be  understood and treated with compassion. Sad because the medicine to make her better probably made her worse.  Sad because she was surely not the only woman to suffer as she did.  Sad because of the wasted lives ... but one has to wonder how Elliot's poetry would have developed had he not met Vivienne.  Would he have been drawn towards a similarly challenging muse?

But the play does reflect some moments of intense passion and joy between the two.  A passion which Elliot denies at the end of the play, but which was surely there in some form in their early days.

At the end of the play we all felt we wanted to know more about Elliot and Vivienne, and no doubt we have all gone home and switched on our computers to look them up!  I do hope so - there is far more to read about them than I have put below, even just the Wikipedia entries make interesting reading.

Some bare facts.

Thomas Stearns Elliot 1888-1965

Born in Missouri, but became a Brit in 1927.
Studied at Harvard & Oxford.
Married Vivienne 3 months after he met her (in Oxford) in 1915.  They remained married, although they were legally separated, until her death in 1947.  It is claimed that she, and her illness, was an inspiration for much of his poetry.
Modernist poet, who was given the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 and The Order of Merit in the same year.
Married his second wife Valerie in in 1957.

Vivienne Haigh-Wood Elliot 1888-1947

It has been said:  "Vivienne ruined Tom as a man, but she made him as a poet."
She too was a writer, but her fame lies in being 'Elliot's first wife'.  The hormonal imbalance she suffered dominated her life and dictated the path her life took towards insanity.

Next Month:  To Kill a Mockingbird

September 2013

This blog is starting at the beginning of the new WIC Year: September 2013.

The WIC Play Reading Group is open to any WIC Member interested in theatre – you don’t need to be a good actor nor does English need to be your mother tongue.  We meet at 1.30pm on the first Wednesday of the month – contact me at janet.middleton@yahoo.com if you’d like to know more.

Our First Meeting: 27 January 2011 - Remember that cake ladies?!?!

Since last September we have worked our way through the Alan Ayckbourn trilogy The Norman Conquests, and enjoyed seeing the same scenario being replayed through different eyes and angles.  We have also read Really Old, Like 45 – a play chosen simply for its wonderful title!  It was quite modern and different to those we had been used to, and envisaged a future when the elderly have to justify their existence. Jumpy was another modern play dealt with a mother and daughter relationship breaking down.  We then read Taking Steps, another Ayckbourn relationship comedy, so we followed this with a serious piece: Look Back in Anger which was certainly a more difficult read and although to some degree dated, it was an interesting piece of social history.

The 'Interval' is always an important part of our meetings!

Normally at our meetings I spend a great deal of time trying to ensure that everyone gets a fair turn at reading, but in May we approached Equus differently.  Having read the play I felt it would benefit from us having just one person play an individual role throughout, and so this is what we did.  Those of us who were there felt that on this occasion we benefited from this approach, as the play is compelling and we felt we were able to engage better with the characters and the depth of the play when we didn’t have to worry about who was playing which role at this point.  I think we all felt pretty drained by the end of the session!

We  finished the WIC Year by reading The Audience.  This play was, at the time of the reading, being performed in the West End with Helen Mirren winning great acclaim for her role as Elizabeth II.  This reading was made in homage to the fabulous NTLive transmissions, which have been stopped in Belgium.  There are a number of people lobbying for them to be reinstated, and if you are interested in knowing more about this please don’t hesitate to contact us at goliveinbrussels@gmail.com or follow our blog at http://gontliveinbrussels.wordpress.com/.

Celebrating Rina's Birthday!

Future plays on our agenda include Tom and Viv (about TS Elliot and his first wife), Our Man in Havana, The Mousetrap and To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Ideas for plays to read are always welcome!