7 September: Amy's View

In July we read A Doll's House, an interesting play which lead to lots of discussion.  That same evening Rina and I went to the ECC play reading where we read Amy's View - and we felt that we'd been treated to two very good plays in one day!  

Wikipedia describes Amy's View thus:  The play takes place in Berkshire near Pangbourne, and in London, from 1979 to 1995. Over the course of these sixteen years  "a running argument about the respective virtues of traditional theater and the media arts weaves its way through espoused opinions on marriage, love, fame, fidelity, betrayal, personal and artistic integrity, and the sometimes elusive ethics of the corporate world, among other things."  Which sums it up rather well!

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Characters

Amy Thomas is a young woman, just twenty-three at the start of the play, who is the daughter of Esme Allen. She is "dark haired with an unmistakable air of quiet resolution." She created a small publication when she was a girl called Amy's View. She is in a relationship with Dominic.

Esme Allen is Amy's mother and a prominent West end actress. She is forty-nine at the start of the play, and is "surprisingly small, her manner both sensitive and intense. Something in her vulnerability makes people instantly protective of her."  She constantly butts heads with Dominic, and has an interesting relationship with Frank.

Dominic Tyghe is Amy's boyfriend. He is a year younger than Amy, and quite attractive. He is an orphan, having never known his parents, and aspires to be a successful filmmaker.

Frank Oddie is one of Esme's neighbors, as well as a commissioning agent for Lloyd's of London. He looks after Esme's investments and other financial matters. He is "in his early fifties, easy going and amiable."

Evelyn Thomas is Esme's mother in law, Amy's grandma. She is "white haired, in her late seventies," and lives with Esme. She becomes increasingly decrepit - both physically and mentally - throughout the play.

Toby Cole is a young actor in his twenties.

I thought this list of actors from Wikipedia would be interesting viewing, it's a play with good credentials!

Role	World Premiere Cast, 13 June 1997 Royal National Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre, London.	Broadway Premiere, Apr 15, 1999 New York City, Ethel Barrymore Theatre	West End Revival, 14 November 2006, Garrick Theatre, London.
Esme Allen	Judi Dench	Judi Dench	Felicity Kendal
Amy Thomas	Samantha Bond	Samantha Bond	Jenna Russell
Dominic Tyghe	Eoin McCarthy	Tate Donovan	Ryan Kiggell
Frank Oddie	Ronald Pickup	Ronald Pickup	Gawn Grainger
Evelyn Thomas	Joyce Redman	Anne Pitoniak	Antonia Pemberton
Toby Cole	Christopher Staines	Maduka Steady	Geoff Breton
Directed by	Richard Eyre	Richard Eyre	Peter Hall

Sir David Hare (1947 - )

Most notable for his stage work, David Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002 and The Reader in 2008.

He has had great success in the West End, and he has had sever Tony Award nominations for Best play and received two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play.  He has also written for the BBC.

Hare has also received various nominations and awards in the US.  

He was knighted in 1998.

3 August: Rookery Nook

I was delighted that so many of you enjoyed July's A Doll's House, and Ibsen is definitely going to appear on our agenda again!

I am also very happy that you enjoyed the cheesecake.  Here's the link to the embarrassingly easy recipe:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4653/strawberry-cheesecake-in-4-easy-steps-

There was a request for something funny in August, and so I am going to put forward a play that I've not read!

When I lived in Godalming the local Am Dram groups performed in The Ben Travers Theatre: and so I have often thought I should investigate his work.  And this set off a chain of thought.  I believe the theatre was so named because he was an old-boy of Charterhouse School, where the theatre was located (Charterhouse is one of the UK's most expensive private schools and was in the same town where I used to live - and, interestingly, my nephew who was not educated there went on to become their theatre technician until very recently!).  Another famous, and still living, old boy is Ben Elton - and so I have popped a book of his plays into my Amazon shopping basket as I think we might enjoy one or two of them!

Back to Rookery Nook!

This is a traditional English farce, with sexual innuendo and misunderstandings - a sort of grown-up pantomime! Therefore I am not going to attempt to reveal the plot, but a list of characters will definitely be a help!

• Gertrude Twine: Formidable wife of Harold
• Mrs Leverett: Charwoman
• Harold Twine – Gertrude's husband
• Clive Popkiss – Gerald's cousin - staying with the Twines
• Gerald Popkiss – Gertrude's new brother-in-law
• Rhoda Marley – Local resident, young, pretty ...
• Putz – Rhoda's wicked step-father
• Admiral Juddy – Golfing pal of Harold
• Poppy Dickey – Lively local woman who collects for charity
• Clara Popkiss – Gertrude's newly married sister/Gerald's wife
• Mrs Possett 

Rookery Nook was first staged in 1923 and has been revived several times since then.  In 2005, Charles Spencer wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "Beneath the laughter, Rookery Nook is blessed with a robust tolerance, celebrating sexual desire and human frailty, even as it deplores those gossips addicted to 'vile scandals, venomous libels, and dirty little tattling tea parties'. In this respect, at least, Travers still has something to say to the England of today.

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Ben Travers  (12 November 1886 – 18 December 1980)

Ben Travers wrote more than twenty plays, thirty screenplays, five novels, and three volumes of memoirs. He is best remembered for his long-running series of farces first staged in the 1920s and 1930s at the Aldwych Theatre. Many of these were made into films and later television productions.

After working for some years in his family's wholesale grocery business, which he detested, Travers worked for a publisher and then as a pilot in the First World War before beginning to write novels and plays. During the Second World War Travers served in the Royal Air Force, working in intelligence, and later served at the Ministry of Information, while producing two well-received plays.

After the war Travers's output declined; he had a long fallow period after the death of his wife in 1951, although he collaborated on a few revivals and adaptations of his earlier work. He returned to playwriting in 1968. He was inspired to write a new comedy in the early 1970s after the abolition of theatre censorship in Britain permitted him to write without evasion about sexual activities, one of his favourite topics. The resulting play, The Bed Before Yesterday (1975), presented when he was 89, was the longest-running of all his stage works, easily outplaying of any of his Aldwych farces.