Middle is the second in David Eldridge's as yet unfinished trilogy exploring love and relationships.
In Beginning we met Laura and Danny, at the very start of their relationship.
Middle introduces us to Maggie and Gary, in their 50s, parents and married over 12 years. Should they have an honest conversation about life and marriage? Can their marriage stand it?
Raw. Touching. Funny. Real.
Happy New Year All
After the nasty little bug I caught in December, we are shifting the plays back a month, and so we start 2023 with The Unfriend
It is by Steven Moffat who is, depending on your viewing habits, a familiar name from the writing credits of Dr. Who, Sherlock or the film Tintin! The London production got a 4* review in The Guardian, so I'm optimistic!
It is almost certainly the most modern play we have read! Here's the Wikipedia entry:
"The play was due to premiere at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester as part of the 2020 Festival, however due to the COVID-19 pandemic the play was postponed to 2022. The play began previews on 21 May 2022, with a press night on 26 May. It ended its planned limited run on 9 July 2022. The play is directed by Mark Gatiss (in his directorial debut) ... The Unfriend will transfer to the West End, opening at the Criterion Theatre on 19 January 2023, following previews from 15 January. It will play a limited run to 16 April 2023, with the original cast from Chichester all returning."
So if you enjoy it you might be able to get to see it. I am already tempted, as Mark Gatiss has had me almost out of my seat weeping with laughter as a performer!
"Ah, but the play Janet!" I hear you cry.
"We're dying of manners. We're under siege from personal embarrassment. This is not sane. This is not rational. That woman is a monster!"
Peter and Debbie are enjoying a cruise, a celebration of twenty years of marriage, and a break from their annoying teenagers. They befriend fellow passenger, Elsa Jean Krakowski, an eccentric American with a fondness for Donald Trump. There's something slightly unsettling in her overeager friendliness, but there's no point rocking the boat if you're about to get off it.
Back home, in the comfort of suburbia, Elsa suddenly turns up on Peter and Debbie's doorstep, unexpectedly. And when they look up their house guest online, unearthing some hair-raising evidence, their good nature is challenged as never before. What k ind of danger have they allowed to take up residence in their guest room? And can they bring themselves to say anything about it? Sometimes the truth is just too impolite.
This is a 'hilarious and satirical' look at middle-class England's disastrous instinct always to appear nice.
What a lovely group we had last month! So nice to welcome new and old members!
Because we have been having smaller groups recently on my last trip to London I bought a number of scripts with a smaller cast list! And I propose to start on one of these new, modern, plays next month.
I will be interested in what you think of this play. I think we'll read it in one go and have tea and cake after as it's shorter than a normal play.
Beginning by David Eldridge
This 2017 play is the first of a trilogy of plays to look at love and relationships, it is followed by Middle, but it seems that End has not yet been written! Beginning had excellent reviews and transferred to various theatres after its original run at The National.
Set in the aftermath of Laura's housewarming party at her new flat in Crouch End, Danny, having attended simply as the plus one of a friend, is the last remaining guest. Laura is 38, single, childless and with no immediate family; Danny is 42, divorced, living with his mother and has not seen his daughter for a number of years.
The play begins with them nearly kissing and charts their journey in real time as they both seek to get back to that point. While Laura is clear from the outset that she fancies Danny and wants him to stay over, Danny is reluctant to share his true feelings. Over the course of the play, both begin to open up to one another and share their mutual loneliness and isolation in the city of London and where they are in their lives.
Hello and Welcome Back!
I hope you all had a wonderful summer.
To start off the Autumn Term I've found a "domestic comedy" from 1974: Chez Nous by Peter Nichols. The first cast included Albert Finney, Geraldine McEwan and Denholm Elliott and received excellent reviews. We might find it a little dated now, but hopefully fun.
In the wake of the publication of his controversial book on adolescent sexuality, Dick and his wife, Liz, have retreated with their family to the French countryside. Joined by their friends Phil and Diana for a child-free weekend, they enjoy the sunshine and the cheap wine until certain unsavoury revelations come to light. At the worst moment possible, two reporters appear to interview Dick, causing great worry among the couples that all their secrets will be aired in the press. Nichols drew inspiration from time spent at his own family's home in France.
Makes you wonder what his holidays were like!!
Three Tall Women by Edward Albee is a play very close to my heart, as it's the first full length play that I directed for the ECC in 2010!
As you might surmise, there are only 3 female characters in the play, although a son also makes an appearance!
In Act One we meet three women, their roles alter in Act Two, but I will leave you to enjoy the play and see how they develop!
A, a compelling woman more than 90 years old, reflects on her life with a mixture of shame, pleasure, regret, and satisfaction. She recalls the fun of her childhood and her early marriage, when she felt an overwhelming optimism. She also bitterly recalls negative events that caused her regret: her husband’s affairs and death, and the estrangement of her gay son.
The woman’s relationship with her son is the clearest indication that Albee was working through some troubled memories of his own in Three Tall Women. Raised by conservative New England adoptive parents who disapproved of his being gay, he left home at 18, as does the son in this play. Albee admitted to The Economist that the play "was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started."
A study guide to the play noted, "Besides exorcising personal demons, Albee regained the respect of New York theater critics with the play. Many of them had despaired that the playwright, who showed such promise during the 1960s and 1970s, had dried up creatively. In fact, Three Tall Women was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1994, as well as the Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle awards for best play."
This month the photos are from my personal collection.
This month we will be having something much lighter after last month's difficult/moving The Father.
The play we have chosen is If I Were You by Alan Ayckbourn.
Two perfect marriages ... until life changes for Jill and Mal Rodale.
Characters
Mal Rodale: A sales manager in his 40s.
Jill Rodale: His wife
Chrissie Snaith: Their daughter in her mid-20s
Dean Snaith: Her husband
Sam Rodale: Mal and Jill's son
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| Florian Zeller |
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I have greatly enjoyed many of Kate Atkinson's books, and thought it might be nice to read one of her two plays. In fact, I thought we had already done so, but can't find it on my list!
Abandonment is a play about Elizabeth, 40 something, childless, recently separated and just wanting to be alone. She has moved to a new house, a converted mansion, alive with history, character, woodworm and dry rot. And is beseiged by humans: living and not quite so living.
It is a play about love, death, identity and evolution. A complex mixture of social comedy and family drama: The Guardian review says it has subject covered!
I hope you will enjoy it.
I PROMISE that I am not going to make you read comedy murder mysteries all year! I did promise you a Belgian play, but very embarrassingly I seem to have lost the scripts (PLEASE no-one tell my friend about this, she thinks I'm incompetent enough as it is, I know they are here SOMEWHERE!)
And so, at change of plan! At the end of January's ECC play reading I asked for suggestions and 'a comedy' was requested! Browsing through the library I came across this, and realised we've never read it - and it is quite funny (I hope!) It was performed by ATC some years ago, and my memory of it was that it was fun!
Arsenic and Old Lace
This is of course best known as a 1944 film starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra. However it was based on Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play. The contract with the play’s producers stipulated that the film would not be released until the Broadway run had ended. The original planned release date was September 30, 1942. The play was a tremendous hit, running for three and a half years, so the film was not released until 1944.
The play is set in 1944 (or as the script says 'The Present') in New York, but accents are not required!
Mortimer Brewster: a writer who has repeatedly denounced marriage as "an old-fashioned superstition"
Elaine Harper: the minister's daughter who grew up next door to him.
Abby Brewster: One of Mortimer's aunts who raised him in the old family home.
Martha Brewster: His other aunt.
Teddy Brewster: Mortimer's brother, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt
Jonathan Brewster: Mortimer's brother, whose face resembles that of Frankenstein
Dr. Herman Einstein: Plastic Surgeon
There is of course more than this to all of the characters!
Kesselring does not appear to have been a prolific writer, and indeed Wikipedia describes Arsenic and Old Lace as his 'Masterpiece'. I think its humour has stood the test of time, although it is definitely not a play for today!
