4 November - Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley

Thank you to everyone who managed to defy the striking bus, metro and tram drivers and make it to Etterbeek for our October play reading.

I hope that you all managed to follow The Women without too much trouble:  it did occur to me during the play that there were an awful lot of women for us to become familiar with!

Next month we have a far easier read:  Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley.  Not one of his most famous works, but on a quick read-through it seems a decent play - and one that will be far easier to allocate the roles for!


John Boynton Priestley,

(13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984), was an English author, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, social commentator, man of letters and broadcaster, whose career straddled the 20th Century.
His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction which first brought him to wide public notice.

Important for our reading of Dangerous Corner (see below),  many of his plays are structured around a time slip, and he went on to develop a new theory of time, with different dimensions that link past, present and future.

Interestingly, in 1940, he broadcast a series of short propaganda talks that were credited with saving civilian morale during the Battle of Britain. His left-wing beliefs brought him into conflict with the government, but influenced the birth of the Welfare State.

Dangerous Corner

Wikipedia has a very thorough summary of the play, which I would encourage you NOT to read!  I fear that it might spoil the reading for you if you know the twists and turns.

However, it will be of benefit to know the characters involved in this 1932 play (1934 film):

• Martin Caplan - Deceased brother of Robert
• Robert Caplan - Director of a Publishing Firm
• Freda Caplan - His wife
• Gordon Whitehouse - Director of a Publishing Firm
• Betty Whitehouse - His wife
• Olwen Peel - Close friend of the Caplans and Whitehouses
• Charles Trevor Stanton  - Employee of the firm
• Maud Mockridge - A Novelist

7 October - The Women

We were a select group of play readers today (2 September), but it was interesting to see that a small group of us could read a play that demanded we sometimes had to each read 2 (or even 3) characters at a time!

However, the highlight of the afternoon was Charlotte's wonderful chocolate cake.  By popular demand here is the recipe:

Charlotte's Chocolate & Marron Cake

150g Dark Chocolate
130g Butter
500g Creme de Marron not puree (available from Match)
4 Eggs

• Melt the chocolate & butter
• Beat the eggs into the creme de marron one at a time
• Add chocolate & butter slowly into the creme de marron
• Cook at 150 degrees for 50 minutes

The Women by Clare Boothe Luce

The Women is a 1936 play about a group of Manhattan socialites, their pampered lives, power struggles and gossip.  It was made revived in 1973 and 2001, and turned into a film three times: in 1939 and then in 1956 (as The Opposite Sex) and 2008.  It strikes me as a Sex in the City for the 1930s!


Clare Booth Luce

Although best known for her play, The Women, Clare Boothe Luce (March 10, 1903 – October 9, 1987) was the first American woman appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad.

Characters

Mary (Mrs. Haines): middle 30s, upper middle-class housewife, married to Stephen Haines with two children (little Mary and little Stephen), demure, faithful, innocent/positive outlook towards marriage

Crystal: middle 20s, single (until marriage to Stephen): no children, lower-class, fragrance salesperson, flirtatious, deceitful, ambitious, manipulative, unfaithful, disrespectful

Sylvia (Mrs. Fowler): 34, upper middle-class housewife, married to Howard Fowler with two children (male born with forceps, female born by Caesarean section), gossiper, assertive, disloyal, dishonest, blunt, inconsiderate, selfish

Peggy (Mrs. Day): 25, middle-class housewife (she has money but not her husband), married to John Day with no children (but longs for a child), innocent, compliant, awkward, sympathetic

Nancy Blake: 35, upper middle-class writer, single, possibly bi-sexual (virgin), traveler, blunt, direct, feminist, unemotional

Edith (Mrs. Potter): 33/34, upper middle-class housewife, married to Phelps Potter with 4 children, one-dimensional, dull, non-confrontational, does not like children, sexual tendencies, static

Mrs. Morehead: 55, upper middle-class, Mary's mother, presumably a widow, old fashioned/traditional, strict, wise

Countess De Lage: middle-aged, upper middle-class, divorced four times, outgoing, hopeless romantic

 

The 1936 original cast

1939

2008

August - Play Reading Cancelled

Sincere apologies, but due to personal circumstances I need to cancel our meeting on 5 August.   I look forward to seeing you in September, when we will read When We Are Married.

5 August - When We Are Married by J B Priestley

We had a marvellous turn out for such a hot day - 11 of us were grateful for any breeze we could catch with the windows and doors open!

We were delighted to welcome Christine for a taster of the play reading group, but very sad that this was Ryoko's last meeting with us before her return to Japan at the end of the month: Ryoko you have been a lovely member of the group and we are really going to miss you.  We wish you had found us earlier and been able to be to more meetings.  We all wish you much happiness in being reunited with your family.

And so to the plays.  Well, after Bennett's somewhat saucy romp, very much set in the English Farce style and looking at not just bodies by human foibles and obsessions - and also perhaps very much a play of the 60s/70s - we are next going to step back in time to the more restrained Victorian Era.

In J. B. Priestley's 1938 hit play, a group of three couples, old friends and all married on the same day in the same chapel, gathers at the Helliwells’ home to celebrate their silver anniversary somewhere in the north of England.

When they discover that they are not legally married, each couple initially reacts with proper Victorian horror – what will the neighbours think? – and all three couples find themselves re-evaluating their marriages.

Hovering closely over the proceedings is the Yorkshire Argus' alcohol-soaked photographer, keen to record the evening's events for posterity, and a wickedly destructive housekeeper who is hoping to use the couples' mortification to her own advantage.

When we are Married was turned into a film in 1943.

A still from the 1943 film

 
In an interesting connection with July's play: in a 1994 radio adaptation of When we are Married Alan Bennett played one of the husbands!
 
This is a popular 'traditional' play, which I hope you will all enjoy.

The three couples in the original cast: clockwise from top left, Raymond Huntley, Lloyd Pearson, Ernest Butcher; Ethel Coleridge, Muriel George, Helena Pickard

1 July - Habeas Corpus by Alan Bennett

Postponed from 3 June: for further information about this play, please see below.

3 June - Change of Play - The Visitor

As we were a small group today, we had a last-minute change of plan and instead of reading Habeas Corpus we read The Visitor by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.  This was a very different play to the one the group was expecting to read, addressing serious issues with very little light comic relief.  However, the group seemed to enjoy the play and discussing the questions it raised.

The Visitor, based on a real incident, imagines a night between the invasion of Vienna by the Nazis in 1938 and Freud's departure to safety with his wife and daughter, Anna.  Anna is taken away by a Nazi officer to be interrogated after she is rude to him.  Freud wrestles with his conscience over whether or not to sign a declaration that will enable him to leave Austria, and a strange, well-dressed, man appears in his room.  Who is he?  Is he a magician?  Is he an escaped psychotic patient?  Or is he God?

This intellectual play raises issues about faith as well as coping with life under the Nazi threat. 

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was born in France in 1960 and now lives in Belgium.  After being brought up as an agnostic he became a Christian  years ago. He is quite prolific and has a large number of plays, films and books to his name, most notable Oscar and the Lady in Pink.

Much is known, and written, about Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).  Most relevant to The Visitor he believed that God was created by man's desire to have a permanent father-figure.  He died in London, just after a year after signing the paper that enabled him to leave Austria.

Anna Freud (1895-1982) was born in Austria; the last child of Freud and his wife, Martha Berneys.  She followed her father and worked in the field of psychoanalysis, particularly child psychoanalysis.

3 June - Habeas Corpus by Alan Bennett

Well, The Rivers of China certainly gave us something to think about.  I think we all found this a life-changing play and will be certainly taking home with us the following passages (I copy them here so that you can print them off and put them on your fridge):

"Woman is from ground.  Self development not possible for her unless she is with man"

"Only way for woman is to evolve - go to what you call 'heaven' - is with man"

"There are women try to become man, but this wrong for her nature. Man has aspiration to find heaven because has possibility for immortality. But such aspiration poison for woman unless has man to help her"

We might also have taken away the message from this play that there should be equality of the sexes and that neither should be the ruling gender.

Habeas Corpus by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett is a popular playwright with the group, and after today's more challenging play we are throwing ourselves back into his arms!

Habeas Corpus is the legal term for: You shall have the body.  And that pretty well sums up this 1973 farce!  I think we can look forward to a bit of a romp, double entendres and rumpy pumpy! I read that Bennett wanted to write using the farce tradition, but with a twist.  His twist is that there are few stage instructions ... so you'll need to keep on the ball!

The play concerns the aging Dr. Arthur Wicksteed and his pursuit of a nubile patient, Felicity Rumpers. Wicksteed's wife, Muriel, is, in turn, lusting after the charming head of the British Medical Association, Sir Percy Shorter, who, as well as being Wicksteed's old rival, turns out to be Felicity's father - the result of an under-the-table liaison during an air-raid with Lady Rumpers, her mother.  Felicity herself is pregnant and finds a way to cover it up in the hypochondriac son of Dr. Wicksteed, Denis.  Meanwhile, Wicksteed's spinster sister Connie, ashamed of her flat-chestedness, has schemes of her own.

Sir Alec Guinness and Madeline Smith