6 July: Three Tall Women

 

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 is a 92-year-old woman. She is thin, autocratic, proud, and wealthy, with "encroaching senility".
• B: B is a 52-year-old hired carer for A. Although she does not enjoy working for A, she learns much from her. 
• C: C is a 26-year-old lawyer, present on behalf of A's law firm, because A has neglected necessary paperwork. 

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.

1 June: If I Were You

 

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

4 May: The Father

A change of plan!!

I had planned a different play for this month, but after reading it, it is simply too difficult for our group!  A huge cast with lots of comings and goings, and I think I shall put this on hold for now.

And so we are going to revisit a play that I remember us all enjoying when we last read it in 2016: it is one that I have been thinking we should read again.

Le Père is a 2012 play by the French playwright Florian Zeller which won in 2014 the Molière Award for Best Play. It was made into the film Floride (2015).  Zeller is a young writer who has won many awards including the 2011 Molière Award for Best Play for his earlier work, The Mother.  

The play was made into the French film Floride in 2015, and in 2020 Zeller directed the English version, The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while Hopkins won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Florian Zeller

This is a moving play about a man suffering dementia, and the affect it has on his life and the lives of those around him.  For those of you who have seen relatives suffer this horrible illness it will no doubt strike a nerve and you might find it quite emotional.

I first heard it on the radio, and found that you are drawn in and are unsure whether and when Andre, the father, is living in the here and now or the past. Another discombobulation is the fact that he is a French man, in Paris, speaking in English. Please don't ask me to explain, but for this play it did seem odd.

The Father played in London to rave reviews, starring Kenneth Cranham and Claire Skinner.

March 2nd - Abandonment by Kate Atkinson

 

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.

February 2nd: Arsenic & Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

 

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!  

Main Characters

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!

January 12 2022: Stage Struck by Simon Gray

 

Happy New Year!

Whether we will meet up again in January very much depends on how the spread of Covid is progressing and how the group feels about risking the spread of the infection.

And so I have chosen a play that we can easily do on Zoom, as it's only 4 characters, or in a smaller group.

Stage Struck 

In his younger days Robert Simon was a first-rate stage-manager in provincial rep.  Now he keeps house for his West End actress wife, while amusing himself with a number of sexual adventures: he is a happy man.  But then one evening, through the clumsy intervention of a psychiatrist, his happiness and his marriage are destroyed.  He plans a hideous revenge, on both his wife and the psychiatrist, that will allow him to rediscover all his old talents.

Written in 1979 this might seem a little dated now, but there are lots of twists in the plot which I think will keep us surprised!

December 1: Life and Beth

 Unfortunately there weren't enough of us at Kyung Sook's in November to read The Father, so we will revisit that excellent play another time.

And in December we were again a small group to read Life and Beth, a play we had read in December 2019 but which was well received a second time.  

It was great to be able to meet up and share mince pies and mulled wine, let's hope being together will be permitted still in 2022!

Wishing you all the very best for Christmas and for the coming year.

Janet