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

6th October: A Doll's House by Ibsen

 

This month we will revisit a play that was very well received when we read it in 2016, and which I am very much looking forward to re-reading.  I think the best thing I can do is reproduce my words from my original posting way back then!

July 2016

I have a large number of scripts at home and one book that I keep picking up and thinking 'Oh, no, we can't do that' is a compilation of plays by Ibsen.

This weekend I decided I'd start reading one of the plays, and having done a Google decided the one to go for was A Doll's House.  I started reading it - and was so entranced by the writing and the story that I continued to read it in one sitting.  I was completely hooked!  And I do hope that you will be to!  

The play, first performed in 1879 in Denmark, is important because it marked a turning point in the theatre with its critical look at 19th Century marriage norms and scandalous ending!  Indeed in 1891 Ibsen very reluctantly wrote an alternate ending, under strong pressure, for the German theatre.  It is just a few lines, and we can read them at the end of the afternoon: they give the play an entirely different meaning and his reluctance is understandable.

I do not want to give away the ending, but Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint." However in 1898 he insisted that his writing was not propaganda for the Women's Rights Movement but for humanity.

Main Characters

• Nora Helmer – wife of Torvald, mother of three, is living out the ideal of the 19th-century wife.
• Torvald Helmer – Nora's husband, a newly promoted bank manager, suffocates but professes to be enamoured of his wife.
• Dr. Rank – a rich family friend, he is secretly in love with Nora. 
• Kristine Linde – Nora's old school friend, widowed, is seeking employment.
• Nils Krogstad – an employee at Torvald's bank, single father, he is pushed to desperation. 

I like to find some pictures to give you a flavour of the plays we are reading.  Looking for pictures for this play was fascinating.

Here is a picture of the original German production, which had the ending re-written.

And then were these ...

... and these - the gilded cage a repeated metaphor.

And finally this one, which reminded me of The Yellow Wallpaper, an important feminist text from 1892.

Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828 – 1906)

Born in Norway, Ibsen is a well-known playwright, director and poet, and a founder of the Modernism movement in theatre.  He has many major works which are considered as classics today.

Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. 

1 September: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

 

Rebecca by Daphne du Marier

 

It was not until I started doing a bit of research to give details of this month’s play that I discovered that Rebecca is a 1938 Gothic novel.   The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character.

 

Rebecca is a bestseller which has never gone out of print, and has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen (both film and TV), including a 1939 play by du Maurier herself.  The 1940 directed by Alfred Hitchcock won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and in 2020 there was a remake for Netflix.  The original novel has been translated into many and diverse languages.

 

It has been suggested that the novel drew inspiration from Jane Eyre, and Daphne du Maurier admitted that the theme of jealousy was drawn from her own experience of having a husband who had been engaged before to a glamorous woman.

 

The novel is remembered especially for Mrs. Danvers, the West Country estate Manderley, and its opening line: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

 

Characters

Maxim de Winter	Owner of Mandalay
Mrs de Winter	His new bride
Frith	Butler
Mrs Danvers	Housekeeper
Beatrice Lacy	Maxim’s sister
Giles Lacy	Her Husband
Frank Crawley	Estate Manager
Jack Favell	Friend of Mrs Danvers
Colonel Julyan	Chief Constable

 

Daphne du Maurier 1907-1989

Although she married Frederick Browning, she continued to write in her maiden name.  She became Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning when she was elevated to the Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1969, but she never used the title.  According to her biographer Margaret Forster, she told no one about the honour, so that even her children learned of it only from the newspapers. "She thought of pleading illness for the investiture, until her children insisted it would be a great day for the older grandchildren. So she went through with it, though she slipped out quietly afterwards to avoid the attention of the press."

 

4 August: Little Wars

 

I am hoping for good weather in August, as it will be the first time we will meet again in person!  I hope that will mean that we will welcome many old friends who have been uncomfortable with zooming the play readings.

The play I've chosen for August features the themes of small battles and little battles: it's a feminist piece with humour.

Little Wars
by Steven Carl McCasland

In 1980, Mary McCarthy told Dick Cavett that "everything Lillian Hellman says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." She also claimed to know a woman who could prove it. And with those words, a legendary literary feud began. 
In Little Wars, it's France, 1940. Tensions are high. The booze is flowing. War is coming. Inspired by one of the literary world's most famous scandals, Little Wars features Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Alice B. Toklas and Muriel Gardiner having the best what-if dinner party imaginable. 
Together they'll drink, scoff and face their demons. Everyone has a confession. Someone has a secret.

The Participants

Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, author, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism.

Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as would meet.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

In August 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. He had fallen in love with Nancy Neele, a friend of Major Belcher. On 3 December 1926, the pair quarrelled after Archie announced his plan to spend the weekend with friends, unaccompanied by his wife. Late that evening, Christie disappeared from their home. The following morning, her car was discovered at Newlands Corner, parked above a chalk quarry with an expired driving licence and clothes inside.  On 14 December 1926, she was located at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as Mrs Tressa Neele (the surname of her husband's lover). The next day, Christie left for her sister's residence, where she was sequestered "in guarded hall, gates locked, telephone cut off, and callers turned away".

Alice Babette Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.

Muriel Gardiner Buttinger (née Morris; November 23, 1901 – February 6, 1985) was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist.  Her story is based on fact.