Monday, April 28, 2014

Thank You Rina!

Many thanks to Rina for this lovely article in the May edition of Newswic.  I am delighted that you get so much pleasure from the group, and your final paragraph really made me laugh!


Wednesday, April 2, 2014

7 May - Life of Riley by Alan Ayckbourne

On 2 April we read 12 Angry Men, and although dealing with serious subjects: prejudice; the responsibilites of jury members and reasonable doubt, it still raised the occassional laugh.  We were only 11 ladies, but the doubling worked out well.

We were happy to welcome Kaley to the group, for the first and last time: Kaley has been a regular WIC Walker and will be returning back to The States next Wednesday.

Huge thanks to Melly for the themed refreshments.   We all enjoyed the American Cheesecake Comme Les Belges, Doughnuts and Chocolate Brownies very much.

In response to the question raised about 12 Angry Men: It was originally written as a Teleplay by Reginald Rose who then wrote and produced the 1957 film.

Life of Riley - Alan Ayckbourn

There is a French fim adaptation of this play currently in the cinemas and so we thought it might be fun to make a change to the schedule for May and read this play - so that those of us going to the film can compare and contrast!  And of course it's a few months since we last did an Ayckbourn!

Life of riley (theatre production) poster.jpg

Life of Riley is a 2010 play and Ayckbourne's 74th.  It deals with the effect that Riley's terminal illness has on 6 members of his family and friends.  No more about this for now!

During Life of Riley there is reference to Ayckbourne's 1965 piece, Relatively Speaking a dark play about misunderstandings and mistaken identity (sounds rather Shakespearian!)  In case it helps with the enjoyment of Life of Riley here's a very very brief synopsis of Relatively Speaking: Greg and Ginny are a young co-habiting couple, Ginny being the more sexually experienced. Ginny goes off, supposedly to visit her parents, but actually to break things off with her older married lover, Philip. Greg follows her and assumes that Philip and his wife are her parents. Greg asks for her hand from Philip, while Philip mistakenly believes that the strange young man is asking permission to marry Sheila. Ginny convinces Philip to play the role of her father ...




Aimer, Boire et Chanter

Currently showing at UGC Toison D'or and Actors Studio.  The film is set in Yorkshire, so I look forward to the French-Yorkshire accents! 

Aimer, Boire et Chanter Affiche

Finally ...

We do seem to do a lot of Ayckbourn.  So I've added a link to his official website to our links page.

And here's a picture of the man!