7 December: Arms & The Man

Thank you to Sheila for suggesting this play which she assures us has her and Keith chuckling away every time they read it!  So I'm looking forward to it!

The opening words of this 1894 play, are Arma virumque cano (Of arms and the man I sing), and, dealing with the subjects of the futility of war and the hypocrisies of human nature, it was one of Shaw's first commercial successes. 

Shaw was called onto stage after the curtain, where he received enthusiastic applause. Amidst the cheers, one audience member booed. Shaw replied, in characteristic fashion, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?"

The Plot

I don't want to give it all away! But it is helpful to know that the play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. 

Characters:

Raina Petkoff: Heroine.  Young Bulgarian woman engaged to Sergius Saranoff.

Sergius Saranoff: Bulgarian war hero

Captain Bluntschli:  Swiss mercenary in the Serbian army

Catherine Petkoff:  Raina's mother

Major Petkoff:  Raina's father

Louka:  Petkoff servant girl, engaged to Nicola

Nicola: Petkoff man servant

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950)

Bernard Shaw, as he preferred to be called,  was an Anglo-Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including many major works (eg Pygmalion and Saint Joan).

Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic as well as a member of the Fabian Society.

Influenced by Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. 

Since Shaw's death, scholarly and critical opinion has varied about his works, but he has regularly been rated as second only to Shakespeare among English-language dramatists; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of playwrights. The word "Shavian" has entered the language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them.

2 November - Uncle Vanya

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899.

The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yeléna, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle - an estate from which they receive but take no part in maintaining. 

Two friends, Vanya, brother of the Professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local Doctor, both fall under Yelena's spell, while bemoaning the ennui of their provincial existence. 

Sonya, the Professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, meanwhile suffers from the awareness of her own lack of beauty and from her unrequited feelings for Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the Professor announces his intention to sell the estate: Vanya and Sonya's home and raison d'être, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife.

The version we will be reading however is an adaptation by Brian Friel,  who has been described as 'Ireland's greatest playwright' and an 'Irish Chekhov'.  You may find the occasional word or expression that is unfamiliar - and it is possible that I will not be able to translate for you!  

Characters

• Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov – a retired university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wife's rural estate, managed for him by Vanya and Sonya.
• Helena Andreyevna Serebryakov (Yelena) – Professor Serebryakov's young and beautiful second wife. She is 27 years old.
• Sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakov (Sonya) – Professor Serebryakov's daughter from his first marriage. She is of a marriageable age but is considered plain.
• Maria Vasilyevna Voynitsky  – the widow of a privy councilor and mother of Vanya (and of Vanya's late sister, the Professor's first wife).
• Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky ("Uncle Vanya") – Maria's son and Sonya's uncle, the title character of the play. He is 47 years old.
• Mikhail Lvovich Astrov – a middle aged country doctor.
• Ilya Ilych Telegin (nicknamed "Waffles" for his pockmarked skin) – an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family.
• Marina Timofeevna – an old nurse.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Cheknov is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. 

Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."^[7]

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays,Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story.^[10] He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

 Brian Friel (1929-2015)

Brian Friel was considered to be one of the greatest living English-language dramatists, and referred to as an "Irish Chekhov" and "the universally accented voice of Ireland".

Recognised for early works, Friel had 24 plays published in a more than half-century spanning career that culminated in his election to the position of Saoi of Aosdána (Head of the Irish Arts Foundation). His plays were commonly featured on Broadway and won many awards. 

5 October: Popcorn by Ben Elton

I  had a whim to read a Ben Elton play having briefly heard him on the radio shortly before the last play reading.

Ben Elton

For those of you not familiar with the name Ben Elton, he is an English comedian, author, playwright, actor and director. He was a part of London's alternative comedy movement of the 1980s and became a writer on series such as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as continuing as a stand-up comedian on stage and television. His style in the 1980s was left-wing political satire. Since then he has published 15 novels and written the musicals We Will Rock You (2002) and Love Never Dies (2010), the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.

Having enjoyed his comedy when I was younger; read some of his books; seen one of his plays and loving We Will Rock You I thought this a good idea!  However, I am just slightly disappointed that my choice has been narrowed down to a play I've already seen twice!

My options were:

Gasping: A play about yuppiedom and corporate greed, but to my mind rather OTT 

Silly Cow: A satire on today's world that bored me with its language and drugs ...

Popcorn: A thriller based on films such as Natural Born Killers and the films of Quentin Tarrantino. 

Popcorn

So Popcorn it is, and you are warned to expect some bad language and violence ... I did enjoy this play in performance, so I do hope that it comes across reasonably well in a reading. It has credentials, having won the Golden Dagger in 1996 (crime writers award).

The characters are:

• Bruce Delamitri – the main protagonist, an egocentric filmmaker who has become controversial for the celluloid violence he produces.

• Wayne – A cruel and immoral killer.

• Scout – Wayne's lover and confidant.

• Brooke Daniels – A vaguely abnormal model and aspiring actress.

• Velvet Delamitri – Bruce's estranged daughter.

• Farrah Delamitri – Bruce's estranged wife.

• Karl Brezner – Bruce's producer.

The notes on the play draw attention to the following references, which I suspect I needn't share, but will, just in case:

Oprah = Oprah Winfrey, American agony aunt and chat show host

OJ = O J Simpson, American star acquitted of the murder of his wife

Roseanne: American TV comedienne

7 September: Amy's View

In July we read A Doll's House, an interesting play which lead to lots of discussion.  That same evening Rina and I went to the ECC play reading where we read Amy's View - and we felt that we'd been treated to two very good plays in one day!  

Wikipedia describes Amy's View thus:  The play takes place in Berkshire near Pangbourne, and in London, from 1979 to 1995. Over the course of these sixteen years  "a running argument about the respective virtues of traditional theater and the media arts weaves its way through espoused opinions on marriage, love, fame, fidelity, betrayal, personal and artistic integrity, and the sometimes elusive ethics of the corporate world, among other things."  Which sums it up rather well!

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Characters

Amy Thomas is a young woman, just twenty-three at the start of the play, who is the daughter of Esme Allen. She is "dark haired with an unmistakable air of quiet resolution." She created a small publication when she was a girl called Amy's View. She is in a relationship with Dominic.

Esme Allen is Amy's mother and a prominent West end actress. She is forty-nine at the start of the play, and is "surprisingly small, her manner both sensitive and intense. Something in her vulnerability makes people instantly protective of her."  She constantly butts heads with Dominic, and has an interesting relationship with Frank.

Dominic Tyghe is Amy's boyfriend. He is a year younger than Amy, and quite attractive. He is an orphan, having never known his parents, and aspires to be a successful filmmaker.

Frank Oddie is one of Esme's neighbors, as well as a commissioning agent for Lloyd's of London. He looks after Esme's investments and other financial matters. He is "in his early fifties, easy going and amiable."

Evelyn Thomas is Esme's mother in law, Amy's grandma. She is "white haired, in her late seventies," and lives with Esme. She becomes increasingly decrepit - both physically and mentally - throughout the play.

Toby Cole is a young actor in his twenties.

I thought this list of actors from Wikipedia would be interesting viewing, it's a play with good credentials!

Role	World Premiere Cast, 13 June 1997 Royal National Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre, London.	Broadway Premiere, Apr 15, 1999 New York City, Ethel Barrymore Theatre	West End Revival, 14 November 2006, Garrick Theatre, London.
Esme Allen	Judi Dench	Judi Dench	Felicity Kendal
Amy Thomas	Samantha Bond	Samantha Bond	Jenna Russell
Dominic Tyghe	Eoin McCarthy	Tate Donovan	Ryan Kiggell
Frank Oddie	Ronald Pickup	Ronald Pickup	Gawn Grainger
Evelyn Thomas	Joyce Redman	Anne Pitoniak	Antonia Pemberton
Toby Cole	Christopher Staines	Maduka Steady	Geoff Breton
Directed by	Richard Eyre	Richard Eyre	Peter Hall

Sir David Hare (1947 - )

Most notable for his stage work, David Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002 and The Reader in 2008.

He has had great success in the West End, and he has had sever Tony Award nominations for Best play and received two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play.  He has also written for the BBC.

Hare has also received various nominations and awards in the US.  

He was knighted in 1998.

3 August: Rookery Nook

I was delighted that so many of you enjoyed July's A Doll's House, and Ibsen is definitely going to appear on our agenda again!

I am also very happy that you enjoyed the cheesecake.  Here's the link to the embarrassingly easy recipe:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4653/strawberry-cheesecake-in-4-easy-steps-

There was a request for something funny in August, and so I am going to put forward a play that I've not read!

When I lived in Godalming the local Am Dram groups performed in The Ben Travers Theatre: and so I have often thought I should investigate his work.  And this set off a chain of thought.  I believe the theatre was so named because he was an old-boy of Charterhouse School, where the theatre was located (Charterhouse is one of the UK's most expensive private schools and was in the same town where I used to live - and, interestingly, my nephew who was not educated there went on to become their theatre technician until very recently!).  Another famous, and still living, old boy is Ben Elton - and so I have popped a book of his plays into my Amazon shopping basket as I think we might enjoy one or two of them!

Back to Rookery Nook!

This is a traditional English farce, with sexual innuendo and misunderstandings - a sort of grown-up pantomime! Therefore I am not going to attempt to reveal the plot, but a list of characters will definitely be a help!

• Gertrude Twine: Formidable wife of Harold
• Mrs Leverett: Charwoman
• Harold Twine – Gertrude's husband
• Clive Popkiss – Gerald's cousin - staying with the Twines
• Gerald Popkiss – Gertrude's new brother-in-law
• Rhoda Marley – Local resident, young, pretty ...
• Putz – Rhoda's wicked step-father
• Admiral Juddy – Golfing pal of Harold
• Poppy Dickey – Lively local woman who collects for charity
• Clara Popkiss – Gertrude's newly married sister/Gerald's wife
• Mrs Possett 

Rookery Nook was first staged in 1923 and has been revived several times since then.  In 2005, Charles Spencer wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "Beneath the laughter, Rookery Nook is blessed with a robust tolerance, celebrating sexual desire and human frailty, even as it deplores those gossips addicted to 'vile scandals, venomous libels, and dirty little tattling tea parties'. In this respect, at least, Travers still has something to say to the England of today.

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Ben Travers  (12 November 1886 – 18 December 1980)

Ben Travers wrote more than twenty plays, thirty screenplays, five novels, and three volumes of memoirs. He is best remembered for his long-running series of farces first staged in the 1920s and 1930s at the Aldwych Theatre. Many of these were made into films and later television productions.

After working for some years in his family's wholesale grocery business, which he detested, Travers worked for a publisher and then as a pilot in the First World War before beginning to write novels and plays. During the Second World War Travers served in the Royal Air Force, working in intelligence, and later served at the Ministry of Information, while producing two well-received plays.

After the war Travers's output declined; he had a long fallow period after the death of his wife in 1951, although he collaborated on a few revivals and adaptations of his earlier work. He returned to playwriting in 1968. He was inspired to write a new comedy in the early 1970s after the abolition of theatre censorship in Britain permitted him to write without evasion about sexual activities, one of his favourite topics. The resulting play, The Bed Before Yesterday (1975), presented when he was 89, was the longest-running of all his stage works, easily outplaying of any of his Aldwych farces.

6 July: A Doll's House

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, but leaves her family at the end of the play.
• 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. He is terminally ill, and it is implied that his "tuberculosis of the spine" originates from a venereal disease contracted by his father.
• Kristine Linde – Nora's old school friend, widowed, is seeking employment (sometimes spelled Christine in English translations). She was in a relationship with Krogstad prior to the play's setting.
• Nils Krogstad – an employee at Torvald's bank, single father, he is pushed to desperation. A supposed scoundrel, he is revealed to be a long-lost lover of Kristine.

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. 

25 May: Victoria Wood

As we are unable to meet the first Wednesday of June, we will instead be meeting on Wednesday 25 May.

At the end of the last play reading, which was a rather sombre piece, some of us thought it would be fun to pay homage to the very talented and sadly departed Victoria Wood.

I have a book of her short pieces, but thought it would be nice to do something longer, and the last copy that Amazon had of Victoria  Wood Plays 1 arrived through my letterbox this morning!

I have, therefore, not yet had time to decide exactly what we'll be reading, but it will be either Talent, Good Fun or Pat & Margaret.

Victoria Wood CBE 1953-2016

4 May: The Father

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.  

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 is currently playing in London to rave reviews, starring Kenneth Cranham and Claire Skinner.

6 April: The Hard Problem

The much-anticipated The Hard Problem has received somewhat mixed reviews.  I am always nervous when approaching a work by Stoppard as he is so very very clever and intellectual that watching one of his plays can be quite taxing and not an easy night out.  But I found this play not only strangely accessible but also in some respects a disappointment: I don't want to give away the ending, but for me it was too neat.  Here are some extracts from reviews.

From The Telegraph:

Sir Tom Stoppard’s new play, his first in nine years, is called The Hard Problem – a reference to the difficulty scientists and philosophers have in fathoming the nature of human consciousness. Watching it has left me with a hard problem of my own. I want to salute Stoppard, now 77 and one of our finest living playwrights ... But there’s no getting round it: this is a major disappointment.

From The Observer:

The “hard problem” of the title is the problem of consciousness. Where is it? What is it? Crucially, is “the mind” the same as “the brain”? The joy of the play, his first for nine years, is that it brings this problem to the stage and poses it crisply. The difficulty is that Stoppard then glides away from examining it. Often taxed with being too intellectual as a playwright, he is here not intellectually stringent enough. The great adventurer looks strangely conventional. 

From The Guardian:

A rich, ideas-packed work that offers a defence of goodness whatever its ultimate source... Stoppard’s play may not solve the hard problem of human consciousness. But it offers endless stimulation and represents, like so much of his work, a search for absolute values and a belief in the possibility of selfless virtue.

The Hard Problem

Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness?

This is 'the hard problem' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry.

Is the day coming when the computer and the MRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.

 

Sir Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard was born in July 1937 in Czechoslovakia.  He fled from the Nazis as a child refugee to Singapore with his parents and brother. When that became a difficult place to be his father sent his family to Australia and, as a doctor, remained where he felt he was needed, but he died 4 years later.  In 1946 his family moved to the UK, via time in India,  and after studying there Stoppard became a journalist and, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's mother died in 1996. The family had not talked about their history and neither brother knew what had happened to the family left behind in Czechoslovakia^. In the early 1990s, with the fall of communism, Stoppard found out that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had died in Auschwitz and other camps, along with three of his mother's sisters.  He has expressed grief both for a lost father and a missing past, but he has no sense of being a survivor, at whatever remove. "I feel incredibly lucky not to have had to survive or die. It's a conspicuous part of what might be termed a charmed life."

He is a prolific writer whose works include many well-known plays and films - including Shakespeare in Love - and he has received many awards.  

His themes are always intellectual and his works include discussions on human rights; censorship; political freedom; linguistics and philosophy. 

Cancellation: 3 Feb due to Flu

I'm so sorry - hope to see you all on 2 March! 

3 February: Love, Loss and What I Wore

January once again proved, to me, that our little group really brings out more of a play than just a mere read-through on ones own.

But before I start on about The Vagina Monologues I must thank Rina for the absolutely delicious Galette des Rois: I had never had such a lovely one in my nearly 14 yeas here.  And congratulations to Isaobel, our 'Queen for the Day'!

I had seen The Vagina Monologues some years ago, and my memory was of a fun evening tinged with the raw emotion of the pieces that dealt with genital mutilation and abuse.  When I read the script last year, having suggested we read it as a group, I confess I did start to get cold feet.  But then we read it aloud, and I don't think I was alone in finding it moving, funny and a work which defends the right of women to be women.  Whilst it might seem controversial to use the vagina as a vehicle for this message, it is what makes us women and is a blessing; a curse; a source of shame; a source of joy and many other things.  So thank  you ladies for bringing this work to life - I thought you all coped very well (in fact probably better than me!).

I have been dithering over next month, torn between the latest Tom Stoppard, The Hard Problem, and my eventual choice: Love, Loss and What I Wore.  The main reason for the decision is that I am away from next Wednesday-Tuesday, and I already have this prepared!

So apologies in advance if it seems like I'm repeating the month!

Love, Loss and What I Wore

I came across this play by chance in Hamburg last year at the FEATS festival.  It was read by a group of women and I thought it was fun and perfect for our group ... so here it is!

Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a play written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman.

The sisters are interesting.  Daughters of screenwriters, both have followed in their parents footsteps - with marked success. Delia's credits include Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail, and Nora's award-winning works include When Harry Met Sally and Julia & Julia.  Nora died in 2012.

Nora & Delia Ephron

You will find a lot about this play on Wikipedia, and, like The Vagina Monologues  it is a series of monologues.  However, unlike VM, it is based on 5 characters and uses the female wardrobe as a time capsule of a woman's life.

It is a recent, American, play from 2008 which won awards in 2010.  Like The Vagina Monologues it has been used to fundraise for women's charities and has attracted many famous actresses.

The original cast, which included Tyne Daly (2nd left), welcomed a very special visitor!