I. The Landmine
In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.
Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...
In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.
Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...
- 3/7/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
This week's Theater Talk focuses on British dramatist Sir Terence Rattigan 1911-1977 and his popular drama, The Winslow Boy, currently being revived on Broadway by The Roundabout Theatre Company. First the show welcomes actors Roger Rees, Charlotte Parry and Alessandro Nivola, now starring in this acclaimed production, followed by a conversation about its playwright with critics John Simon, John Heilpern and actor Edward Hibbert.
- 11/15/2013
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
This week's Theater Talk focuses on British dramatist Sir Terence Rattigan 1911-1977 and his popular drama, The Winslow Boy, currently being revived on Broadway by The Roundabout Theatre Company. First the show welcomes actors Roger Rees, Charlotte Parry and Alessandro Nivola, now starring in this acclaimed production, followed by a conversation about its playwright with critics John Simon, John Heilpern and actor Edward Hibbert.
- 11/13/2013
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Powerful stage and screen actor often cast as an aristocrat, king or moustachioed villain
When the whisky flowed, according to the writer John Heilpern, the actor Nigel Davenport looked "as if he might knock you through the wall for sport". However, words such as "imposing" and "heavyweight", both often applied to his performances on stage and screen across more than 40 years, do not do sufficient justice to his lightness of touch and comic energy.
Davenport, who has died aged 85, was a founder member of the English Stage Company (Esc) at the Royal Court – in the first season, he was in every production except Look Back in Anger – and a distinguished president of Equity, the actors' union; he played leads in Restoration comedy and absurdist drama as well as King Lear.
In a recent rerun of the BBC's Keeping Up Appearances, he loomed as a lubricious old navy commodore coming on...
When the whisky flowed, according to the writer John Heilpern, the actor Nigel Davenport looked "as if he might knock you through the wall for sport". However, words such as "imposing" and "heavyweight", both often applied to his performances on stage and screen across more than 40 years, do not do sufficient justice to his lightness of touch and comic energy.
Davenport, who has died aged 85, was a founder member of the English Stage Company (Esc) at the Royal Court – in the first season, he was in every production except Look Back in Anger – and a distinguished president of Equity, the actors' union; he played leads in Restoration comedy and absurdist drama as well as King Lear.
In a recent rerun of the BBC's Keeping Up Appearances, he loomed as a lubricious old navy commodore coming on...
- 10/30/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
It took Judi Dench's astonishing 1989 production of Look Back in Anger to give us the play that John Osborne actually wrote – a play, like Beckett's, about waiting
British theatre is full of consoling myths. One of them is that John Osborne's Look Back in Anger caused an overnight revolution when it opened at the Royal Court on 8 May 1956. That's not quite true. What the play did do, though, was give youth a voice, stimulate other dramatists and liberate audiences. It certainly changed my life. I was a 16-year-old, Shakespeare-saturated, Midlands schoolboy when it opened. Because of Look Back I became hooked on new drama, and eventually a bit of a Royal Court groupie. I've often told the story of how, when I finally got to London to see Look Back on a Saturday evening, I studied the faces of people coming out of the matinee performance to see...
British theatre is full of consoling myths. One of them is that John Osborne's Look Back in Anger caused an overnight revolution when it opened at the Royal Court on 8 May 1956. That's not quite true. What the play did do, though, was give youth a voice, stimulate other dramatists and liberate audiences. It certainly changed my life. I was a 16-year-old, Shakespeare-saturated, Midlands schoolboy when it opened. Because of Look Back I became hooked on new drama, and eventually a bit of a Royal Court groupie. I've often told the story of how, when I finally got to London to see Look Back on a Saturday evening, I studied the faces of people coming out of the matinee performance to see...
- 2/7/2012
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
She's not a feminist, but says women are born creative. Juliette Binoche talks to Laura Barnett about her spat with Gérard Depardieu, bad reviews – and why acting is like peeling onions
One Sunday a couple of months ago, Juliette Binoche bumped into Gérard Depardieu while shopping in a Paris market. It was the first time the two titans of French cinema had met since Depardieu's bizarre public rant last year, in which he described her as "nothing" and "nobody".
"I just went up to him and grabbed him," she says, "and said, 'Hey, what happened, Gérard? Why are you so aggressive with me? What did I do to you?'"
Binoche turns up her palms and shrugs her shoulders, in that uniquely Gallic expression of frustration. "He said, 'Oh, I'm stupid. Sometimes I just do that, blah, blah.' Later, his agent called my agent to say, 'Gérard is very happy you are reconciled.
One Sunday a couple of months ago, Juliette Binoche bumped into Gérard Depardieu while shopping in a Paris market. It was the first time the two titans of French cinema had met since Depardieu's bizarre public rant last year, in which he described her as "nothing" and "nobody".
"I just went up to him and grabbed him," she says, "and said, 'Hey, what happened, Gérard? Why are you so aggressive with me? What did I do to you?'"
Binoche turns up her palms and shrugs her shoulders, in that uniquely Gallic expression of frustration. "He said, 'Oh, I'm stupid. Sometimes I just do that, blah, blah.' Later, his agent called my agent to say, 'Gérard is very happy you are reconciled.
- 7/31/2011
- by Laura Barnett
- The Guardian - Film News
"Sidney Lumet, a director who preferred the streets of New York to the back lots of Hollywood and whose stories of conscience — 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, Network — became modern American film classics, died Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 86." Robert Berkvist in the New York Times: "'While the goal of all movies is to entertain,' Mr Lumet once wrote, 'the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing.' Social issues set his own mental juices flowing, and his best films not only probed the consequences of prejudice, corruption and betrayal but also celebrated individual acts of courage."
"Nearly all the characters in Lumet's gallery are driven by obsessions or passions that range from the pursuit of justice,...
"Nearly all the characters in Lumet's gallery are driven by obsessions or passions that range from the pursuit of justice,...
- 4/18/2011
- MUBI
Photograph by Jonathan Becker on May 14, 2002 for Vanity Fair.Elaine Kaufman, proprietress of the eponymous Upper East Side restaurant Elaine’s, died today at 81. Kaufman was also a fixture on the New York literary, media, and intellectual scenes: since its opening in 1963, Elaine’s clientele has included Charlie Rose, David Halberstam, Jules Feiffer, Nora Ephron, and Terry Southern, Tom Wolfe, and Norman Mailer, among others. According to The New York Times, in 2003, the New York Landmarks Conservancy named Kaufman a Living Landmark. But as Gay Talese, also an Elaine’s regular, wrote in a May 1983 issue of New York magazine, “The celebrities are not determining factors in the restaurant’s enduring presence in New York. Its success is due rather to Elaine herself, an ebullient woman with a large heart that she extends selectively to a group of New Yorkers who are too disorganized to arrange their own dinner parties or nightlife,...
- 12/3/2010
- Vanity Fair
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