The Jermyn Street Theatre have taken on a project of Wagnerian proportions. They are putting on a cycle of nine one-act plays by Noël Coward. It is the first complete London revival of Tonight at 8.30 since 1936.
I am going on Thursday to see Nuclear Families. Here is a taster from the Jermyn Street website:
“You’d better come and dine tonight – I’m on a diet, so there’s only spinach.”
The glitter of middle-class life is exposed as the thinnest of façades in these three plays, ranging from laugh-out-loud comedy to mesmeric drama.
Family Album is a social comedy wickedly poking fun at Victorian sentiment. The Featherways family have gathered to mourn their father. But the siblings are not on their best behaviour.
Hands Across the Sea is a glittering comedy reminiscent of Hay Fever. Naval officer Peter Gilpin and his wife ‘Piggie’ are the most eccentric party hosts in London.
The Astonished Heart is a gripping drama of secrecy and betrayal. A brilliant psychiatrist, Christian appears to have the perfect life. Then he meets Leonora…
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Irish Sea my brother’s latest play had its World Premiere at Beaulieu, on the Boyne estuary in Co Louth. Like Noël Coward, Bru writes plays and includes parts for himself. His Director, with whom he has collaborated before, is stage and film actress Cara Konig. A dream team whose production hit the spot both with an appreciative audience and Noel Mullins, theatre critic of The Irish Field.
What do hunt followers do in the off season? Well the Louth Hunt takes to the stage!
In the stately surroundings of Beaulieu House and Gardens, the beautiful Main Salon held a capacity audience to a sea of continuous laughter, that later could be heard as they proceeded home down the avenue.
It was written by the flamboyant Lord Bru Bellew of Barmeath Castle who has hunted all his life with the Louths, and directed by the owner of Beaulieu House, Cara Konig, who is no stranger to the stage.
It had all the ingredients of a great play, the plot was that of a titled couple trying to save their castle from financial ruin by turning it into a B&B.
The characters, a penniless Lord of the Realm who accuses his wife of marrying him for a “title and turrets”, a maid and a gardener who are fond of a drink, a demanding guest from Dublin 4 with a Celtic Tiger accent of distorted vowels, when the “car park” becomes the “corpork”, a young lady with an elderly gentleman who dies from a heart attack from his weekend exertions, and two men that the noble lord regards as being rather sporting in sharing a bedroom!
The theme of the play was summed up perfectly by the Lord of the Manor when he remarked that they were offering a romantic night in a stately home for the “great unwashed” that appeals to the two basic instincts of many humans, sex and snobbery!
The spectacle could not have been more fitting, the play being about a stately home, and held in a stately home, Beaulieu House, where the rooms, stairs and balcony were the props.
Although when asked about how he got the inspiration for the play, Lord Bellew with a tight-lipped smile suggested that it is a work of fiction. But one left wondering – will it go on tour? Well it is too amusing not to!
BB
I haven’t seen your brother for many years but if that really is him (her?) on the left, how well he/she has worn. What a cutting edge family you all are.
John
Oh hasn’t Bru matured into the distinguished ageing thespian. I am, however, a little puzzled by His Lordships garb: he appears to be attired in a cape (or cope?) which, with top hat, resembles something of a cross between a circus ringmaster and inferior undertaker.
They say a good actor is somebody who tries hard to be everybody but himself, although reading the review from The Irish Field, I imagine beloved Bru positively being himself (demonstrating that characteristic dash of superior flippancy) and accurately dramatising, what the author of this blog would entitle, ‘Family History’.
I must give the Pastor-cum-Actor credit for his writing, he does write splendidly, with delightful epigrammatic descriptive powers. Perhaps, by extensions of brotherly love, the script may be serialised here?……………Tally-ho!