Isn't it wonderful to see Peter Nichols’s play back on stage?’ said the famous actress sitting next to me at the first night of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Trafalgar Studios, London SW1. I agreed with her, it was wonderful. My new-found friend went on to say that Nichols’s plays would long outlast those of his contem-poraries because they were so entertaining.
We were just starting to debate the issue when Toby Stephens bounded on stage and, in the guise of a schoolteacher, told the audience ‘That’s enough!’ and the play was under way.
I should say that I am a great admirer of Nichols, who died last month, and would love to see more of his work revived. Joe Egg, as Simon Evans’s current production proves, is a play as powerful now as it was when it was first seen in 1967. How, it asks, do parents cope with the daily difficulties of bringing up a disabled child? The answer is with resilience and a defensive humour, but there are other Nichols plays that deserve a second look.
The National Health—long before Alan Bennett’s Allelujah! —brilliantly used a hospital ward as a metaphor for society. Passion Play clinically examined the consequences of adultery and I have great fondness for Poppy, which satirised British Imperialism through the popular form of a pantomime.
Nichols was a terrific writer whose work should be more widely seen, but it was the assertion that he will still be performed in 50 years’ time when others are forgotten that set my mind racing. ‘What about Harold Pinter?’ I asked my actress neighbour.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 16, 2019 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 16, 2019 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds