AFTER a year or more of gazing at screens, it is a joy to be back inside a theatre. For a start, there is the social pleasure of seeing old friends. Then theatre, like church, allows us all to engage in an act of communal celebration. Above all, after the prosaic realism of television drama (with the honourable exception of Inside No 9), it is a pleasure to once more encounter verbal richness and intellectual vivacity.
My first visit to a theatre since December was to the Orange Tree in Richmond to see a double-bill of Shaw Shorts (until June 26). Socially distanced as we were, it was a thrill to be reminded of Shaw’s irrepressible gaiety, gift for paradox and surprising sexiness. The first play, How He Lied To Her Husband (1904), is a jeu d’esprit in which an uxorious husband relishes the fact that his wife is the recipient of amorous verses penned by a young poet. The joke is that the characters have all been to see Candida—the last Shaw play to be staged at the Orange Tree before lockdown— and are, in effect, re-enacting its triangular passions.
Overruled (1912) is the more substantial and subversive, and uncannily anticipates Coward’s Private Lives by 20 years. A young solicitor has been making love to an attractive woman during a world cruise. Both discover that their marital partners have been doing the same while also traversing the globe. What keeps this sexual quadrille airborne is the deftness with which Shaw handles a delicate situation.
Denne historien er fra June 16, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 16, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
