SOME bright news: the BBC is going to film new productions of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. What is more, two fresh pieces are being added to the original 10 monologues and the impressively starry list of performers includes Jodie Comer, Tamsin Greig, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Harriet Walter. As Bennett fans know, these are wistfully tragicomic pieces that explore various forms of quiet desperation, and that work equally as memorably on stage as they do on TV.
In theory, the theatrical monologue shouldn’t work—we look for conflict and opposition in drama. Putting a solo performer in the spotlight seems like a denial of what theatre is all about. In his book about Broadway, The Season, William Goldman tells a wonderful story about a customer coming out of Judy Garland’s one-woman show and saying to his companion: ‘But is it theatre?’ The companion replies: ‘It had better be, because it sure as hell ain’t singing.’
You can broadly divide solo performances into two categories. There is the one-person play, in which an actor assumes a character—recent examples include the phenomenal Phoebe Waller- Bridge in Fleabag, derived from TV, Maggie Smith in A German Life and Laura Linney in My Name Is Lucy Barton. Then there’s the solo show, in which the performer’s personality is undisguised, as in Sir Ian McKellen’s recent tour de force, or in which a biographical portrait is offered —Simon Callow’s life-enhancing studies of Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde leap to mind.
Denne historien er fra May 20, 2020-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.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra May 20, 2020-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.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
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
