 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2018) |
| My Fat Friend | |
|---|---|
 Original West End production poster | |
| Written by | Charles Laurence |
| Date premiered | 1972 |
| Place premiered | Theatre Royal, Brighton |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Comedy |
My Fat Friend is a play by Charles Laurence. [1]
The comedy is an ugly duckling tale about an overweight young woman who attracts the attention of a potential suitor. With the help of her friends/roommates, she undergoes a diet and exercise regime to shed the extra pounds she assumes she needs to lose in order to hold the man's attention.
The play premiered on 6 November 1972 at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, where it ran for one week before transferring to the Rex Theatre in Wilmslow for another week's engagement. On 6 December it opened in London's West End at the Globe Theatre, where it enjoyed a modest run despite lukewarm reviews. The cast, directed by Eric Thompson, included Jennie Linden and Kenneth Williams. [2]
After seven previews, the Broadway production, directed by Robert Moore, opened on 31 March 1974 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where it ran for 288 performances. The cast included Lynn Redgrave, John Lithgow, and George Rose, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.
John Inman, star of the BBC department-store comedy Are You Being Served? , appeared in the November 1972 production at the Rex Theatre in Wilmslow, and later in a 1998 revival of the play. [3]
My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. Despite his cynical nature, Higgins falls in love with her.
The Matchmaker is a 1954 play by Thornton Wilder, a rewritten version of his 1938 play The Merchant of Yonkers.
Noises Off is a 1982 play by the English playwright Michael Frayn. Frayn conceived the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of The Two of Us, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind." The prototype, a short-lived one-act play called Exits, was written and performed in 1977. At the request of his associate, Michael Codron, Frayn expanded this into what would become Noises Off. It takes its title from the theatrical stage direction indicating sounds coming from offstage.
Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss. A cross between high farce and a comedy of manners, the play is set in an English country house in the 1920s, and deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend. The self-centred behaviour of the hosts finally drives their guests to flee while the Blisses are so engaged in a family row that they do not notice their guests' furtive departure.
Me and My Girl is a musical with music by Noel Gay and its original book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose. The musical is set in the late 1930s and tells the story of an unapologetically unrefined cockney gentleman named Bill Snibson, who learns that he is the 14th heir to the Earl of Hareford. The action is set in Hampshire, Mayfair, and Lambeth.
The Royal Family is a play written by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Its premiere on Broadway was at the Selwyn Theatre on 28 December 1927, where it ran for 345 performances to close in October 1928. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1927–1928.
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is a 1967 play by the English playwright Peter Nichols, first staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, before transferring to the Comedy Theatre in London's West End.
French Without Tears is a comic play written by a 25-year-old Terence Rattigan in 1936.
Twentieth Century is a 1932 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles B. Millholland, inspired by his experience working for the eccentric Broadway impresario David Belasco.
Pack of Lies is a 1983 play by English writer Hugh Whitemore, itself adapted from his Act of Betrayal, an episode of the BBC anthology series Play of the Month transmitted in 1971.
Sticks and Bones is a 1971 play by David Rabe. The black comedy focuses on David, a blind Vietnam War veteran who finds himself unable to come to terms with his actions on the battlefield and alienated from his family because they neither can accept his disability nor understand his wartime experience. Rabe explores the conflicted feelings of many civilians during the era by parodying the ideal American family as it was portrayed on the television sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Beneath the perfect facade of the playwright's fictional Nelson family are layers of prejudice, bigotry, and self-hatred that are peeled away slowly as they interact with their physically and emotionally damaged son and brother.
There's a Girl in My Soup is a stage comedy written by Terence Frisby. Set in the 1960s, it tells the story of a smooth-talking TV chef, Robert Danvers, who falls for a much younger woman, Marion. She leaves her hippy boyfriend, Jimmy, to live with Danvers, but eventually returns to Jimmy, leaving Danvers bereft.
Conduct Unbecoming is a play by Barry England. The plot concerns a scandal in a British regiment stationed in India in the 1880s.
Trelawny of the "Wells" is an 1898 comic play by Arthur Wing Pinero. It tells the story of a theatre star who attempts to give up the stage for love, but is unable to fit into conventional society.
Maureen St John Pook, known professionally as Maureen Pryor, was an Irish-born English character actress who made stage, film, and television appearances. The Encyclopaedia of British Film noted, "she never played leads, but, with long rep and TV experience, she was noticeable in all she did."
Minnie Rayner was a British stage and film actress. A character actress, she played working class figures, often mothers, in films of the 1930s. Her roles include the matriarch of the working-class Fulham family who takes in an exiled Russian prince as a lodger in the comedy I Lived with You (1933). The same year she played Gracie Fields's mother in This Week of Grace.
Gerald Douglas Savory was an English writer and television producer specialising in comedies.
The Reluctant Debutante is a 1955 play by the British playwright William Douglas Home.
The Complaisant Lover is a 1959 comedy play by Graham Greene. Consisting of two acts, each of two scenes, the play revolves around an affair between Mary Rhodes and Clive Root, the book seller friend of her husband, Victor. The play takes place in the Rhodes family home and an Amsterdam guesthouse.
Margaret Courtenay was a British actress best known for her British theatre roles during the 1970s and 1980s. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.