On the Rocks | |
---|---|
Written by | Amy Rosenthal |
Directed by | Clare Lizzimore |
Date premiered | 1 July 2008 |
Place premiered | Hampstead Theatre, London |
Original language | English |
On the Rocks is a 2008 play written by Amy Rosenthal and directed by Clare Lizzimore about real events surrounding novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright D. H. Lawrence [1] in the tiny village of Zennor in Cornwall in 1916 in the middle of World War I. [2] It played at the Hampstead Theatre in London from 1 to 26 July 2008. It was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2009.
D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda are living a shaky relationship with the overpowering Frieda missing her children, whom she abandoned for the writer, and fighting with Lawrence. The local coastguards, also suspect that Frieda, a cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron air ace, is a German spy and is sending signals from the cliffs to U-boats in the channel. In these turbulent times, the Lawrences invite their best, and by now almost only remaining friends, the critic and editor John Middleton Murry and the short-story writer Katherine Mansfield to come and join them in the cottage. [2] For Lawrence, this was a step on the road to his ideal of Rananim – a utopia where one could be happy with a group of friends. [1] As things develop, Lawrence and Frieda engage in violent fights followed by love-making sessions on the floor. Lawrence suggests that Murry becomes his blood brother, while Mansfield has writer's block, a situation Rosenthal passed through for six years before writing this play. Mansfield, after an enforced intimacy with Frieda, puts an end to the social experiment, leaving Lawrence with a permanent sense of betrayal. [1]
David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Four of his most famous novels — Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)— were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of romance, sexuality and use of explicit language.
Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, and artists including Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and Gilbert Spencer.
Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a New Zealand writer and critic who was an important figure in the modernist movement. Her works are celebrated across the world and have been published in 25 languages.
Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. G. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only one novel, Christine, published in 1917.
Women in Love is a 1920 novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his earlier novel, The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula Brangwen and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships thus established are given further depth and tension by an intense psychological and physical attraction between Gerald and Rupert.
Frieda Lawrence was a German author and wife of the British novelist D. H. Lawrence.
John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband, for his friendship with D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, and for his friendship with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.
Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky was a Ukrainian translator of Russian literature into English. He made the transition from his origins in a small Jewish shtetl to distinction in the rarefied world of English letters. Although he was not a creative writer himself, he befriended, corresponded with, helped publish, and otherwise served as intermediary between some of the most prominent people in English literary life in the early twentieth century.
Gilbert Eric Cannan was a British novelist and dramatist.
Kangaroo is a 1923 novel by D.H. Lawrence. It is set in Australia.
The D. H. Lawrence Ranch, as it is now known, was the New Mexico residence of the English novelist D. H. Lawrence for about two years during the 1920s and the only property Lawrence and his wife Frieda owned. The 160-acre (65 ha) property, originally named the Kiowa Ranch, is located about eighteen miles (29 km) northwest of Taos, New Mexico, near Lobo Mountain and San Cristobal in Taos County, at about 8,600 feet (2,600 m) above sea level. The gate of the ranch is 4.2 miles (6.8 km) by road from a historic marker and turnoff on state route NM 522.
Priest of Love is a 1981 British biographical film about D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda played by Ian McKellen and Janet Suzman. It was a Stanley J. Seeger presentation, produced and directed by Christopher Miles and co-produced by Andrew Donally. The screenplay was by Alan Plater from the biography The Priest of Love by Harry T. Moore. The music score was by Francis James Brown and Stanley J. Seeger, credited jointly as "Joseph James".
"Je ne parle pas français" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. She began it at the end of January 1918, and finished it by February 10. It was first published by the Heron Press in early 1920, and an excised version was published in Bliss and Other Stories later that year.
The Adelphi or New Adelphi was an English literary journal founded by John Middleton Murry and published between 1923 and 1955. The first issue appeared in June 1923, with issues published monthly thereafter. Between August 1927 and September 1930 it was renamed the New Adelphi and issued quarterly. Murry was editor until 1930, when he handed over to Sir Richard Rees and the monthly issues resumed. Rees was succeeded by Max Plowman in 1938. The magazine included one or two stories per issue with contributions by Katherine Mansfield, A.A. Milne, D. H. Lawrence, H. E. Bates, Rhys Davies, G.B. Edwards and Dylan Thomas. The Adelphi published George Orwell's "The Spike" in 1931 and Orwell contributed regularly thereafter, particularly as a reviewer; in the late 1930s/early 1940s, working class writers Jack Common and Jack Hilton also contributed.
Linda Lappin is an American-born poet, novelist, and translator living in Rome, Italy.
Rhythm was a literary, arts, and critical review magazine published in London, England, from 1911 to 1913.
A Picture of Katherine Mansfield is a 1973 BBC television drama series starring Vanessa Redgrave as writer Katherine Mansfield, Jeremy Brett as her second husband John Middleton Murry, and Annette Crosbie as her life-long friend Ida Baker, known as L.M. The series consists of six fifty-minute parts each including episodes of Mansfield's life interwoven with adaptations of her short stories, dramatized by English novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Robin Chapman (1933–2020).
Anne Estelle Rice (1877–1959) was an American artist who was one of the chief illustrators for the British periodical Rhythm, edited by John Middleton Murry and Michael Sadleir from 1911 to 1913. She established a close relationship with Katherine Mansfield, and famously painted her wearing red.
Clare Lizzimore is a British theatre director and writer. Her production of Bull by Mike Bartlett, won 'Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre' at the 2015 Olivier Awards. Lizzimore has been resident director at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and staff director at the Royal National Theatre.
Zennor in Darkness was the debut novel from English author Helen Dunmore, published in 1993. It won the 1994 McKitterick Prize which is awarded for debut novels for writers over 40. Until that point, Dunmore was primarily a poet though she had published short stories and books for children. As a result of winning the prize, Penguin offered her a two-book deal and fiction became her focus.