The Song of Lunch

Last updated

The Song of Lunch is a British 2010 television adaptation of Christopher Reid's poem of the same name. [1] [2] It was directed by Niall MacCormick and stars Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Screened on 9 October 2010 during National Poetry Month, the production is unusual in featuring little spoken dialogue, the action instead being an enactment of incidents described in poetic monologue by the male character. [3] [4]

The play tells the story of a reunion between two former lovers in a Soho Italian restaurant. Rickman's character ('he') is a London book editor who writes poetry in his spare time (unsuccessfully). Thompson's character ('she') is his former lover who left him to marry a successful novelist fifteen years previously. [5]

50 minutes long and a co-production between the BBC and Masterpiece , it was filmed in the anamorphic format 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Thompson received an Emmy Award nomination (Outstanding Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie) in 2012 for her performance. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sweeney Todd</span> Fictional serial killer barber

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the villain of the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls (1846–1847). The original tale became a feature of 19th-century melodrama and London legend. A barber from Fleet Street, Todd murders his customers with a straight razor and gives their corpses to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies. The tale has been retold many times since in various media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Rickman</span> English actor (1946–2016)

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was an English actor and director. Known for his deep, languid voice, he trained at RADA in London and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), performing in modern and classical theatre productions. He played the Vicomte de Valmont in the RSC stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, and after the production transferred to the West End in 1986 and Broadway in 1987, he was nominated for a Tony Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Branagh</span> British actor and filmmaker

Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has served as its president since 2015. He has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours. He was made a Freeman of his native city of Belfast in January 2018. In 2020, he was listed at number 20 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

<i>Sense and Sensibility</i> (film) 1995 film by Ang Lee

Sense and Sensibility is a 1995 period drama film directed by Ang Lee and based on Jane Austen's 1811 novel of the same name. Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay and stars as Elinor Dashwood, while Kate Winslet plays Elinor's younger sister Marianne. The story follows the Dashwood sisters, members of a wealthy English family of landed gentry, as they must deal with circumstances of sudden destitution. They are forced to seek financial security through marriage. Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman play their respective suitors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Thompson</span> British actress and screenwriter (born 1959)

Dame Emma Thompson is a British actress and screenwriter. Regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation, she has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2018, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama.

Louise Gold is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than four decades. She is best known for her work as a puppeteer on television and for roles in musical theatre in the West End.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Nighy</span> British actor (born 1949)

William Francis Nighy is a British actor. He started his career with the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool and made his London debut with the Royal National Theatre starting with The Illuminatus! in 1977. There he gained acclaim for his roles in David Hare's Pravda in 1985, Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1991, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1993, and Anton Chekov's The Seagull in 1994. He received a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nomination for his performance in Blue/Orange in 2001. He made his Broadway debut in Hare's The Vertical Hour in 2006, and returned in the 2015 revival of Hare's Skylight earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.

<i>The Lord of the Rings</i> (1981 radio series) Radio dramatisation of book

In 1981, BBC Radio 4 produced a dramatisation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in 26 half-hour stereo instalments. The novel had previously been adapted as a 12-part BBC Radio adaptation in 1955 and 1956, and a 1979 production by The Mind's Eye for National Public Radio in the USA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Kingston</span> English actress (b. 1963)

Alexandra Elizabeth Kingston is an English actress. Active from the early 1980s, Kingston became noted for her television work in both Britain and the US in the 1990s, including her regular role as Dr. Elizabeth Corday in the NBC medical drama ER (1997–2004) and her title role in the ITV miniseries The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996), which earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Glover</span> English actor (born 1935)

Julian Wyatt Glover is an English classical actor with many stage, television, and film roles since commencing his career in the 1950s. He is a recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award and has performed many times for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

<i>The Winter Guest</i> 1997 film by Alan Rickman

The Winter Guest is a 1997 drama film directed by Alan Rickman and starring Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Reid (writer)</span> British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer

Christopher John Reid, FRSL is a British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer. In January 2010 he won the 2009 Costa Book Award for A Scattering, written as a tribute to his late wife, the actress Lucinda Gane. Beside winning the poetry category, Reid became the first poet to take the overall Costa Book of the Year since Seamus Heaney in 1999. He had been nominated for Whitbread Awards in 1996 and in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greg Wise</span> English actor

Matthew Gregory Wise is an English actor and producer. He has appeared in several British television programmes and feature films. He played the role of John Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, which also starred Emma Thompson, whom he later married.

Anne Reid is a British stage, film and television actress, known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street (1961–1971); Jean in the sitcom dinnerladies (1998–2000); and her role as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020) for which she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year and received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film The Mother (2003).

Srdjan Kurpjel, is a composer and re-recording mixer for film and television. Srdjan began playing piano when he was 4 years old at the class of Neda Stankovic. He arranged the score for Kuduz aged only 15, and composed the score for Praznik u Sarajevu (1991). Subsequently forming an association with the composer Goran Bregovic, he worked as orchestrator, programmer and arranger on Arizona Dream (1993), and the Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995) and many more. He left his birthplace in 1991 and moved to London from where he heads his own post production facility house Zound. www.zound.com His TV credits as composer include Judderman Metz, Guinness, United Airlines, Audi, MTV News, Christopher Reid's Poem Song of Lunch with Emma Thomson and Alan Rickman, Messiah V for BBC, The End of the Line, The Long Walk to Finchley (2008), Transit (2005), The Naked Pilgrim (2003) and many more. Other Sound Design Credits and Mixing include Around the World in 80 days, Tristan & Isolde, This Must be the Place with Sean Penn, The Disappearance of Alice Creed with Gemma Arterton, Heartless with Jim Sturgess, Skellig with Tim Roth, etc..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winnie-the-Pooh</span> Fictional character created by A. A. Milne

Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925. The character is based on a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnny Flynn</span> British actor and musician (born 1983)

John Patrick Vivian Flynn is a British actor and singer-songwriter. He has starred as Dylan Witter in the Channel 4 and Netflix television sitcom Lovesick, and portrayed David Bowie in the film Stardust.

The Ted Hughes Award is an annual literary prize given to a living UK poet for new work in poetry. It is awarded each spring in recognition of a work from the previous year.

<i>King Lear</i> (2018 film) British TV series or program

King Lear is a 2018 British-American television film directed by Richard Eyre. An adaptation of the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, cut to just 115 minutes, it was broadcast on BBC Two on 28 May 2018. Starring Anthony Hopkins as the title character, the adaptation is set in a highly militarised version of 21st-century London and depicts the tragedy that follows when the sovereign King Lear announces the end of his reign and the division of his kingdom among his three daughters. The adaptation was met with positive reviews, which commended its acting, and many singled out Hopkins for his performance in the title role.

<i>Matilda the Musical</i> (film) 2022 film by Matthew Warchus, Dennis Kelly, and Kelly and Tim Minchin

Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical, or simply Matilda The Musical, is a 2022 musical fantasy comedy drama film directed by Matthew Warchus from a screenplay by Dennis Kelly, based on the stage musical of the same name by Kelly and Tim Minchin, which in turn is based on the 1988 novel Matilda by Roald Dahl. The film, co-produced by TriStar Pictures, Working Title Films, and The Roald Dahl Story Company, is the second film adaptation of the novel, following the 1996 film. The film stars Alisha Weir as the title character, alongside Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Sindhu Vee, and Emma Thompson. In the film, Matilda Wormwood (Weir), who is neglected and mistreated by her parents, develops psychokinetic abilities to deal with Miss Trunchbull (Thompson), the ruthless and cruel headmistress of Crunchem Hall School.

References

  1. "Thompson and Rickman to star in Reid poem adaptation". BBC News . 30 June 2010. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  2. Self, John (17 July 2009). "Christopher Reid: The Song of Lunch". Asylum. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  3. "The Song of Lunch". BBC Two . Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  4. Mangan, Lucy (8 October 2010). "The Song of Lunch". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  5. Damien Love, The Song Of Lunch, 4 October 2010
  6. "Emma Thompson". Television Academy. Retrieved 16 February 2023.