 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2020) |
Waste is a play by the English author Harley Granville Barker. It exists in two wholly different versions, from 1906 and 1927. The first version was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain and had to be performed privately by the Stage Society in 1907; the second was finally staged in public at the Westminster Theatre in 1936.
The plot centres around ambitious independent politician Henry Trebell, his plans for a bill to disestablish the Church of England and his fall from grace and suicide after his affair with married woman Amy O'Connell, who dies after a botched abortion. The title may refer to the waste of his potential talents due to the scandal, the loss of the disestablishment bill and the termination of Amy's pregnancy.
Recent productions include John Barton's in 1985 for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican, with Daniel Massey as Trebell and Judi Dench as Amy, one in 1997 at the Old Vic by the Peter Hall Company (with Michael Pennington as Trebell, Anna Carteret as Frances and Peter Blythe as Charles Cantilupe) and a well-received one at the Almeida Theatre (directed by Samuel West and starring Will Keen as Trebell, Nancy Carroll as Amy and Phoebe Nicholls as Frances). [1] Recent North American productions include one in 1995 at the Shaw Festival (directed by Neil Munro) and one in 2000 directed by Bartlett Sher. In November 2015, the National Theatre revived the play, directed by Roger Michell and starring Charles Edwards as Trebell and Olivia Williams as Amy, using the 1927 version of the text. [2]
The first radio production was produced by Val Gielgud on the Third Programme in 1947 and starred Andrew Cruickshank. Stephen Murray starred in a 1959 version of 1947 adaptation on the Home Service. The most recent dramatisation was broadcast on the World Service in 1995 and featured Rachel Weisz, Penelope Wilton and Timothy West.
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 and difficulty understanding women, Higgins grows attached to her.
Alex Michael Jennings is an English actor of the stage and screen, who worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. For his work on the London stage, Jennings received three Olivier Awards, winning for Too Clever by Half (1988), Peer Gynt (1996), and My Fair Lady (2003). He is the only performer to have won Olivier awards in the drama, musical, and comedy categories.
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre is an English film, theatre, television and opera director.
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325-seat producing house with an international reputation, which takes its name from the street on which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama. Successful plays are often transferred to West End theatres.
Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish actress. Her first acting roles were at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, before moving to London in 1969 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has won the Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for her performance in Sebastian Barry's Our Lady of Sligo.
Frances J. de Lautour, better known as Frances de la Tour, is an English actress. She is known for her role as Miss Ruth Jones in the television sitcom Rising Damp from 1974 until 1978. She is a Tony Award winner and three-time Olivier Award winner.
Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.
Raymond Fearon is an English actor. He played garage mechanic Nathan Harding on ITV's long-running soap opera Coronation Street and voiced the centaur Firenze in the Wizarding World film series Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts.
Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor.
Jonathan Kent CBE is an English theatre director and opera director. He is known as a director/producer alongside Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.
The Belle of Mayfair is a musical comedy composed by Leslie Stuart with a book by Basil Hood, Charles Brookfield and Cosmo Hamilton and lyrics by George Arthurs. The story is inspired by the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet.
George Street Playhouse is a theater company in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the city's Civic Square government and theater district. It is one of the state's preeminent professional theaters, committed to the production of new and established plays.
Peter Blythe was an English character actor, probably best known as Samuel "Soapy Sam" Ballard in Rumpole of the Bailey.
Charles Peter Keep Edwards is an English actor with a career in theatre, TV, and film, most notable for playing Michael Gregson in Downton Abbey (2012–2013), Dr Alexander McDonald in The Terror (2018), Sir Martin Charteris in The Crown (2019-2020), and Lord Celebrimbor in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022).
Nancy Carroll is a British actress. She has worked extensively in theatre productions, particularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She also has numerous film and television credits, including a long-running feature role as Lady Felicia in the BBC series Father Brown.
Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish actor and director of stage and screen, best known for portraying the Sith Lord Darth Sidious in the Star Wars multimedia franchise. Making his stage debut in Hamlet in 1972, McDiarmid joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974, and has since starred in a number of Shakespeare's plays. He has received an Olivier Award for Best Actor and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his stage performances.
The Fermor, later Eversfield Baronetcy, of Welches in the County of Suffolk and of Sevenoak in the County of Kent, was a title in the Baronetage of Great Britain. It was created on 4 May 1725 for Henry Fermor, of Castwisell House, Biddenden. Sir Henry died without a direct heir in 1734. He left funds to endow a local school that still bears his name.
The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones, aimed indiscriminately, with the aim of breaking a few windows. I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one."
Alex Rathgeber is an Australian actor and singer, perhaps best known for his Helpmann Award-winning performance as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes. More recently he appeared as the Tin Man in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of The Wizard of Oz.
Charles Eversfield of Denne Place, near Horsham, Sussex, was a British Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1705 and 1747.