The Matchmaker is a 1954 Broadway play by Thornton Wilder, a rewritten version of his 1938 play The Merchant of Yonkers.
Frederick Charles Jones was an English actor who had an extensive career in television, theatre and cinema productions for almost sixty years. In theatre, he was best known for originating the role of Sir in The Dresser; in film, he was best known for his role as the showman Bytes in The Elephant Man (1980); and in television, he was best known for playing Sandy Thomas in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale from 2005 to 2018.
The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. The play is Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright. It was published in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans together with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and Caesar and Cleopatra. Set in Colonial America during the Revolutionary era, the play tells the story of Richard Dudgeon, a local outcast and self-proclaimed "Devil's disciple". In a twist characteristic of Shaw's love of paradox, Dudgeon sacrifices himself in a Christ-like gesture despite his professed infernal allegiance.
Widowers' Houses (1892) was the first play by George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It premièred on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society — a subscription club, formed to escape the Lord Chamberlain's Office censorship.
Valentine Ruth Henshall, known professionally as Ruthie Henshall, is an English actress, singer and dancer, known for her work in musical theatre. She began her professional stage career in 1986, before making her West End debut in Cats in 1987. A five-time Olivier Award nominee, she won the 1995 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Amalia Balash in the London revival of She Loves Me (1994).
Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. It is one of the three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898, alongside The Philanderer and Widowers' Houses. The play is about a former prostitute, now a madam, who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter. It is a problem play, offering social commentary to illustrate the idea that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity. Elements of the play were borrowed from Shaw's 1882 novel Cashel Byron's Profession, about a man who becomes a boxer due to limited employment opportunities.
Rachel Gurney was an English actress. She began her career in the theatre towards the end of World War II and then expanded into television and film in the 1950s. She remained active, mostly in television and theatre work, into the early 1990s. She is best remembered for playing the elegant Lady Marjorie Bellamy in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs.
The Body in the Library is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1942 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in May of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence. The novel features her fictional amateur detective Miss Marple.
Acorn Antiques: The Musical! is a musical about an antiques dealer, based on the parodic soap opera of the same name by Victoria Wood. It premiered in the West End in 2005, and starred Julie Walters and Celia Imrie. The musical won the Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical and was nominated as Best New Musical.
Still Life is a short play in five scenes by Noël Coward, one of ten plays that make up Tonight at 8.30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. One-act plays were unfashionable in the 1920s and 30s, but Coward was fond of the genre and conceived the idea of a set of short pieces to be played across several evenings. The actress most closely associated with him was Gertrude Lawrence, and he wrote the plays as vehicles for them both.
Oliver Burchett Clarence was an English actor.
The Magistrate is a farce by English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. It concerns a respectable magistrate who finds himself caught up in scandalous events that threaten to disgrace him.
Dorothy Minto was a prominent actress on the London stage between 1905 and the mid-1930s, notably appearing in the first runs of several plays written by George Bernard Shaw. She also featured in a small number of films between 1916 and 1936. While her early stage career concentrated on classical plays and serious new work, from 1912 onwards she devoted herself more to musicals and comedies.
The Body in the Library is a 3-part 1984 television film adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1942 detective novel The Body in the Library, which was co-produced by the BBC and the A&E Network. The film uses an adapted screenplay by T. R. Bowen and was directed by Silvio Narizzano. Starring Joan Hickson in the title role, it was the first film presented in the British television series Miss Marple and premiered in three parts from 26 to 28 December 1984 on BBC One. In the United States the film was first broadcast on 4 January 1986 as a part of PBS's Mystery!. In his review in The New York Times, critic John J. O'Connor wrote:
Miss Christie would no doubt approve of Joan Hickson, the veteran British character actress who plays Miss Marple... This BBC/Arts & Entertainment co-production offers an especially good example of Agatha Christie in adaptation. The characters are nicely realized and the suspense holds. Miss Hickson is lovely, neither as awesome as Miss Rutherford nor as overly cute as Helen Hayes. And the supporting cast is admirable, particularly Gwen Watford as Dolly and David Horovitch as Inspector Slack. As someone notes about the case, "you'll have to admit it has all the bizarre elements of a cheap thriller." Once hooked, you won't be able to turn it off.
Mabel Gwynedd Terry-Lewis was an English actress and a member of the Terry-Gielgud dynasty of actors of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Innocents is a play written by William Archibald that premiered on Broadway in 1950 and was revived in 1976. The play is based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Jack Straw is a 1920 American silent comedy film produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. William C. deMille directed the film and Robert Warwick and Carroll McComas star. The film is based on a 1908 stage play by W. Somerset Maugham starring John Drew and a young Mary Boland. In 1926 Paramount attempted a remake of this film called The Waiter from the Ritz which was begun and/or completed but never released. James Cruze directed and Raymond Griffith starred; this film, if completed, is now lost. The 1920 film survives at the Library of Congress.
Nora Nicholson was an English actress. Known for her portrayal of character roles, she achieved her greatest success in the later years of her career. She played in classics by Shakespeare and Chekhov and in new plays by authors including Noël Coward and Alan Bennett. Many of her best-regarded performances were as eccentric or even unhinged characters.
Fanny Carby was a British character actress. She had two different roles on Coronation Street: she played Mary Hornigold in 1965, then in 1987 she took the role of Vera Duckworth's domineering mother, Amy Burton, a role she played into the following year. Fanny's other credits include Street spin-off Pardon the Expression, On The Buses, Sykes, The Bill, In Sickness and in Health and Goodnight Sweetheart.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, is a 1903 comedy by American author Anne Crawford Flexner. It was based on two books by Alice Hegan Rice, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901) and Lovey Mary (1903). It has three acts and two settings, all within the "Cabbage Patch", an impoverished neighborhood on the fringes of Louisville, Kentucky. The character-driven play covers three weeks time and has multiple storylines, including an ill-starred mail-order marriage, two refugees from an orphanage, the return of a long-lost husband, and a handful of young romances.
