South Solihull u3a Play Reading Group - Armchair Theatre
Coordinator: Helen Woodcock
Where: Members' Houses
When: Usually 1st Thursday of each month at 2:00 p.m. See Diary for next meeting
Where: Members' Houses
When: Usually 1st Thursday of each month at 2:00 p.m. See Diary for next meeting
INTRODUCTION
We are a friendly group who read an eclectic mix of plays. Serious, thought provoking, funny and murder mystery scripts have entertained us and improved our play reading skills.
Members choose, and are in charge of, the casting of their plays. We take turns to host in our own homes if that is practicable. We have watched professional productions at the Alex in Birmingham and the Bear Pit Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.
The group meet on the first Thursday of the month at 2:00 pm and we always leave feeling we have had an afternoon well spent. An interlude provides us with tea or coffee and a chat, which is usually about the play.
The idea is that we enjoy being thespians without having to act on stage!!
We are a friendly group who read an eclectic mix of plays. Serious, thought provoking, funny and murder mystery scripts have entertained us and improved our play reading skills.
Members choose, and are in charge of, the casting of their plays. We take turns to host in our own homes if that is practicable. We have watched professional productions at the Alex in Birmingham and the Bear Pit Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.
The group meet on the first Thursday of the month at 2:00 pm and we always leave feeling we have had an afternoon well spent. An interlude provides us with tea or coffee and a chat, which is usually about the play.
The idea is that we enjoy being thespians without having to act on stage!!
SEEKING NEW MEMBERS
We have lost a few members over the past year and would welcome new readers. If you are interested please e-mail Helen Woodcock or phone on 01564702259, and she will be pleased and able to tell you more.
We have lost a few members over the past year and would welcome new readers. If you are interested please e-mail Helen Woodcock or phone on 01564702259, and she will be pleased and able to tell you more.
FORTHCOMING PLAYS
Thursday 7th September 2023
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crimes by Oscar Wilde
This play is based on an 1890's story by Oscar Wilde about Lord Arthur Savile's who is engaged to lovely Sybil Merton. Her pet chiromantist, Podgers, has read Lord Arthur's palm and foretold he would commit a murder. Lord Arthur desires a blissful married life and therefore feels duty bound to get the murder over with first. Despite help from his butler and the cheerful anarchist Winkelkopf, attempt after attempt fails. Then news comes that Podgers is a charlatan: Lord Arthur is free and the carriage awaits to take him to the wedding rehearsal. Alas, it contains Winkelkopf's newest bomb. Lord Arthur saves himself by tossing it into a horse trough. As the dust settles, two policemen appear and march the unhappy young man away and another postponement notice has to be sent to The Times.
The story is a humorous critique of the Victorian notion of duty and the idea of the heroic quest as it juxtaposes Lord Arthur's determination to clear the way for his marriage by committing murder with the reader's knowledge that murder cannot masquerade as duty. This opposition creates irony throughout the story.
Venue: Pam’s Apartment
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crimes by Oscar Wilde
This play is based on an 1890's story by Oscar Wilde about Lord Arthur Savile's who is engaged to lovely Sybil Merton. Her pet chiromantist, Podgers, has read Lord Arthur's palm and foretold he would commit a murder. Lord Arthur desires a blissful married life and therefore feels duty bound to get the murder over with first. Despite help from his butler and the cheerful anarchist Winkelkopf, attempt after attempt fails. Then news comes that Podgers is a charlatan: Lord Arthur is free and the carriage awaits to take him to the wedding rehearsal. Alas, it contains Winkelkopf's newest bomb. Lord Arthur saves himself by tossing it into a horse trough. As the dust settles, two policemen appear and march the unhappy young man away and another postponement notice has to be sent to The Times.
The story is a humorous critique of the Victorian notion of duty and the idea of the heroic quest as it juxtaposes Lord Arthur's determination to clear the way for his marriage by committing murder with the reader's knowledge that murder cannot masquerade as duty. This opposition creates irony throughout the story.
Venue: Pam’s Apartment
Thursday October 5th 2023
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard portrays the social climate of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, when the aristocrats and land-owning gentry were losing their wealth and revealed themselves to be incapable of coping with their change in status. Many Socialist Soviet critics in Russia after the Revolution of 1917 tried to interpret this as an indictment of Russian society at the turn of the century; however, it is unlikely that Chekhov meant this play as an attack on the society of which he was so much a part. Though intended as a comedy, the tragedy of the situation in which Mrs. Ranevsky and her family find themselves is derived primarily from their inability to adapt to their new social and personal responsibilities. No longer able to live on the labour provided by the serfs (slaves) who worked the land, many wealthy landowners, like Mrs. Ranevsky in The Cherry Orchard, lost their fortunes and their estates.
The action takes place between May and October. Madame Ranevskaya returns to her estate in the Russian countryside from Paris. She has been living there with her lover following the deaths of her husband and young son (drowned on the estate) some years previously. Her money has run out and her lover has deserted her. She is accompanied by her daughter Anya, Anya’s governess Charlotta, and a manservant Yasha. She is welcomed by other members of the family and household, and by Lopakhin, a wealthy merchant descended from serfs who urges her to sell her cherry orchard to wipe out the family’s debts and to lease out the land and buildings so as to retain the family home. She refuses, Lopakhin purchases the orchard at auction, and gives orders for it to be cut down as Madame R departs, virtually penniless, for Paris once again.
A bald and simple enough tale, but it is the playing out of the characters’ lives, loves, hopes, fears and disappointments that is so enthralling.
Venue: Helen’s House
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard portrays the social climate of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, when the aristocrats and land-owning gentry were losing their wealth and revealed themselves to be incapable of coping with their change in status. Many Socialist Soviet critics in Russia after the Revolution of 1917 tried to interpret this as an indictment of Russian society at the turn of the century; however, it is unlikely that Chekhov meant this play as an attack on the society of which he was so much a part. Though intended as a comedy, the tragedy of the situation in which Mrs. Ranevsky and her family find themselves is derived primarily from their inability to adapt to their new social and personal responsibilities. No longer able to live on the labour provided by the serfs (slaves) who worked the land, many wealthy landowners, like Mrs. Ranevsky in The Cherry Orchard, lost their fortunes and their estates.
The action takes place between May and October. Madame Ranevskaya returns to her estate in the Russian countryside from Paris. She has been living there with her lover following the deaths of her husband and young son (drowned on the estate) some years previously. Her money has run out and her lover has deserted her. She is accompanied by her daughter Anya, Anya’s governess Charlotta, and a manservant Yasha. She is welcomed by other members of the family and household, and by Lopakhin, a wealthy merchant descended from serfs who urges her to sell her cherry orchard to wipe out the family’s debts and to lease out the land and buildings so as to retain the family home. She refuses, Lopakhin purchases the orchard at auction, and gives orders for it to be cut down as Madame R departs, virtually penniless, for Paris once again.
A bald and simple enough tale, but it is the playing out of the characters’ lives, loves, hopes, fears and disappointments that is so enthralling.
Venue: Helen’s House
Thursday 2nd November 2023
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith
Imagine Three Sisters re-written by E M Forster with a touch of Jane Austen, and you get the charming, funny, poignant family drama that is Dear Octopus, a comedy romance about three sisters who try to manage the flirtation between a governess and their younger brother during the weekend of their parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Smith's play is so dense, dialogue and stage directions wise, that it reads more like a novel (and is rather hard to imagine staged) but the story is delightful, and the characters so distinctly written, that one can't help being pulled into the world she creates and populates so deftly with people many of us will be familiar with from our own families. Act Two, in particular, is masterfully written, and could almost work as a one act play, were not the set up of Act One and the climax of Act Three so delicious. A real treasure for those who love the period, family dramas, and thoroughly English English Theatre.
Successfully produced in London and New York, Dear Octopus is the family from which none of its members are either able or quite willing to escape. And on the occasion of a golden wedding anniversary the children and grandchildren gather to reminisce and acquaint each other more fully with their activities. The life of this English family is shown in terms of the chatter of the youngsters, the careers and nursery memories of the middle-aged and the sense of the swift passing of the years, the sweetness of an old nurse, the minor frictions and abiding loyalty of brothers and sisters, the feast-day toast and the benevolent tyranny of the grandmother. Woven throughout the proceedings is a love story between Fenny, companion to Mrs. Randolph, and Nicholas Randolph.
Venue: t.b.c.
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith
Imagine Three Sisters re-written by E M Forster with a touch of Jane Austen, and you get the charming, funny, poignant family drama that is Dear Octopus, a comedy romance about three sisters who try to manage the flirtation between a governess and their younger brother during the weekend of their parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Smith's play is so dense, dialogue and stage directions wise, that it reads more like a novel (and is rather hard to imagine staged) but the story is delightful, and the characters so distinctly written, that one can't help being pulled into the world she creates and populates so deftly with people many of us will be familiar with from our own families. Act Two, in particular, is masterfully written, and could almost work as a one act play, were not the set up of Act One and the climax of Act Three so delicious. A real treasure for those who love the period, family dramas, and thoroughly English English Theatre.
Successfully produced in London and New York, Dear Octopus is the family from which none of its members are either able or quite willing to escape. And on the occasion of a golden wedding anniversary the children and grandchildren gather to reminisce and acquaint each other more fully with their activities. The life of this English family is shown in terms of the chatter of the youngsters, the careers and nursery memories of the middle-aged and the sense of the swift passing of the years, the sweetness of an old nurse, the minor frictions and abiding loyalty of brothers and sisters, the feast-day toast and the benevolent tyranny of the grandmother. Woven throughout the proceedings is a love story between Fenny, companion to Mrs. Randolph, and Nicholas Randolph.
Venue: t.b.c.
Thursday 7th December 2023
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Stepping Out by Richard Harris
Stepping Out is a warm and very funny play about the lives, laughs and loves of a group of women (and one man) attending a weekly tap-dance class in a dingy North London church hall. There is ex-professional dancer Mavis, who runs the class; cheerfully overweight Sylvia; Andy, a plain do-gooder with no confidence; snobby but well meaning Vera; timid Dorothy who works in Social Security; Maxine, attractive, sharp and very shrewd; fat, plain Lynne; Rose, just here for a good time, and Geoffrey, the lone male. As the play progresses, the class’s dancing improves to such an extent that by the climax, a grand charity show performance, they have been transformed into triumphant tappers, worthy of any chorus line.
Venue: t.b.c.
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Stepping Out by Richard Harris
Stepping Out is a warm and very funny play about the lives, laughs and loves of a group of women (and one man) attending a weekly tap-dance class in a dingy North London church hall. There is ex-professional dancer Mavis, who runs the class; cheerfully overweight Sylvia; Andy, a plain do-gooder with no confidence; snobby but well meaning Vera; timid Dorothy who works in Social Security; Maxine, attractive, sharp and very shrewd; fat, plain Lynne; Rose, just here for a good time, and Geoffrey, the lone male. As the play progresses, the class’s dancing improves to such an extent that by the climax, a grand charity show performance, they have been transformed into triumphant tappers, worthy of any chorus line.
Venue: t.b.c.
