Christmas in Marlow-land

[sheep-noises.livejournal.com]

This time o' year always reminds me of

1) The Christmas Play in Wade Minster, from "End of Term" (which I don't have atm as my copy gave up the ghost and fell to pieces >:( ) ;

2) The unconventional Christmas Dinner in a cave, with poor old Ann staying home in case the phone rings :( , from "Run Away Home"; but mostly

3) "Peter's Room". For me, this is the most magical of all those magical books. I must admit I've always skipped the bits in Italics, so I still don't know what fantasy it was that they acted out that Christmas, even though I've read it dozens of times. Don't care, either. The wonderful descriptions of the day-to-day Marlow (and a bit o' Merrick) winter doings are enough to keep me going :)

Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

My experience of boarding-school plays is that they are as much a mixed bag as any other school play. Occasionally it all comes together brilliantly, and more often it's a bit of a mess. There was an awful lot of spare time to be filled up at school and play rehearsals was one way of doing this. Given the amount of time Third Remove had spent on their play, it strikes me as just possible that Elaine might have Marie's lines memorised enough to keep things going.

I completely agree with the joint writing thing. I just can't imagine how that works at all. Do you imagine that the Gondals were written down? In my mind, they just sit around telling the story, each taking turns to do 'their bit'.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Of course, owing to the somewhat Miss Keithish idea that my headmistress, Big O, had, to the effect that gels doing exams shouldn't have distractions you were only eligible for school plays as an actor in Lower Sixth and Fourth forms (and, exceptionally, 1st or 2nd forms when they needed a Moth or Mustardseed) so I expect part of the problem was that there was only the same limited pool of actors to choose from and our year wasn't very good at acting.

Fortunately Art Club got to do sets, backstage and noises off irrespective of our ages or exam commitments - my finest hour was being exploding tomato cans in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Oh, ours was much more of the Crommie school of thought that one ought to be able to take exams in one's stride without any fuss. I was definitely in a school performance of Blithe Spirit when I was in Upper VI. The backstage crew had lots of fun with that one. And, actually we had lots of fun with it too - not least because we had been allowed to 'borrow' two boys for the male parts from the local boys' school.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Do you imagine that the Gondals were written down?

I imagine they spend about four hours each day (and an awful lot of roast potatoes and chestnuts) planning out what's going to happen (probably involving either paper or a blackboard), an hour of so for people to prepare for the planned scene and two hours or so improvising it, with a great deal of interruptions and "Lal! You can't possibly" sort of interjections, and quite possibly Gin and Patrick going all Agatha and Frederick and rehearsing indefatigably in dark corners shoved in throughout.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Funny, because I've always imagined quite the opposite. Ie. that it was done "live", as it were, and tidied up by AF to cut out all the "he said, she said" bits that would distract.

(Exactly like Ransome's 'Peter Duck', if you've ever seen the first few draft chapters. It had to jump back between the boat on the Broads (real life, where the children were inventing the story) and the South Seas (where the story was set). He abandoned that idea, and if AF ever tried that way of doing it, she clearly abandoned it too.)

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

The only unfinished one I've seen is that rather promising one where the Death and Glories hide on board a launch which is being trucked from the boatyard to the Lakes and arrive in the middle of a sea-battle between the Swallows and the Amazons and think it's all rather childish and silly. I'd have liked to see where he went with that one.