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Alan Stanford
Alan Stanford (born 1949) is an English-Irish actor, director and writer. He has worked in the theatre for many years, including a 30 year association with the Gate Theatre as both actor and director. He is well known for playing George Manning in the popular Irish drama series ''Glenroe''. Personal life Though originally from Liverpool, Alan Stanford's childhood was spent on the Isle of Wight in the South of England. He was an only child. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Stanford moved to Ireland in 1969 after touring there and eventually became an Irish citizen. As of 2011 became resident in the USA and is based in Pittsburgh. Stanford's parents were John Stanford and Anne Kirkpatrick who raised him for most of his childhood in the Isle of Wight, however in 2010, aged 61, Stanford discovered that he had been adopted and that he shared a biological mother with six younger children. He has been married twice and has two sons from hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre is a Theater (structure), theatre on Cavendish Row in Dublin, Ireland. It was founded in 1928. History Beginnings The Gate Theatre was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir with Daisy Bannard Cogley and Gearóid Ó Lochlainn. During their first season, they presented seven plays, including Ibsen's Peer Gynt, O’Neill's The Hairy Ape and Wilde's Salomé. They offered Dublin audiences an introduction to the world of European and American theatre as well as classics from the modern and Irish repertoire. It was at the Gate that Orson Welles, James Mason, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Michael Gambon began their acting careers. The company played for two seasons at the Peacock Theatre and then moved to the 18th Century Rotunda Annex - the ‘Upper Concert Hall’, the Gate's present home, with Goethe's Faust opening on 17 February 1930. Lord and Lady Longford The newly established Gate Theatre ran into financial difficulties and a meeting was called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth
''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, ''Macbeth'' most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyrano De Bergerac (play)
''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. There was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, and the play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of his life. The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the classical alexandrine form, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the ''dames précieuses'' glimpsed before the performance in the first scene. The play has been translated and performed many times, and it is responsible for introducing the word ''panache'' into the English language. The character of Cyrano himself makes reference to "my panache" in the play. The most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker, Anthony Burgess, and Louis Untermeyer. Plot summary Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Windermere's Fan
''Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman'' is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an affair with another woman; she confronts him with it. Although he denies it, he invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed that Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage. Composition By the summer of 1891 Wilde had al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Collection (play)
''The Collection'' is a 1961 play by Harold Pinter featuring two couples, James and Stella and Harry and Bill. It is a comedy laced with typically "Pinteresque" ambiguity and "implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses" (''Oxford English Dictionary''). Setting ''The Collection'' takes place on a divided stage, shared by a house in London's Belgravia, and a flat in Chelsea, with another space between them where telephone calls take place; according to Pinter's stage description, the "three areas" comprise "two peninsulas and a promontory" (''Three Plays'' 3. Bill, a dress designer in his twenties, lives with Harry, a man in his forties, in Harry's house, in Belgravia, which has "Elegant decor" (''Three Plays'' 3. Stella, another dress designer, in her thirties like her husband and business partner James, lives with him in "James' flat" in Chelsea, which has "Tasteful contemporary furnishing." Accordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Tale Of Two Cities
''A Tale of Two Cities'' is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In the Introduction to the ''Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction'', critic Don D'Ammassa argues that it is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed. As Dickens's best-known work of historical fiction, ''A Tale of Two Cities'' is said to be one of the best-selling novels of all time. In 2003, the novel was ranked 63rd on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The novel has been adapted for film, television, radio, and the stage, and has continued to influence popular culture. Synopsis Book the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Expectations
''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after ''David Copperfield'', to be fully narrated in the first person.''Bleak House'' alternates between a third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, but the former is predominant. The novel was first published as a serial (literature), serial in Dickens's weekly periodical ''All the Year Round'', from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. ''Great Expectations'' is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Picture Of Dorian Gray
''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' is a philosophical fiction, philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine''.''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (Penguin Classics) – Introduction The novel-length version was published in April 1891. The story revolves around a Oil painting, portrait of Dorian Gray (character), Dorian Gray painted by Basil Hallward, a friend of Dorian's and an artist infatuated with Dorian's Aesthetics, beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and is soon enthralled by the aristocrat's Hedonism, hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to Deal with the Devil, sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine lif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pride And Prejudice
''Pride and Prejudice'' is an 1813 novel of manners by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness. Mr. Bennet, owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire, has five daughters, but his property is Fee tail, entailed and can only be passed to a male heir. His wife also lacks an inheritance, so his family faces becoming poor upon his death. Thus, it is imperative that at least one of the daughters marries well to support the others, which is a motivation that drives the plot. ''Pride and Prejudice'' has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literatur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Present Laughter
''Present Laughter'' is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1939 but not produced until 1942 because the Second World War began while it was in rehearsal, and the British theatres closed. The title is drawn from a song in Shakespeare's ''Twelfth Night'' that urges '' carpe diem'' ("present mirth hath present laughter"). The play has been frequently revived in Britain, the US and beyond. The plot depicts a few days in the life of the successful and self-obsessed light comedy actor Garry Essendine as he prepares to travel for a touring commitment in Africa. Amid a series of events bordering on farce, Garry has to deal with women who want to seduce him, placate both his long-suffering secretary and his wife, cope with a crazed young playwright, and overcome his impending mid-life crisis (he has recently turned forty). The character is a caricature of the author's real-life persona, as Coward acknowledged. Coward starred as Garry during the original run, which began with a lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tartuffe
''Tartuffe, or The Impostor, or The Hypocrite'' (; french: Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur, ), first performed in 1664, is a theatrical comedy by Molière. The characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and Orgon are considered among the greatest classical theatre roles. History Molière performed his first version of ''Tartuffe'' in 1664. Almost immediately following its performance that same year at Versailles' grand fêtes (The Party of the Delights of the Enchanted Island/''Les fêtes des plaisirs de l'ile enchantée''), King Louis XIV suppressed it, probably due to the influence of the archbishop of Paris, Paul Philippe Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, who was the King's confessor and had been his tutor. While the king had little personal interest in suppressing the play, he did so because, as stated in the official account of the fête: although it was found to be extremely diverting, the king recognized so much conformity between those that a true devotion leads on the path to heave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romeo And Juliet
''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with ''Hamlet'', is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the Title character, title characters are regarded as archetype, archetypal young lovers. ''Romeo and Juliet'' belongs to a tradition of tragic Romance (love), romances stretching back to Ancient history, antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as ''The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet'' by Arthur Brooke (poet), Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in ''Palace of Pleasure'' by William Painter (author), William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Count Paris, Paris. Believed to have been written between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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