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Barry Creyton
Barry Creyton (born 1939, Brisbane, Queensland) is an Australian actor and playwright. Creyton began his professional career in radio and revue in Melbourne, Australia and became well known in Sydney starring in and writing popular comedy-melodramas at the Music Hall theatre-restaurant in Neutral Bay. He gained national prominence in 1964–66, as one of the original stars and writers of the topical comedy revue TV series ''The Mavis Bramston Show''. Creyton also spent time in the United Kingdom, where he appeared in British comedy television series including ''Doctor in the House''. Following his return to Australia, he appeared in television series such as ''The Sullivans'' and ''Carson's Law''. Creyton has been a theatre performer since 1957 and stage work has included theatrical versions of ''Don's Party'' and ''The Naked Vicar Show''. Creyton now works in the United States. Family history Creyton is the great grandson of Shakespearean actor William Hoskins. Hos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South East Queensland metropolitan region, which encompasses a population of around 3.8 million. The Brisbane central business district is situated within a peninsula of the Brisbane River about from its mouth at Moreton Bay, a bay of the Coral Sea. Brisbane is located in the hilly floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Taylor Range, Taylor and D'Aguilar Range, D'Aguilar mountain ranges. It sprawls across several local government in Australia, local government areas, most centrally the City of Brisbane, Australia's most populous local government area. The demonym of Brisbane is ''Brisbanite''. The Traditional Owners of the Brisbane a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Blakemore
Michael Howell Blakemore OBE, AO (born 18 June 1928) is an Australian actor, writer and theatre director who has also made a handful of films. A former Associate Director of the National Theatre, in 2000 he became the only individual to win Tony Awards for best Director of a Play and Musical in the same year for ''Copenhagen'' and ''Kiss Me, Kate''. Biography Early life and career Blakemore was born in Sydney, Australia, son of Conrad Howell Blakemore and his wife, Una Mary Litchfield. He married English actress Shirley Bush. Blakemore was educated at The King's School, Sydney, and went on to study medicine at the University of Sydney. Blakemore's first job in the theatre was as press agent for Robert Morley during the Australian tour of ''Edward, My Son'', who advised him to try drama school. In 1950 he came to London, enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and trained as an actor until 1952. He made his first professional stage appearance in 1952 at the Theatre Roya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Side By Side By Sondheim
''Side by Side by Sondheim'' is a musical revue featuring the songs of Broadway and film composer Stephen Sondheim. Its title is derived from the song "Side by Side by Side" from ''Company''. History The musical had its origins when David Kernan was asked by Cleo Laine and her husband John Dankworth to put together a revue as a benefit for The Stables, a theatre they owned in Wavendon. Kernan contacted director Ned Sherrin and suggested that they do a revue of Sondheim material. Producer Cameron Mackintosh saw the benefit revue, which featured Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie, Kernan, and Sherrin as the narrator, and agreed to produce it."''Side by Side by Sondheim'' Article" Sondheim.com In the TV documentary ''Cameron Mackintosh: The Music Man'', Mackintosh admits that he never saw the benefit performance, but C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pack Of Lies
''Pack of Lies'' is a 1983 play by English writer Hugh Whitemore, itself adapted from his ''Act of Betrayal'', an episode of the BBC anthology series ''Play of the Month'' transmitted in 1971. Based on a true story, the plot centres on Bob and Barbara Jackson (in real life Bill and Ruth Search) and their teenage daughter Julie (in real life Gay Search, later a television reporter and newspaper journalist in the UK.) The Jacksons are friendly with their neighbours, Peter and Helen Kroger, until the couple are arrested and charged with espionage in 1961. It is revealed the Krogers actually are Morris and Lona Cohen, who during the 1950s and 1960s worked with fellow spy Gordon Lonsdale photographing and encoding as microdots various pieces of material which they then sent to their colleagues in Russia, as part of a Soviet espionage network known as the Portland Spy Ring that had penetrated Britain's Royal Navy. Productions The original West End production, starring Judi Dench and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Whitemore
Hugh John Whitemore (16 June 1936 – 17 July 2018) was an English playwright and screenwriter. Biography Whitemore studied for the stage at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he was taught by Peter Barkworth, then on the staff at RADA, who recognised he had the potential to make a significant contribution to the theatre, "though perhaps not as an actor." He began his writing career in British television with both original television plays and adaptations of classic works by Charles Dickens, W. Somerset Maugham, Daphne du Maurier, and Charlotte Brontë, among others, and had won a Writers' Guild of Great Britain award twice. His work for American TV includes ''Concealed Enemies'' (1984), about the Alger Hiss case, and '' The Gathering Storm'' (2002), which focused on a troubled period in the marriage of Clementine and Winston Churchill just prior to World War II. He won an Emmy Award for each script. He was also nominated for his adaptation of the Carl Bernstein/Bob Wood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noises Off
''Noises Off'' is a 1982 play by the English playwright Michael Frayn. Frayn conceived the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of ''The Two of Us'', a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind." The prototype, a short-lived one-act play called ''Exits'', was written and performed in 1977. At the request of his associate, Michael Codron, Frayn expanded this into what would become ''Noises Off''. It takes its title from the theatrical stage direction indicating sounds coming from offstage. Characters of ''Noises Off'' *Lloyd Dallas: The director of a play-within-the-play, ''Nothing On''. Temperamental, exacting and sarcastic. Involved with both Brooke and Poppy. *Dotty Otley: A middle-aged television star who is not only the top-billed star but also one of the play's principal investors. Dating the much younger Garry. *Garry Lejeune: The play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn, FRSL (; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce ''Noises Off'' and the dramas ''Copenhagen'' and ''Democracy''. His novels, such as '' Towards the End of the Morning'', '' Headlong'' and ''Spies'', have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. He has also written philosophical works, such as ''The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe'' (2006). Early life Frayn was born at Mill Hill (then in Middlesex) to Thomas Allen Frayn, an asbestos salesman from a working-class family of blacksmiths, locksmiths and servants, in which deafness was hereditary, and his wife Violet Alice (née Lawson). Violet was the daughter of a failed palliasse merchant; having studied as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music, she worked as a shop assistant and occasional clothes model at Harr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Absurd Person Singular
''Absurd Person Singular'' is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples. Each act takes place at a Christmas celebration at one of the couples' homes on successive Christmas Eves. Production history The play made its world premiere at the Library Theatre, Scarborough on 26 June 1972 and its London début at the Criterion Theatre on 4 July 1973, transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in September 1974, completing a run of 973 performances. Its official New York Broadway début was at the Music Box Theatre on 8 October 1974. It ran for 591 performances in its first run on Broadway (through March 1976). It starred Richard Kiley, Geraldine Page, Sandy Dennis, Carole Shelley, Larry Blyden, and Tony Roberts. It was revived on Broadway on 18 October 2005 at the Biltmore Theatre, for 56 performances. In 1994 James Maxwell directed a production for the Royal Exchange, Manchester with Trevor Cooper, Margo Gunn, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Season's Greetings (play)
''Season's Greetings'' is a 1980 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about four days in the life of a dysfunctional family starting on Christmas Eve, and is set in a typical English suburban house. Characters The characters seen on stage are the nine adults present in the house. All the children are off-stage characters, although a few productions have been known to use child actors. The nine adults are: * Bernard, a feeble-spirited doctor with strong views on non-violence. Every year he creates an elaborate puppet show for the children, which he fondly imagines they enjoy (though they actually hate it) * Phyllis, Bernard's lush of a wife, whom Bernard struggles to support * Neville, Phyllis's brother, always busy fiddling with anything mechanical out in his shed * Belinda, who endures a stale marriage to Neville, resorting to flapping about the house and constantly dressing the Christmas tree * Eddie, a lacklustre and lazy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bedroom Farce (play)
''Bedroom Farce'' is a 1975 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the National Theatre in 1977, transferring subsequently to the Prince of Wales Theatre. Overview ''Bedroom Farce'' is a comedy that contains a melee of events involving certain philandering characters, all occurring within similar moments of one another. Alan Ayckbourn’s clever uses of time and space makes this a very intricate and sophisticated comedy while also portraying the deteriorating and rebuilding of relationships among young couples. This play explores the differences in relationships between the younger and older generations while capitalizing on certain unlikely issues that may strain the relationships even further. Although Ayckbourn uses hints of homosexuality in this play, this doesn't seem to have a huge part in his play as a whole, but can be interpreted to have a stronger deeper meaning within the play. As the title implies, the play is an absurd and confusing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit '' Relatively Speaking'' opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include ''Absurd Person Singular'' (1975), ''The Norman Conquests'' trilogy (1973), '' Bedroom Farce'' (1975), ''Just Between Ourselves'' (1976), '' A Chorus of Disapproval'' (1984), ''Woman in Mind'' (1985), ''A Small Family Business'' (1987), '' Man of the Moment'' (1988), ''House'' & ''Garden'' (1999) and ''Private Fears in Public Places'' (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Cooney
Raymond George Alfred Cooney, OBE (born 30 May 1932) is an English playwright, actor, and director. His biggest success, '' Run for Your Wife'' (1983), ran for nine years in London's West End and is its longest-running comedy. He has had 17 of his plays performed there. Career Cooney began to act in 1946, appearing in many of the Whitehall farces of Brian Rix throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It was during this time that he co-wrote his first play, ''One For The Pot''. With Tony Hilton, he co-wrote the screenplay for the British comedy film '' What a Carve Up!'' (1961), which features Sid James and Kenneth Connor. In 1968 and 1969, Cooney adapted Richard Gordon's ''Doctor'' novels for BBC radio, as series starring Richard Briers. He also took parts in them. Cooney has also appeared on TV, (including an uncredited appearance in the ''Dial 999 (TV series)'' ' episode, 'A Mined Area', as a hold-up victim), and in several films, including a film adaptation of his successful the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
