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Mixed Doubles (play)
''Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage'' (London: Methuen, 1970) is a programme consisting of a series of eight short plays or revue sketches, each with two characters, composed by various English playwrights. It was first performed on 6 February 1969 in the Hampstead Theatre Club with the title, '' We Who Are About To...''. The programme was then presented as ''Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage'' at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 9 April 1969. The eight dramatic sketches, each portraying marriage at a different stage of life, are linked together by a series of anti-authoritarian monologues written by George Melly. Taken together, the programme presents an acidly humorous image of marriage from the moment of blessing until the silver wedding anniversary. In the course of the programme, many people appear on stage in various professional capacities. The characters in ''Mixed Doubles'' appear to be plagued by everyday trivialities, their pasts, their jobs, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clive Dunn
Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn (9 January 19206 November 2012) was an English actor. Although he was only 48 and one of the youngest cast members, he was cast in a role many years his senior, as the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in the BBC sitcom ''Dad's Army,'' which ran for nine series and 80 episodes between 1968 and 1977.Clive Dunn Telegraph (7 November 2012). Retrieved on 4 February 2013. Dunn started his acting career in 1935, but this was interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served as a trooper in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. In 1941 the regiment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheila Hancock
Dame Sheila Cameron Hancock (born 22 February 1933) is an English actress, singer, and author. Hancock trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before starting her career in repertory theatre. Hancock went on to perform in plays and musicals in London, and her Broadway debut in ''Entertaining Mr Sloane'' (1966) earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Lead Actress in Play. Hancock won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical for her role in ''Cabaret'' (2007) and was nominated at the Laurence Olivier Awards five other times for her work in ''Annie'' (1978), ''Sweeney Todd'' (1980), ''The Winter's Tale'' (1982), ''Prin'' (1989) and ''Sister Act'' (2010). Early life Sheila Cameron Hancock was born in Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, the daughter of Enrico Cameron Hancock and Ivy Louise (née Woodward). Enrico Hancock was the son of a Thomas Cook employee, and grew up in Milan. He worked for Vickers, and was previously a publican and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Rodgers
Anthony "Anton" Rodgers (10 January 1933 – 1 December 2007) was an English actor and occasional director. He performed on stage, in film, in television dramas and sitcoms. He starred in several sitcoms, including ''Fresh Fields'' (ITV, 1984–86), its sequel '' French Fields'' (ITV, 1989–91), and ''May to December'' (BBC, 1989–94). Early life and career Rodgers was born in Ealing, the son of William Robert Rodgers and Leonore Victoria (née Wood).Who's Who in the Theatre: A Biographical Record of the contemporary stage, seventeenth edition, ed. Ian Herbert, Gale Research Co., 1981, p. 582 His early education was at Westminster City School. The family were evacuated to Wisbech, Isle of Ely during the war, where his father worked for Balding and Mansell, printers of ration books, permits and passes; Rodgers was sometimes erroneously reported as having been born in Wisbech. Later he was educated at the Italia Conti Academy and LAMDA. He appeared on stage from the age o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Doré
Alexander Joseph Doré (28 August 1923 – 16 April 2002) was a British actor, director and screenwriter. He was best known for his appearance as the First Spy in the 1968 film ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.''Doré on the He also co-starred in the 1968 TV series '''' (as villain Karl Von Brauner) as well as playing Bertram Bright in '''' (1970-1972). Doré's other screen appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vivien Merchant
Ada Brand Thomson (22 July 1929 – 3 October 1982), known professionally as Vivien Merchant, was an English actress. She began her career in 1942, and became known for dramatic roles on stage and in films. In 1956 she married the playwright Harold Pinter and performed in many of his plays. Merchant achieved considerable success from the 1950s to the 1970s, winning the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress in 1964. For her role in the film ''Alfie'' (1966), she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. In 1967, she starred in the Broadway production of Pinter's ''The Homecoming'', and received a Tony Award nomination. Her other films included ''Accident'' (1967), ''The Offence'' (1972), ''Frenzy'' (1972), ''The Homecoming'' (1973), and ''The Maids'' (1975). Suffering from depression and alcoholism as her marriage ended, she died in 1982, two years after her divorce. Career Merchant took her stage name as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigel Stock (actor)
Nigel Stock (21 September 1919 - 23 June 1986) was a British actor who played character roles in many films and television dramas. He was perhaps best known for his stint as Dr Watson in TV adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, for his supporting roles as a solidly reliable English soldier or bureaucrat in several war and historical film dramas, and for playing the title role in ''Owen, M.D.''. Early life Stock was born in Malta, the son of an Army captain. He grew up in India before attending St Paul's School, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he earned the Leverhulme Exhibition, Northcliffe Scholarship, and the Principal's Medal. Military service Stock served in the Second World War with the London Irish Rifles and the Assam Regiment of the Indian Army in Burma, China and Kohima. He was honourably discharged with the rank of Major, having twice been mentioned in dispatches. Acting He made his stage debut in 1931, and during his career achieved n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Campton
David Campton (2 May 1924 – 9 September 2006) was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years. "He was one of the first British dramatists to write in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd"."David Campton, Playwright", ''Samuel French London''. Biography Campton was born in Leicester, in 1924. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys. From 1942 to 1945, he served in the RAF, and then, for another year, in the Fleet Air Arm. He worked as a clerk in the City of Leicester Department of Education until 1949 and then moved to the East Midlands Gas Board, where he worked until 1956. Campton worked with Stephen Joseph in developing theatre in the round in the United Kingdom, and played a major role in establishing theatre-in-the-rounds in both Scarborough, North Yorkshire (now in the well-known Stephen Joseph Theatre, a converted 1930s Odeon cinema) and Staffordshire in the English West Midlands. He worked as writer, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Griffith Bowen
John Griffith Bowen (5 November 1924 – 18 April 2019) was a British playwright and novelist. Early life John Bowen was born in Calcutta, India, to Ethel (née Cook) and Hugh Bowen; his father was the manager of the Shalimar Print Works in Gobariah. John Bowen's grandfather was an Inspector of Police in Calcutta. At the age of five and a half he was placed on a boat in Bombay and sent back to Britain where he was brought up by his uncle Donald and aunt Dolly in Whitehaven. Bowen was sent to board at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Crediton in Devon, where he developed an interest in literature and drama. In 1939, his mother returned to England with her three younger children, Patricia (b. 1926) and twins Daphne and David (b. 1930), and rented a house near Crediton. In 1940, having read about the bombing of Britain in ''The Times of India'', Bowen's father sent a cable to his wife saying "Bring the children out", though no bombs had fallen in or near Crediton. The whole family ... [...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] |
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon CBE, FRSL (born Franklin Birkinshaw; 22 September 1931 – 4 January 2023) was an English author, essayist and playwright. Over the course of her 55-year writing career, she published 31 novels, including ''Puffball'' (1980), '' The Cloning of Joanna May'' (1989), '' Wicked Women'' (1995)'' and The Bulgari Connection'' (2000), but was most well-known as the writer of ''The Life and Loves of a She-Devil'' (1983) which was televised by the BBC in 1986. Married three times and with four children, Weldon was a self-declared feminist. Her work features what she described as "overweight, plain women". She said there were many reasons why she became a feminist, including the "appalling" lack of equal opportunities and the myth that women were supported by male relatives. Early life Weldon was born Franklin Birkinshaw to a literary family in Birmingham, England, on 22 September 1931. Her maternal grandfather, Edgar Jepson (1863–1938), her uncle Selwyn Jepson and her m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
