|
Murray Melvin
Murray Melvin (born 10 August 1932) is an English actor. He is best known for his acting work with Joan Littlewood, Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick. He is the author of two books: ''The Art of Theatre Workshop'' (2006) and ''The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building'' (2009). Early years Melvin was born on 10 August 1932 in St. Pancras, London, the son of Hugh Victor Melvin and Maisie Winifred, née Driscoll. Melvin left his north London secondary school at the age of fourteen unable to master fractions but as head prefect, a qualification he says he gained by always having clean fingernails and well-combed hair. He started work as an office boy for a firm of travel agents off Oxford Street. To help channel the energies of the young after the disturbing times of the war, his parents had helped to found a youth club in Hampstead, financed by the Co-operative Society of which they were longstanding members. A drama section formed with Melvin its most enthusiastic participant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Pancras, London
St Pancras () is a district in north London. It was originally a medieval ancient parish and subsequently became a metropolitan borough. The metropolitan borough then merged with neighbouring boroughs and the area it covered now forms around half of the modern London Borough of Camden. The area of the parish and borough includes the sub-districts of Camden Town, Kentish Town, Gospel Oak, Somers Town, King's Cross, Chalk Farm, Dartmouth Park, the core area of Fitzrovia and a part of Highgate. History St Pancras Old Church St Pancras Old Church lies on Pancras Road, Somers Town, behind St Pancras railway station. Until the 19th century it stood on a knoll on the eastern bank of the now buried River Fleet. The church, dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Pancras, gave its name to the St Pancras district, which originated as the parish served by the church. The church is reputed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England; however, as is so often with old c ... [...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] |
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays ''Every Man in His Humour'' (1598), '' Volpone, or The Fox'' (c. 1606), '' The Alchemist'' (1610) and '' Bartholomew Fair'' (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I." Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642)."Ben Jonson", ''Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge'', volume 10, p. 388. His ancestor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Saroyan
William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''The Human Comedy''. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, '' The Human Comedy.'' Saroyan is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Saroyan wrote extensively about the Armenian immigrant life in California. Many of his stories and plays are set in his native Fresno. Some of his best-known works are ''The Time of Your Life'', ''My Name Is Aram'' and '' My Heart's in the Highlands''. His two collections of short stories from the 1930s, ''Inhale Exhale'' (1936) and ''The Daring Young Man On the Flying Trapeze'' (1941) are regarded as among his major achievements and essential documents of the cultural history of the period on the American West Coast. He has been described in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cannes Film Festival Award For Best Actor
The Best Actor Award (french: Prix d'interprétation masculine) is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival since 1946. It is given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance and chosen by the jury from the films in official competition slate at the festival. At the 1st Cannes Film Festival held in 1946, Ray Milland was the first winner of this award for his performance in '' The Lost Weekend'', and Song Kang-ho is the most recent winner in this category for his role in ''Broker'' at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in 2022. History The award was first presented in 1946. The prize was not awarded on five occasions (1947, 1953–54, 1956, and 1960). The festival was not held at all in 1948, 1950, and 2020. In 1968, no awards were given as the festival was called off mid-way due to the May 1968 events in France. On four occasions, the jury has awarded multiple men (more than 2) the prize for one film. The four films were ''A Big Family'' (1955), ''Compuls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director and producer whose career spanned five decades. In 1964, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film ''Tom Jones (1963 film), Tom Jones''. Early life Richardson was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire, Shipley, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans (Campion) and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist. He was head girl and head boy, Head Boy at Ashville College, Harrogate and attended Wadham College, University of Oxford. His Oxford contemporaries included Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher, Kenneth Tynan, Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. He had the unprecedented distinction of being the President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club (the ETC), in addition to being the theatre critic for the university magazine ''Isis magazine, Isis''. Those he cast in his student productions included Shirley William ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Taste Of Honey (film)
''A Taste of Honey'' is a 1961 British film adaptation of the 1958 play of the same name by Shelagh Delaney. Delaney wrote the screenplay with director Tony Richardson, who had directed the play on the stage. It is an exemplar of a gritty genre of British film that has come to be called kitchen sink realism. The film opened on 15 September 1961 at the Leicester Square Theatre in London's West End. Plot The film starts with girls playing a game of netball in a school playground. Jo and her mother then move across Manchester on a bus. The story is set in a run-down, post-industrial area of Salford. Jo (Rita Tushingham) is a 17-year-old schoolgirl with a self-centred, promiscuous, alcoholic mother, Helen (Dora Bryan). The two of them frequently argue, and rarely stay in one home for long, since the mother runs up rent arrears, and is either evicted, or elects to abandon the property without settling any debts. As they move into a shabby new flat, a young black sailor called Ji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre at Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building. It has a seating capacity of 588. Building the theatre In 1870, the caterers Spiers and Pond began development of the site of the White Bear, a seventeenth-century posting inn. The inn was located on sloping ground stretching between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly Circus, known as Regent Circus. A competition was held for the design of a concert hall complex, with Thomas Verity winning out of 15 entries. He was commissioned to design a large restaurant, dining rooms, ballroom, and galleried concert hall in the basement. The frontage, which was the façade of the restaurant, showed a French Renaissance influence using Portland stone. After the building work began, it was decided to change the concert hall into a theatre. The composers' names, which line the tiled staircases, were retained and can still be seen. The redesign placed the large Criterio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by actor/manager Charles Wyndham (the other is the Criterion Theatre). Located on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, it was designed c.1898 by W. G. R. Sprague, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916. It was designed to seat 759 patrons on three levels; later refurbishment increased this to four seating levels. The theatre was Grade II* listed by English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ... in September 1960. History Wyndham had always dreamed of building a theatre of his own, and through the admiration of a patron and the financial confidence of friends, he was able to realise his dream. Wyndham's Theatre opened on 16 November 1899, in the presence of the Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hostage (play)
''The Hostage'' is a 1958 English-language play, with songs, by Irish playwright Brendan Behan. It consists on a much longer text, with songs, expanded from a one-act Irish language play ''An Giall'' also by Behan. Plot ''The Hostage'' depicts the events leading up to the planned execution of an 18-year-old IRA member in a Belfast jail, accused of killing a Royal Ulster Constabulary policeman. Like the protagonist of ''The Quare Fellow'', the audience never sees him. The action of the play is set in a very odd house of ill-repute on Nelson Street, Dublin, owned by a former IRA commandant. The hostage of the title is Leslie Williams, a young and innocent Cockney British Army soldier taken hostage at the border with Northern Ireland and held in the brothel, brought among the vibrant but desperately unorthodox combination of prostitutes, revolutionaries and general low characters inhabiting the place. During the course of the play, a love story develops between Leslie and Teresa, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( ; ga, Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican activist who wrote in both English and Irish. He was named by Irish Central as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time. An Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family becoming a member of the IRA's youth organization Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. There was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in his home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. At age 16, Behan joined the IRA, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and imprisonment in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Taste Of Honey
''A Taste of Honey'' is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 19. It was intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalise British theatre and address social issues that she thought were not being presented. The play was produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, a socialist fringe theatre in London, on 27 May 1958. The production then transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End on 10 February 1959. The play was adapted into an award winning film of the same title in 1961 with an entirely different cast except for Murray Melvin as Geoff. ''A Taste of Honey'' is set in Salford in North West England in the 1950s. It tells the story of Jo, a seventeen-year-old working class girl, and her mother, Helen, who is presented as crude and sexually indiscriminate. Helen leaves Jo alone in their new flat after she begins a relationship with Peter, a rich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
