PLAYS
Fall of the House of Framharper
An absurdist comedy which defies description, written and performed at Lancing College, Sussex.
The Gibbet
A melodrama. A young farmer murders his neighbour who was blackmailing him. Despite the sympathetic investigation of an ex-commissioner of police from Hungerford, who is a good friend of his wife, justice must be done, and all paths lead to the gibbet on Inkpen Beacon where he will be hung as an example to the world. Nobody is there to save him, least of all the Commissioner.
Death and the Dreamer (a play for voices)
A short play designed for radio, in which a Dreamer has an encounter with Death, and learns many lessons as a result.
The Secret
An experimental play with acts played simultaneously on two stages, one above the other. Keith possesses a secret which will free his fellow workers from slavery or bring about his own death.
The King’s Angel
A group of ten short plays, in the manner of medieval mystery plays, only five of which are now complete:-
Charles the Eighth, the teenage king of France, believes he has a mission on this earth, to lead a bloodless crusade to restore Christianity to Constantinople and Jerusalem. He is offered the kingdom of Naples as a first step, but he has to lay claim to it by conquering Italy. One of his generals boasts that he can take any Italian hill town and will prove it by leading a group of men and climbing the impregnable natural fortress of Mont Aiguille in Southern France. A young goatherd who is a brilliant climber attempts the ascent alongside him, without the aid of ropes or ladders, and reaches the summit first. Unable to admit defeat, the general comes with a story that he and his men encountered all sorts of dragons and monsters on the plateau on top of the mountain, and were aided in their fight by an angel who flew down from heaven. He forces the goatherd to take on the role of this angel, and offers him as a present to the gullible king. In the battles to come in which Italy is won and lost, the young king and his captive angel become close friends.
The Causeway
During the Cold War, the famous writer and dissident, Konstanty (Kot) Wlassek, has fled from his native Poland and is living in exile with his family on a small island off the North of England, joined to the mainland at high tide by a causeway. A young man, Jan, an admirer of his writing, comes to visit him, and is made welcome. He tells Wlassek that he should not sit on his hands in England but return to Poland, where he is hugely popular with the young people, and where his voice would be an inspiration for them to overthrow the yoke of Communism. Kot is suspicious of this young man, but his daughter Barbara falls head over heels in love with him, and joins her voice to his. His wife does not want Konstanty to return to Poland, and fears a trap. Konstanty confronts the young man, and forces him to admit that he was working for the Polish authorities as an agent provocateur, to bring him back to Poland where they can imprison him. The young man protests that his love for Konstanty’s daughter has changed his perception of things, and that he is now totally on their side. His admiration for Konstanty’s writing had always been genuine. But Konstanty remains furious and demands that he open the case he brought with him, in which he finds a gun. Jan tries to get rid of the gun, but Konstanty, a professed pacifist, calls him an assassin, and a fight ensues in which the gun goes off and Jan is killed. Whether or not he knew the gun was loaded, his work as a spy is done, because Konstanty is disgraced, his daughter devastated, and his writing no longer respected in his native land.
Kurtz
A dramatic monologue in which the character from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” relates the story of his descent from the darling of society into a monstrous lord of hell, in the jungles of the Congo.
The Deluge
A play based on the “Deluge at Norderney” by Karen Blixen, in which four characters keep up their spirits by telling stories while waiting for rescue in the shaky attic of an old barn during a flood. They enact each other’s stories as audience and performers, demonstrating the power of story-telling and the power of the theatre to entrance and provide life.
Green Grass Falls
A successful young doctor allows herself to be drawn into a lesbian affair with a provocative young American, who has also seduced her husband and wants to take her place. They visit Green Grass Falls, a waterfall where the girl attempts to murder her by pushing her over the edge. She survives, but with loss of memory which only slowly comes back when in hospital. When she returns to the outside world she discovers the young girl has been using her identity and has taken over her life. The two encounter each other again in a meeting of love and hate, in which it seems inevitable that one must die.