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MARTIN WESLEY-SMITH (1945 - ) |
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Nationality: Australian Email: Click here to contact Website: n/a |
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Literary Agent: Australian Music Centre |
Please send me a biography and information about this Playwright
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Plays by Martin Wesley-Smith |
Boojum! Nonsense, Truth, and Lewis Carroll | ||
| 1st Produced: | Scott Theatre, Adelaide | 10 Mar 1986 | ||||
Company: | South Australian Opera Company | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | VAST-010-2 | |||
| Music: | Studio recording: Vox Australia (VAST 010 2) 1977 | doollee no | #61944 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Musical | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 10 | Female | 5 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | Written by Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith; music by Martin Wesley-Smth; lyrics by Peter Wesley-Smith. Boojum! was commissioned by the Adelaide Festival Inc with financial assistance from the Literature and Music Boards of the Australia Council. Originally a music theatre piece, it was first performed - amidst controversy, and before Queen Elizabeth II - at the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts. Rewritten in 1988, it became a no-nonsense choral nonsense piece designed to be presented in concert with or without theatrical trappings. Productions of this version have been mounted in La Jola, Pasadena, and several Australian cities. Boojum! was presented in its full theatrical manifestation in Chicago in 2010, by Chicago Opera Vanguard and Caffeine Theatre in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Affairs. This was a magnificent production and it was extravagantly reviewed. | |||||
| A set of White chess pieces galumphantly hunts for a Snark, even though they've been warned that if their quarry turns out to be a Boojum then they will "softly and suddenly vanish away". Indeed the Baker (a White Knight) already has, but our heroic crew, undeterred, recruits a new one - the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - and ploughs on. With Lewis Carroll (Dodgson's alter-ego) and Alice personning HQ, out Hunt moves inexorably towards its fateful conclusion, where we discover, in the end, that Nothing is quite what it seems & | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Noonday Gun | ||
| 1st Produced: | Fringe Club Theatre, Hong Kong | 1986 | ||||
Company: | Fringe Club | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #98850 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Musical | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 2 | Female | 2 | ||
Parts other: | 1 m | |||||
Notes: | Book and lyrics by Peter Wesley-Smith, music by Martin Wesley-Smith. Originally a short piece, the current version, which has not been produced, is more substantial and probably takes up at least one hour. Although set in Hong Kong in 1930, when Noel Coward visited after writing "Private Lives" in Shanghai, it looks to the future when Hong Kong is returned to China. Throughout, the script is informed by the life and work of Noel Coward as it gently satirises the colonial British. | |||||
Synopsis: | Noel Coward is staying at the Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong, in 1930 where he meets Clara Worthington, an aspiring actress, and her pushy mother. They endure a trip to a typhoon shelter, meet the Governor of the colony, and attend Coward's ceremonial firing of the noonday gun. Meanwhile Mrs Worthington's worst fears are realized when Clara fails her "audition" and falls in love with the Governor's Chinese aide-de-camp. | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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