HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0028 3/31/00 "NEW HARDY MUSICAL". =============================================== Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 13:22:05 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: After the Fair - Thomas Hardy adaptation - Special Offer Greetings all! I am forwarding the accompanying message from Justin Young: > >Dear Professor Morgan. > >I have discovered via the internet that you are the President of the Thomas >Hardy Association and I thought I would mail you to let you know about a >new show that we are producing at the King's Head here in London.The show >is called After the Fair and is based on On the Western Circuit from Life's >Little Ironies. There is of course an earlier film and play version called >The Day After the Fair which starred Deborah Kerr. I have attached a file >which should tell you all you need to know, including the fact that we >would like to offer all members of The Thomas Hardy Society (and the Thomas >Hardy Assocation) 2 tickets for the price of one. If you have an e-mail >list of UK members that you could forward the attachment to, that would be >terrific. > >With many thanks > >Yours faithfully > >Justin Young >Production Manager > > Attachment converted: Emma:After the Fair.doc (WDBN/MSWD) (000234F2) After the Fair – Thomas Hardy adaptation in London After the Fair is a new musical which enjoyed a successful run off-Broadway last year. Based on a Thomas Hardy short story and set at the turn of the century, After the Fair is a humorous and touching story of love and desire in which the lives of a young maid and her mistress are turned upside down when they both fall in love with a handsome barrister from London. The cast consists of Nicola Dewdney, whose stage credits include the Award-winning Anything Goes and Crazy for You; Terrence Hardiman, well-known for his TV role in The Demon Headmaster; Robert Irons from Les Miserables; and Rebecca Lock who starred in the Award-winning Martin Guerre. Performances are Tuesday – Saturday at 8.00pm and Saturday and Sunday at 3.30pm. The show is running until 22 April. The King’s Head Theatre is at 115 Upper Street, London, N1, five minutes walk from Angel tube. Special Offer: 2 tickets-for-the-price-of-1 for any member of The Thomas Hardy Society Box Office: 0171 226 1916 (Please quote the offer when booking.) Review – The Times – 31/3/00 After the Fair at the King’s Head – Jeremy Kingston After the rough experience of playing Angel Clare in last year’s musical version of Tess of the D’Urbevilles, you might think twice before embarking on another musical Hardy. Robert Irons is evidently made of sterner stuff, and here he is performing the young male lead in a show derived from one of the short stories collected in Hardy’s Life’s Little Ironies. The American creative team has made an infinitely better job of it than the Tess lot. The tight plot provides a suitable framework, and the small cast (only four players) makes it an admirable choice for a chamber musical. On a stage as vast as that of the Savoy, some producers would have demanded an opening number set in the fairground; roundabouts would whirl about at the speed of light, the cast would come dancing down the helter-skelter and it would all be utterly dire. Instead of this garish banality, Stephen Cole (book and lyrics) and Matthew Ward (music) simply have Mr and Mrs Harnham becoming aware, from their Melchester sitting room, that the annual fair has come to town. The maid, Anna, joins their song and she, her master and mistress, sing The World at my Window, which neatly introduces us to everything we need to know about a wife much younger than her husband, and two women daydreaming of romantic happiness. At the fair Anna (Rebecca Lock) meets a dashing young London lawyer (Irons) and falls in love. He sends her a letter, and because she can neither read nor write, her mistress replies for her. The lawyer is amazed at the unsuspected depths in a girl he regarded merely as a passing fancy. He falls in love with her letters; her mistress falls in love with his letters; and the outcome isn’t likely to be happy ever after. What is particularly satisfying about the show is the lyrical wit. When Terrence Hardiman’s Mr Harnham remembers his country wedding, he does so with four internal assonances: “witnessed by my sister and some cows/ And the minister administered the vows.” The music includes, unusually, a number where three voices sing exactly the same words to exactly the same melody. Odd and attractive. Nicola Dewdney (Mrs Harnham) has to strain for the highest notes, and Cole could have reduced the amount of niceness in the character he gives her. But he and Ward have a flair for sensing when an event calls for a song, and then providing it, light, ardent, or angry, a range that allows all four of the cast to show their characters deepening and darkening through experience. Raymond Wright’s direction moves pleasingly between the comedy and the pain. ==========