Maydays & Trying It On: two plays

Two Plays

David Edgar

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781848427327
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788501118
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre britannique

Two plays by David Edgar, written thirty-five years apart, both exploring the theme of youth and revolution.

Maydays tells the story of the twenty-somethings who came of age in 1968 and were drawn into revolutionary politics; of defection from East to West as well as from Left to Right. It is told through a number of interlocking stories, across three continents and twenty-five years of tumultuous history.

First performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican, London, in 1983, Maydays was revived in this new version, also by the RSC, in 2018.

Trying It On is an autobiographical monologue, written to be performed by Edgar, in which the author at seventy confronts the ideals of his twenty-something self. Does he still share the beliefs which once defined him as a person and as an artist? If not, is it he that has changed, or the world itself?

Presented by Warwick Arts Centre and China Plate, Trying It On toured the UK in 2018, including performances at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Midlands Arts Centre and at the Royal Court Theatre, London – as well as at the Royal Shakespeare Company, alongside the revival of Maydays.

This edition also includes a new introduction by the author.

MAYDAYS

In memory of Jill Forbes

Maydays was first presented at the Barbican Theatre, London on 13 October 1985. This revised and updated version of the play was presented as part of the autumn 2018 Mischief Festival at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 27 September 2018. The cast was as follows:

PUGACHEV/TRELAWNEY/CHORUS	Geoffrey Beevers
WEINER/MRS GLASS/WOMAN/CHORUS	Gillian Bevan
JEREMY/SKURATOV/CHORUS	Richard Cant
CLARA/JUDY/CHORUS	Sophie Khan Levy
PHIL/KOROLENKO/CHORUS	Chris Nayak
AMANDA/ERICA/CHORUS	Lily Nichol
MARTIN/CHORUS	Mark Quartley
JAMES GRAIN/PALOCZI/CHORUS	Christopher Simpson
BRYONY/MOLLY/TANYA/CHORUS	Liyah Summers
LERMONTOV/CHORUS	Jay Taylor
KAYLA	Katherine Kotz
G	Rakesh Boury
REMIX	Ciaran Alexander Stewart

Director	Owen Horsley
Designer	Simon Wells
Lighting Designer	Claire Gerrens
Sound Designer	Steven Atkinson
Movement Director	Polly Bennett
Company Voice and Text Work	Kate Godfrey
Assistant Director	Rosa Crompton
Casting Director	Matthew Dewsbury
Dramaturg	Pippa Hill
Production Manager	Julian Cree
Costume Supervisor	Samantha Pickering
Props Supervisor	Charlotte King
Company Stage Manager	Julia Wade
Assistant Stage Manager	PK Thummukgool
Producer	Claire Birch
Crew	Dan Avery Samantha Gray Alex Hughes Jon Lawrence Laura O’Driscoll Matty Sanders

Characters

THE CHORUS

PART ONE:

England and America: 1945–1975

JEREMY CROWTHER

PAVEL LERMONTOV

MARTIN GLASS

JAMES GRAIN

PHIL

AMANDA

BRYONY

JUDY

PHYLLIS WEINER

POLICEMAN

DETECTIVE

PAPERSELLERS

TWO LIBERTARIANS

MRS GLASS

SMOKER

MOLLY

END OF PART ONE:

Glienicke Bridge: 1978

KGB OFFICER

AMBASSADOR

SVETLANA DANILOVA

MIKLOS PALOCZI

PART TWO:

The Eastern Bloc: 1956–1971

CLARA IVANOVNA

ERICA MOLNAR

OLD WOMAN

SOVIET SOLDIERS

SOVIET SERGEANT

YOUNG SOLDIER

HUNGARIAN PRISONERS

PUGACHEV

SKURATOV

GUARDS

KOROLENKO

PRISONER

OFFICER

DOCTOR

CHIEF OFFICER

PART THREE:

England: 1978–1984

REPORTERS

CAMERAMEN

OFFICIAL (HEATHROW)

SIR HUGH TRELAWNEY

WAITER

TANYA

Suggested Doubling

For a cast of ten:

JEREMY, PARTYGOER, SERGEANT, SKURATOV, OFFICER

MARTIN, YOUNG SOLDIER

JAMES, PALOCZI

AMANDA, ERICA

CLARA, JUDY, 6TH PAPERSELLER, LIBERTARIAN, SVETLANA

PHIL, 1ST PAPERSELLER, SMOKER, 1ST SOLDIER, KOROLENKO, WAITER

BRYONY, 4TH PAPERSELLER, LIBERTARIAN, MOLLY, 2ND SOLDIER, TANYA

PHYLLIS WEINER, 3RD PAPERSELLER, MRS GLASS, PARTYGOER, OLD WOMAN, KGB OFFICER, DOCTOR

LERMONTOV, 2ND PAPERSELLER

DETECTIVE, 5TH PAPERSELLER, PARTYGOER, AMBASSADOR, PUGACHEV, CHIEF OFFICER, TRELAWNEY

Languages

Although people speak in Russian and Hungarian, all languages are rendered in English. When Lermontov is speaking English, he does so with a Russian accent. Palozci speaks Russian well enough not to need an accent; his English is good too, but accented. When Lermontov and Paloczi speak to each other, without wishing others to hear, they speak in Russian, rendered as accentless English.

On a couple of occasions, Lermontov asks Paloczi for an English word. So, when he is groping for the word ‘novelty’, we assume that the phrase ‘new thing’ is, as it were, the Russian words for ‘novelty’.

Notation

A forward slash (/) indicates when the next speaker begins speaking.

May Days

5 May 1818	Karl Marx is born.
15 May 1848	A Communist rising in Paris is quickly overthrown.
28 May 1871	The Paris Commune falls after fifteen months in power.
1 May 1886	A Chicago strike for the eight-hour day leads to the founding of the international May Day workers’ festival.
4 May 1919	The Bavarian Soviet is defeated after two weeks in power.
4 May 1926	The nine-day British General Strike begins.
3 May 1936	A left-wing popular front government is elected in France.
3 May 1937	Communists suppress anarchist revolutionaries in Barcelona.
2 May 1945	Berlin falls to the Red Army.
7 May 1954	The French are defeated by Communist Vietnamese forces at Dien Bien Phu.
10 May 1968	The Parisian ‘Night of the Barricades’ leads to a general strike by ten million workers.
1 May 1973	Two million British workers strike against anti-union legislation.
5 May 1982	Attempts to evict the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common fail.

Part One

The thing that attracted me, even infatuated me, about the Communist movement was the feeling, however illusory, of being close to the helm of history… There was at the time, and with us youngsters in particular, an altogether idealist illusion that we were inaugurating a human era, an era where every man – every man – would be neither outside history nor under the heel of history, but would direct and create it himself…

Milan Kundera, The Joke, 1967

I allowed myself to be forced into the position of feeling guilty not only about my own indecisions, but about the very virtues of love and pity and a passion for personal freedom which had brought me close to Communism. The Communists told me that these feelings were ‘bourgeois’. The Communist, having joined the Party, has to castrate himself of the reasons which made him one.

Stephen Spender, The God that Failed, 1950

We shall not enter the kingdom of socialism in white gloves on a polished floor.

Leon Trotsky, December 1917

Scene One

May Day 1945. England. Enter a young man, JEREMY CROWTHER, from the Midlands. He has a soapbox and a red flag. He climbs on the soapbox.

The CHORUS consists of actors in the present day.

CHORUS. May Day.

The traditional spring festival.

The universal distress call.

The International Workers’ Day.

Leicester, 1945.

JEREMY. Friends. This May Day of all May Days we celebrate the achievements of the international working class.

CHORUS. Jeremy.

Seventeen.

JEREMY. Fascism has been defeated! The war is won!

CHORUS. The next day, the victorious Soviet Army will raise the Red Flag over the Reichstag in Berlin.

JEREMY. At last we face a future of peace and progress!

CHORUS. Three months later, the Labour Party will win a landslide victory in the British General Election.

JEREMY. An end to colonialism!

CHORUS. Two years later, India will win independence from Britain.

JEREMY. No return to the poverty and mise...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Maydays
• Trying It On
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information