Martine

Jean-Jacques Bernard, John Fowles

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783196432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre européen

The Great War is over. It is the summer of 1920, in rural France. By a dusty road, a girl is sitting under the shade of an apple tree. She sees someone walking towards her. He is a young man, just back from fighting in Syria. He joins her under the tree, and a tragic love story begins. Often compared to Chekhov, and much admired by Harold Pinter, Jean-Jacques Bernard creates a unique emotional landscape of beauty and longing, desire and disappointment. Martine was written in 1922 and John Fowles wrote this translation for a revival at the National Theatre in 1985.

Primavera in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre presents

MARTINE

by Jean-Jacques Bernard
Translated by John Fowles

FINBOROUGH | THEATRE

First performed by the Compagnons de la Chimère at the Théâtre des Mathurins, Paris: 9 May 1922.
First performed in the UK at the Gate Theatre Studio: 4 December 1929.
This translation first performed at the National Theatre: 20 April 1985.
First performed at the Finborough Theatre: Tuesday 22 April 2014.

MARTINE

by Jean-Jacques Bernard

Translated by John Fowles

Cast in order of appearance

Martine	Hannah Murray
Julien	Barnaby Sax
Alfred	Chris Porter
Madame Mervan	Susan Penhaligon
Jeanne	Leila Crerar

The action takes place in and around the village of Grandchin, not far from Paris, during 1920 and 1921.

Scene I – The road from Granchin to Bateux, July 1920
Scene II – Madame Mervan’s house, August 1920
Scene III – The road from Grandchin to Bateux, October 1920
Scene IV – Madame Mervan’s house, December 1920
Scene V – Alfred’s house, December 1921

The performance lasts approximately ninety minutes.

There will be no interval.

Director	Tom Littler
Set Designer	Cherry Truluck
Lighting Designer	Tim Mascall
Costume Designer	Emily Stuart
Sound Designer and Composer	Max Pappenheim
Stage Manager	Maud Dromgoole
Assistant Stage Manager	Lauren Tata
Assistant Director	Philippa Douglas
Design Assistant	Holly Henshaw
Assistant Scenic Artist	Caitlin Lane
Costume Design Assistant	Katherine Chan
Dialect Coach	Nick Trumble
Casting Director	Alice Krijgsman
Press Representation	David Burns
General Manager	Grace Wessels for Primavera
Producer	Tom Littler for Primavera

Our patrons are respectfully reminded that, in this intimate theatre, any noise such as rustling programmes, talking or the ringing of mobile phones may distract the actors and your fellow audience-members.

We regret there is no admittance or re-admittance to the auditorium whilst the performance is in progress.

Leila Crerar | Jeanne
Trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Theatre includes Macbeth (Perth Theatre and Tron Theatre, Glasgow), Prophesy (Site Specific for Baz Productions), Odyssey (The Factory at the Bristol Old Vic), The Merchant of Venice (Creation Theatre Company), Decade (Headlong), Hamlet (The Factory at the Rose Theatre, Kingston), We Love You City (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry), We Are One (Apollo Theatre), The Seagull (Factory at the Hampstead Theatre), Those Little Brown Backed Books (Arcola Theatre), Relatively Speaking, Rock ‘n’ Roll (Library Theatre, Manchester), Othello (Frantic Assembly), Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida (Clwyd Theatr Cymru), Sit and Shiver (Hackney Empire), Be My Baby (Dukes Theatre, Lancaster) and Emma (Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke).
Film includes Confession, Mecca 3, Tales from Pleasure Beach, and Two Way Journey.
Television includes EastEnders, Casualty, Torchwood, Doctors, and Belonging (three series).

Hannah Murray | Martine
Read English at Cambridge University.
Theatre includes That Face (Duke of York’s Theatre).
Television includes Skins: Pure, Game of Thrones, Skins for which she received a Monte-Carlo Television Festival Golden Nymph Award nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series. Film includes Suburbs, Lily and Kat, God Help the Girl (Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Award), The Numbers Station, Dark Shadows, Womb and Chatroom.

Susan Penhaligon | Madame Mervan
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Hindle Wakes.
Trained at Webber Douglas.
Theatre includes The Real Thing (Strand Theatre), Three Sisters (Albery Theatre), The Mysterious Mr Love and The Maintenance Man (Harold Pinter Theatre) and Dangerous Corner (Whitehall Theatre and UK tour), Of Mice and Men (Mermaid Theatre), Having a Ball, Bedroom Farce, The Constant Wife, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Death Trap, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Agatha Christie’s Verdict and The Madness of George III (UK Tours), The Complacent Lover, A Doll’s House; Time and the Conways, Lower Depths and The Cherry Orchard (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), Broken Glass (West Yorkshire Playhouse), the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (Jermyn Street Theatre) and Misery (King’s Head Theatre). Film includes leading roles in Top Dog, The Uncanny, The Confessional, The Land that Time Forgot, No Sex Please We’re British, Leopard in the Snow, Nasty Habits, Patrick, Soldier of the Queen, Private Road and two short films, Citizen versus Kane and Say You Love Me.
Television includes Upstairs Downstairs, Tales of the Unexpected, Bergerac, Remmington Steele, Casualty, Inspector Wycliffe and Doctor Who. She played Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew for the BBC’s Shakespeare season and Prue in A Bouquet of Barbed Wire. Other leading parts were in Fay Weldon’s Heart of the Country and Stan Barstow’s A Kind of Loving. She played Lucy in Dracula for the BBC and Judi Dench’s sister Helen in four series of the award winning sitcom A Fine Romance. She played the regular role of Jean Hope in Emmerdale for a year. Recently she has appeared in episodes of Casualty and Doctors.
Susan has published her first novel, For the Love of Angel (Truran Books), a story set in Cornwall in the 1880s.

Chris Porter | Alfred
Trained at LAMDA.
Theatre includes Othello (Guildford Shakespeare Company), Joking Apart (UK Tour), What the Dickens (UK Tour), Aladdin (Creation Theatre Company), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Guildford Shakespeare Company), Friend or Foe (Scamp and Watford Palace), The Hypochondriac (Liverpool Playhouse and English Touring Theatre), Victory (Arcola Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (Red Shift), Hard Times (Compass), Onysos the Wild (Theatre503 and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh), Tartuffe (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Globe Theatre, Warsaw), Angels Among The Trees (Nottingham Playhouse), The Legend of King Arthur and Bartleby (Red Shift), Saints Day and The Road to Ruin (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), The Art of Success (Arcola Theatre), The Winter’s Tale and The Maid’s Tragedy (Shakespeare’s Globe), The Dwarfs, The Local Stigmatic and Lakeboat (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and Assembly Rooms).
Film includes The Winslow Boy.
Television includes Bad Girls, Footballers’ Wives, The Bill, Nail Bomber and The Genius of Mozart.
Radio includes The Wild Asses Skin and Heart Transplant.

Barnaby Sax | Julien
Trained at Oxford School of Drama and the National Youth Theatre.
Theatre includes Laughton (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough), Pride and Prejudice (Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park), Tom, Dick and Harry (Old Red Lion Theatre), Antony and Cleopatra (Chichester Festival Theatre) and Two Bean Bags (Soho Theatre).

Jean-Jacques Bernard | Playwright
Jean-Jacques Bernard was born in 1888, the son of leading French dramatist Tristan Bernard. Bernard belonged to a group of artists called La Chimère, who attacked the prevailing melodramatic theatre and pioneered drama that was domestic in action and naturalistic in style. Martine was acted throughout Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s. His plays include Le Feu qui reprend mal (1921), Martine (1922), Le Printemps des Autres (1924), L’Invitation au Voyage (1924), L’Ame en Peine (1926), Nationale 6 (1935) and Le Jardinier d’Ispahan (1939). As a Jew living in occupied France, he was imprisoned during the Second World War in the notorious Compiègne camp and narrowly escaped deportation. He died in 1972.

John Fowles | Translator
John Fowles was an English novelist born i...