Fry: Plays One

Christopher Fry

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781840027716
• eBook ISBN: 9781849437301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Literature

Includes the plays The Lady's Not for Burning, A Yard of Sun and Siege In this volume of Christopher Fry's original stage work, his most famous play The Lady's Not for Burning - 'Spring' in his set of 'Seasonal Plays' - is joined by the 'Summer' play A Yard of Sun, written in the mid-1930's. Celebrated for the sensuousness and joyous wit of its language, The Lady's Not for Burning is a key play in the revival of verse drama in the 1940's, and the scale of its success made Fry one of the most famous playwrights of his day. A Yard of Sun, Fry's last full-length stage play, is set in Siena just after the end of World War Two. Without ignoring the struggles and privations of war, the play is funny, touching and ultimately optimistic. Based on the medieval story of Aucassin and Nicolette and conceived as a form of 'pageant', Siege with its mixing of verse and prose, sprawling structure, employment of different speech patterns and deliberately contemporary touches, gives a unique insight into Fry's development as a stage-craftsman.

A YARD OF SUN

To Tam and Vreli
with love

Characters

ANGELINO BRUNO

ROBERTO, his son

LUIGI, his son

EDMONDO, his son

GIOSETTA SCAPARE

GRAZIA, her daughter

ALFIO, a jockey from Naples

ANA-CLARA, Edmondo’s wife

CESARE SCAPARE, Giosetta’s husband

PIERO MARTINI, a photographer

FRANCO, a water carrier

ETTORE, Edmondo’s chauffeur

Place: The courtyard of the Palazzo del Traguardo, Siena

Time: July 1946

A Yard of Sun was first performed at the Nottingham Playhouse on 10 August 1970, with the following cast:

ANGELINO BRUNO, Frank Middlemass

ROBERTO, John Shrapnel

LUIGI, Michael Burrell

EDMONDO, Robert East

GIOSETTA SCAPARE, Eithne Dunne

GRAZIA, Lucy Fleming

ALFIO, Nickolas Grace

ANA-CLARA, Cherith Mellor

CESARE SCAPARE, Haydn Jones

PIERO MARTINI, Geoffrey Bateman

FRANCO, Jeremy Chandler

ETTORE, Alec Sabin

SERVANTS, NEIGHBOURS, etc, Helen Lloyd, Evadne Sefton, Geoffrey Drew, Peter Draycott, Douglas Whitlock

Director Stuart Burge

Designer Robin Archer

Lighting designer Nick Chelton

Stage manager Kevin Hubbard

Musical arranger Stephen Hancock

ACT ONE

(July 1946. The courtyard of the Palazzo del Traguardo. A gateway to the street. A handsome doorway to the grand apartment. A smaller door to an apartment partly used as an Osteria; and, across the yard, the door to a third apartment. ANGELINO BRUNO, a stocky, bushy-browed man of middle-age, is sweeping from the porter’s room to the street outside. ROBERTO BRUNO, his son, wearing an old outgrown dressing gown, enters from the Osteria.)

ROBERTO: Don’t you know it’s a dirty world, father?

And every day is as dirty as another.

That’s why we have to wash.

ANGELINO: It’s only nine.

I thought you’d lie with the day a bit.

What sinful hour was it when you got to bed?

ROBERTO: Five o’clock. And then it was too hot to sleep.

I need a bath. There’s no water in the taps.

ANGELINO: It’s been turned off at the mains.

ROBERTO: Damn.

ANGELINO: There was a storm last night. But there you are,

What’s a collision in the atmosphere to you

Once you all start singing at one of your reunions?

You think you’re the thunder and the lot. At half past eleven

The heavens emptied their pots, I can tell you.

ROBERTO: Yes, I know. Rosa Levanti came

And fetched me to her father about midnight.

The old man didn’t want to die till the weather improved.

ANGELINO: Did you keep him alive?

ROBERTO: Yes, while the storm lasted.

Then he seemed to notice the silence: put out his hand

As though he’d been sheltering in a doorway,

Looked up, and made off. Just before daylight.

ANGELINO: Still,

You did your best, poor old Giovanni. So you knew

The streets were flooded. It overflowed the sewers.

ROBERTO: We have no water when there’s a drought, and then

We have no water when there’s a flood. You see

The hopeless way this town is organised!

ANGELINO: What do you want?

Everyone with snow white necks and typhoid?

ROBERTO: I want an efficient water supply, and not

A hackneyed parable of modern life.

I want a shave, and a coffee, and a blessed bath.

I don’t expect to have to start the day

On a bottle of beer.

(He goes into the Osteria. ANGELINO raises his voice.)

ANGELINO: It isn’t believable!

You call yourself a doctor? What a fantasy!

I’ve said the floodwater floated the sewers!

Why don’t you listen? That’s an Act of God

Not a political manifesto. A doctor!

You ought to be saying seven Hail Marys

For not having to wade up to your gorge

Through an epidemic. Always the same thing:

You have a Reunion, and that’s perfectly right,

You are all fine fellows, I say it to God,

The Partisans were all fine courageous fellows.

You deserve to shout the night down, once a month.

But next morning you have to come back to earth

And, each time you do, the earth isn’t good enough for you.

(ROBERTO emerges, grinning, with a glass and bottle.)

ROBERTO: Is it good enough for you?

ANGELINO: (With a shrug.) What is good enough?

You are not good enoug...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• THE LADY’S NOT FOR BURNING
• A YARD OF SUN
• SIEGE