Includes the plays A Voyage Around My Father, The Collaborators, The Dock Brief, Lunch Hour, and What Shall We Tell Caroline?An unsuccessful barrister and even more unsuccessful murderer are the subject of Mortimer’s first play, The Dock Brief. This was followed by What Shall We Tell Caroline? and then Lunch Hour, another short play, about love and lies in the lunch-hour. The Collaborators covers the wear and tear of married life subsequently united by the threat of a third party. A Voyage Round My Father, one of Mortimer’s greatest theatrical successes, is a celebration of the Shakespeare-quoting, eccentric, brave and impossible barrister the author had as a father.
Henry, now in the autumn of his years, is transported back to the key episodes of his life. At once ironic and affectionate, he speaks with his younger self both man and boy, offering warnings of a life to come and advice on how he might live it without the small self-delusions and regrets that leave him ultimately unfulfilled. Warm, funny and always entertaining Hock and Soda Water is a nostalgic lament for a life never lived. Christopher Morahan directs this quintessentially English comedy about the recipe for happiness through the three ages of man at the Chichester Festival Theatre from November 2001.
Eccentric and hillarious, Georges Feydeau’s much loved comedy mixes madness, mayhem, fun and frivolity. When the beautiful wife of Victor Chandebise suspects of having an affair, she enlists the help of her dearest friend to entrap him. Their plan to entice him to a rendezvous at the Hotel Coq D'or spectacularly misfires and chaos ensues. Set in the decadent surroundings of Belle Époque Paris, Feydeau's quintessential farce promises to be an exhilerating even of mistaken identities and comic disaster.
John Mortimer's autobiographical play is the affectionate portrait of a son's relationship with his father. Growing up in the shadow of the brilliant barrister, who adored his garden and hated visitors, and whose blindness was never mentioned, the son continually yearns for his father's love and respect.A Voyage Round My Father opened in June 2006 at the Donmar Theatre, London starring Derek Jacobi.
Three strange people, two men and a woman, arrive in a house where they are obviously expected. Who are they? They talk about crime. Are they criminals? The woman talks a lot about sex, what dubious business is she in? A play about the act of judging: can it be separated from the character and past of who sits in judgement? Naked Justice toured the UK in 2001.
Includes the plays The Wrong Side of the Park, Come as You Are and EdwinThis second volume of Oberon's new edition of John Mortimer's Collected Plays contains two full-length works, The Wrong Side of the Park and Edwin, and four short plays known collectively as Come As You Are and individually named after parts of London. Mill Hill concerns a dentist, his wife and a friend who likes to dress up as Sir Walter Raleigh for the purpose of making love. In Bermondsey, the well-adjusted life of a London publican, his wife and the man who loves him is disturbed by the presence of a young girl at Christmas time.Marble Arch is the story of an ageing film atar who believes that her rich lover has died in her bathroom, and it's up to her to dispose of the body.Knightsbridge deals with the misunderstandings and confusions that arise when the mother of a gril about to be married puts up a number of dunious advertisements in and around Knightsbridge.In Edwin, young Edwin – whom we never see – is coming from Canada to meet the family; but is he the son of a retired judge who can't stop trying things, or of a free-living, opera-whistling potter? Views on this question change radically during the course of the play.