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$45.41 ex GST
$49.95 inc GST
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His Plays, People and Politics
Alan Shelley
A playwright whose work is appreciated on a global scale, Athol Fugard’s plays have done more to document and provide a cultural commentary on Apartheid-era South Africa than any other writer in the last century. Using mostly migrant workers and township dwellers, and staging guerrilla-raid productions in black areas, Fugard frequently came into conflict with the government, forcing him to take his work overseas. Consequently, powerful plays such as
The Blood Knot,
Sizwe Banzi is Dead, and
Master Harold... and the boys came to broadcast the inequities of the Apartheid-era to the world. Fugard’s work retains an insistent influence, and is studied and performed the world over.
Alan Shelley’s study is an accessible but profound analysis of the man, his work and its influence, the social injustices that drive him, and the lives of those who people his remarkable plays.
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-821-8 | PB
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$45.41 ex GST
$49.95 inc GST
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Joe Orton / Halliwell
Never published before, the two novels in this volume mark the beginning and the end of the seven-year-long writing partnership of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. In Lord Cucumber, Orton and Halliwell romp through an ineffably camp pastiche of a vintage Mills and Boon novel with borrowings from Ronald Firbank.
By contrast, The Boy Hairdresser, tells of the tortured relationship of two rootless young men. Astonishingly prophetic of their lives together, it is a lasting monument of the strengths and fatal weaknesses of Orton and Halliwell's creative collaboration
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Nick Hern Books | 978-1-85459-414-3 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | HB
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$12.68 ex GST
$13.95 inc GST
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Edited and Introduced by Emma French
Thomas Middleton & Emma French
This new title in the Drama Classics series is a
delightfully lewd city comedy written in 1613 by the co-author of The Changeling. Unpublished until 1630 and long-neglected afterwards, it is now considered among the best and most characteristic Jacobean comedies.
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Nick Hern Books | 978-1-85459-966-7 | PB
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$27.23 ex GST
$29.95 inc GST
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John Fraser
John Fraser starred in films such as
Repulsion, El Cid
and
Tunes of Glory, and was nominated for a British Academy Award as
Best Actor for his performance, opposite Peter Finch, as Bosie in
The Trials
of Oscar Wilde. He has written fiction, non-fiction and drama. This
paperback edition includes a previously unpublished chapter.
"Genuinely moving...a deliciously gossipy read,
but much, much more than a set of anecdotes about famous people. What
distinguishes
Close Up from a hundred other celebrity memoirs is the skill of
the writing, and also the sense that a real warm heart lies at the
centre."
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-504-0 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | PB
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$54.50 ex GST
$59.95 inc GST
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'This Effing Lady'
Rose Collis
A larger-than-life character that towered over the London stage for half a century, Coral Browne was remarkable for her mesmerising character performances, her glamour, her liberated attitude to sex and the quickness of her often-savage wit.
Arriving from ‘awful Australia’ as a 21-year old she quickly became the talk of wartime London—performing as bombs rained around her. Prodigiously talented and highly unconventional for the age she lived in, she forged a reputation as a brilliant comic and classical actress, though she would later perform in the premiere of Joe Orton’s
What the Butler Saw in her underwear, alongside Ralph Richardson. She is also remembered for a series of iconic performances in films such as
Auntie Mame,
The Killing of Sister George,
Theatre of Blood,
The Legend of Lyla Clare,
The Ruling Class, and in television dramas such as Dennis Potter’s
Dreamchild, and Alan Bennett’s
An Englishman Abroad, in which she played herself.
Almost as famous for her bawdy wit and unashamed appetite for men (and women), her famous lovers included Maurice Chevalier, Cecil Beaton and Paul Robeson, though she played confidante to many more, including Alec Guinness, John Schlesinger, Alan Bates, and, remarkably, the traitor Guy Burgess. Later in life she became ‘Mrs Vincent Price’, one half of one of the most passionate and remarkable celebrity marriages of all time.
'This Effing Lady' is Rose Collis' humane and funny account of a remarkable and truly original star.
ROSE COLLIS
is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books, including Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry (Virago), A Trouser-Wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain (Continuum), and Portraits to the Wall (Cassell). Her features, celebrity interviews and reviews on politics, literature, film, television, theatre and history have appeared in over 30 publications including: The Independent, The Times and Time Out.
She received the Society Of Authors, 2004 Michael Meyer Award for her research for ‘This Effing Lady’ and is currently working in conjunction with Peter Quilter, who is writing a stage play about
Coral Browne.
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-764-8 | HB
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$26.32 ex GST
$28.95 inc GST
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An Actor's Story
Leigh Lawson
'The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good – In spite of all the people who say he is very good.' Robert Graves
In 1996 actor Leigh Lawson was asked to spend a season playing both
Oberon and
Theseus in Adrian Noble’s version of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company, during which (and in-between visits from Prime Ministers and trips to the pub) he rediscovered his love for the bard.
The Dream is an actor’s odyssey, full of stories and anecdotes from throughout a theatrical career, as well as the obligatory dwarves, false phalluses, and encounters with a predatory Franco Zefferelli.
This book is a delight for anyone interested in what goes on behind the curtain, and what motivates anyone to tread the boards in the first place.
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-867-6 | Aust/NZ | PB
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$45.41 ex GST
$49.95 inc GST
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Memories
Elaine Paige
Elaine Paige, the undisputed ‘First Lady of Musical Theatre’ celebrates 40 years on the stage in 2008.
Memories is the remarkable story of her own life, on and off the stage, in words and pictures.
She takes us through her extraordinary career from her earliest stage appearances, to her many starring roles in some of the biggest musicals of the modern era, including
Hair,
Grease,
Evita,
Cats,
Chess,
Piaf,
Sunset Boulevard and
The Drowsy Chaperone. She tells it how it was, sharing moments of joy and regret.
Illustrated with an extraordinary collection of images in colour and black and white,
Memories depicts Elaine Paige in some of her most iconic roles –
Evita, Grizabella from
Cats, Edith Piaf, and Norma Desmond from
Sunset Boulevard – but also shows Elaine away from the stage, in childhood, with family and friends, and on her travels. Above all we get an insight into the life and career of a true national treasure in this revealing, funny and personal book.
Elaine Paige tours Australia
'The First Lady of British Musical Theatre' and the great star of West End and
Broadway Musicals will be touring Australia. For all details visit her official website
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-852-2 | HB
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$27.23 ex GST
$29.95 inc GST
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Mel Gussow
Michael Gambon is a notoriously private man. Yet this profile of him in his own words—assembled from interviews with drama critic, Mel Gussow—offers the most complete portrait yet of a man who 'has just about everything—enormous power, great depth, absolute expertise and the ability to illuminate a character by the simplest of means' (Harold Pinter). The book is rounded off by interviews with writers, directors and actors who have worked with him: Dennis Potter, Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Simon Russell Beale, Deborah Warner, Peter Hall and Adrian Noble.
To read an extract from this book, as published the
Guardian, please click here
''Gambon emerges from this entertaining book as
a master of understatement, but not of underaction... illuminating flashes of
what makes an actor tick "
Daily Mail ''Book of the Week''
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Nick Hern Books | 978-1-85459-806-6 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | PB
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$45.41 ex GST
$49.95 inc GST
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Mel Gussow
Dubbed ‘the Great Gambon’, Michael Gambon has appeared in the films
Harry Potter,
Charlotte Gray,
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and
Gosford Park and the television series
The Singing Detective making him both well known and well loved.
Yet he is a notoriously private man. This profile of him in his own words
- assembled from interviews with drama critic, Mel Gussow
- offers the most complete portrait to date of a man who 'has just about everything
- enormous power, great depth, absolute expertise and the ability to illuminate a character by the simplest of means' (
Harold Pinter). The book is rounded off by interviews with writers, directors and actors who have worked with him: Dennis Potter, Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Simon Russell Beale, Deborah Warner, Peter Hall and Adrian Noble.
To read an extract from this book, as published the
Guardian, please click here
'Gambon emerges from this entertaining book as a master of understatement, but not of underaction... illuminating flashes of what makes an actor tick'
Daily Mail 'Book of the Week'
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Nick Hern Books | 978-1-85459-773-1 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | HB
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$54.55 ex GST
$60.00 inc GST
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Denis Quilley
Denis Quilley's autobiography, near completion on his death in October 2003, is presented here with his remaining notes.
After fifty years of working in the theatre, TV and films, Denis Quilley remembers his first job in rep with twenty-somethings Paul Scofield, Peter Brook and Stanley Baker; his West End debut with John Gielgud; seasons at the National Theatre with Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn; and working in musicals and films with many other well-known figures.
Stories of army service in the Sudan region, touring in Italy, America and Australia, washing-up in a Park Lane hotel, staying married to the same woman for fifty years and raising three children, and having two grandchildren, are all part of these rich but light-hearted reminiscences.
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Oberon Books | 978-1-84002-268-1 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | HB
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