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MONDAY 25 AUGUST
Presented by Mark Lawson
FRONT ROW SPECIAL
JOHN OSBORNE
As John Osborne's little known play The Hotel in Amsterdam receives its first revival in London next month, this Front Row special re-examines the dramatist through the history of the original production in 1968.
Mark Lawson talks to members of the original cast including Joss Ackland, David Burke and Susan Engel and playwright Christopher Hampton looks back to his memories of the 1968 Royal Court production.
Michael Grandage, the artistic director of London's Donmar Warehouse theatre, where the new production is currently in rehearsal, explains why many people believe this neglected play was in fact Osborne's best work.
The Hotel in Amsterdam by John Osborne, Donmar Warehouse, London, 11 September to 15 November
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SEPTEMBER NOVELS COMPETITION
Each day this week five passages from different books have been read out on air. You have to guess who the five authors are by their writing style. Find out how to enter here...
5th Reading
But I go to Hollywood but I go to hospital, but you are first but you are last, but he is tall but she is small, but you stay up but you go down, but we are rich but we are poor, but they find peace but they find…
Xan Meo went to Hollywood. And, minutes later, with urgent speed, and accompanied by choric howls of electrified distress, Xan Meo went to hospital. Male violence did it.
4th Reading
The King of Capri had been out to a party. It was just the kind of party that Kings like best. All his friends were there, and somebody had cooked his favourite food. There was royal jelly, crown of lamb, queen of puddings, buns with pearly icing, and chocolate soldiers.
The King ate much as he could but not as much as he would have liked. He had a bun in one hand, jelly in the other but, try as he might, he couldn't get all the jelly and all the bun into his mouth at once.
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3rd Reading
There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.
Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built and crossed, that we can put it out of our mind. We have left behind the territory in which we were. We are in the far territory, where we want to be.
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2nd Reading
The day she walked the streets of Silk, a chafing wind kept the temperature low and the sun was helpless to move outside thermometers more than a few degrees above freezing. Tiles of ice had formed at the shoreline and, inland, the thrown-together houses on Monarch Street whined like puppies. Ice slick gleamed, then disappeared in the early evening shadow, causing the sidewalks she marched along to undermine even an agile tread, let alone one with a faint limp. She should have bent her head and closed her eyes to slits in that weather, but being a stranger, she stared wide-eyed at each house searching for the address that matched the one in the advertisement: One Monarch Street.
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1st Reading
Every woman he dares to sleep with bears his child. So now it is Mouetta's turn. Whispering and smudging his ear with her lipstick, her breath a little sour from the garlic in her lunch, she confirms her first, his sixth pregnancy. His sixth at least. She's 'passed the urine test,' she says - an unintended play on words, which she acknowledges in the matinée darkness with half an optimistic smile. The doctor thinks she's twelve or thirteen weeks. A baby due by May. It's early days.
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RELATED LINKS
Donmar Warehouse - The Hotel in Amsterdam
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