Spoiled
Poster of original West End production
Written bySimon Gray
Date premiered24 February 1971
Place premieredThe Close Theatre Club, Glasgow
Original languageEnglish
GenreDrama
SettingThe home of a schoolmaster
Official site

Spoiled is a television and stage play by Simon Gray, first broadcast by the BBC in 1968 as part of The Wednesday Play series and later adapted for the stage.[1] It is set over a single weekend in the house of a schoolmaster, Howarth, who invites one of his O-Level French students to his home to do some last-minute cramming before an exam. Howarth has an almost unnatural enthusiasm, while his student, Donald, is painfully shy. Meanwhile, Howarth's pregnant wife is far from happy about having someone to stay in the midst of her fears about parenting.[2][3]

Characters

  • Howarth
  • Donald
  • Joanna
  • Les
  • Mrs Clenham

Television production

Spoiled was originally a play written for the BBC's The Wednesday Play series, broadcast first on 28 August 1968, and again on 9 July 1969.[4] It was directed by Waris Hussein and produced by Graeme MacDonald.[5] Believed to be lost,[6] it had the following cast:[5] The production was wiped after broadcast and no copies are known to exist.

Stage

Spoiled was adapted by the author for the stage and first performed at the Close Theatre Club, Glasgow, in 1970, directed by Stephen Hollis.[2] It had the following cast:[3]

The play was then performed at the Haymarket Theatre, London, also directed by Stephen Hollis, from 24 February 1971.[7] It had the following cast:[3]

Australian TV version

Spoiled
Directed byJohn Croyston
Written bySimon Gray
Based onplay by Simon Gray
Produced byJohn Croyston
StarringPeter Carroll
Judith Fisher
Tony Sheldon
Production
company
Distributed byABC
Release date
2 November 1974[8]
Running time
110 minutes
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish

The film was adapted for Australian TV in 1974. It was one of a number of stage productions filmed by the ABC in the early 1970s. For Spoiled the ABC filmed an adaptation of a production of the play at the Independent Theatre. Others that year included Hamlet, The Misanthrope and A Hard God.[9]

Cast

Reception

The Age felt it was "a gay play that had nothing to say... incident outweighed insight."[10]

References

  1. ↑ Andrew Mortimer and Anthony Wilks, comp. "The Official Simon Gray Website: Spoiled". Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  2. 1 2 "Spoiled - Drama Online". dramaonlinelibrary.com.
  3. 1 2 3 "Spoiled".
  4. ↑ "The Wednesday Play: Spoiled". 9 July 1969. p. 37 – via BBC Genome.
  5. 1 2 "Spoiled (1968)". BFI. Archived from the original on 5 May 2019.
  6. ↑ "Missing episode in programme The Wednesday Play, lostshows.com
  7. ↑ "Simon Gray: Playwright, novelist and author of a series of hilarious". The Independent. 8 August 2008. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022.
  8. ↑ "TV Guide". The Sydney Morning Herald. 28 October 1974. p. 11.
  9. ↑ Ed. Scott Murray, Australia on the Small Screen 1970-1995, Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p146
  10. ↑ "More to the mind than jet era black magic". The Age. 13 November 1974. p. 2.

Sources


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.