Week 1: Shaw’s Major Barbara
After looking briefly at late 19th-century British theatre, our focus falls on multi-faceted Shaw, music critic and Fabian socialist. His Major Barbara, a social comedy in Act 1, switches to realism in Act 2, and to debate in Act 3, dominated by the extraordinary Undershaft.
Week 2: Shaw’s Heartbreak House
Shaw’s Heartbreak House is subtitled a “fantasia” (a musical term). A country house party, presided over by the agèd Shotover, becomes an elusive and dreamlike critique of an England unprepared for the First World War.
Week 3: Osborne’s Look Back in Anger
Theatre in the earlier part of the 20th century was largely commercial, with Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, with some experiment. Look Back in Anger had huge impact, with ordinary people discussing what such people spoke of in the disenchanted 1950s. This was the era of Angry Young Men. Why were they angry?
Week 4: Shaffer’s Equus
The Royal Court Theatre (Arden, Wesker, Bond) was central from 1956. Harold Pinter (famous for his pauses) and Tom Stoppard also became well-known during the 1960s. Shaffer explores the age-old conflict of Emotion and Reason in Royal Hunt of the Sun, Amadeus, and Equus, on which we will focus.
Week 5: Russell’s Educating Rita
Established in 1963, the National Theatre has played an influential role. Is the playwright, director, or actor now most important? Willy Russell, author of Blood Brothers and Shirley Valentine, writes of class, feminism and education. In Educating Rita, he contrasts a young working-class woman with a jaded middle-aged male professor.
Week 6: Churchill’s Top Girls
Churchill is the leading woman dramatist. In Top Girls, who are these women, historical and fictional, having dinner? How does their party connect to Marlene and staff at work? This final overview presents the re-emergence of theatre as important in recent years.
