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Collected Plays Volume One
Includes the playsA 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.
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.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2001
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About the author
John Mortimer
249 books230 followersJohn Clifford Mortimer was a novelist, playwright and former practising barrister. Among his many publications are several volumes of Rumpole stories and a trilogy of political novels, Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets, featuring Leslie Titmuss - a character as brilliant as Rumpole. John Mortimer received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 1998.
Series:
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rapstone Chronicles
Series:
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rapstone Chronicles
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 12, 2013
This book has five plays by English barrister and master of comic fiction John Mortimer (creator of Rumpole of the Bailey).
A Voyage Round My Father is touching and brilliant, and I'd have paid very good money to have seen Sir Alec Guinness in the role of the father. It so happens I have read the non-dramatized version of this essentially-autobiographical play, in _Clinging to the Wreckage_, Mortimer's touching, beautiful autobiography, so it was rewarding to see how a great artist transmutes the raw memories into peculiar, idiosyncratic and yet no longer memoiristic art.
The Dock Brief and The Lunch Hour are two droll short plays, with signature Mortimer dialogue, and though both show signs of age (e.g. people aren't all that embarrassed about assignations in hotel rooms any more), they're both very much worth reading.
The other two plays, however -- Collaborators and What Shall We Tell Caroline? -- are rather different pieces. They are both brooding ruminations, perhaps exorcisms of some sort, of tense and emotionally-abusive relationships, and were a harrowing and yet unrewarding read. I just don't know why Mortimer wrote them.
A Voyage Round My Father is touching and brilliant, and I'd have paid very good money to have seen Sir Alec Guinness in the role of the father. It so happens I have read the non-dramatized version of this essentially-autobiographical play, in _Clinging to the Wreckage_, Mortimer's touching, beautiful autobiography, so it was rewarding to see how a great artist transmutes the raw memories into peculiar, idiosyncratic and yet no longer memoiristic art.
The Dock Brief and The Lunch Hour are two droll short plays, with signature Mortimer dialogue, and though both show signs of age (e.g. people aren't all that embarrassed about assignations in hotel rooms any more), they're both very much worth reading.
The other two plays, however -- Collaborators and What Shall We Tell Caroline? -- are rather different pieces. They are both brooding ruminations, perhaps exorcisms of some sort, of tense and emotionally-abusive relationships, and were a harrowing and yet unrewarding read. I just don't know why Mortimer wrote them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review