Arguments with England
Published on 16. September 2004
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-0-571-22445-6 (ISBN)
Description
"Anyone who has read Michael Blakemore's classic novel "Next Season" knows he is one of the best writers we have about how life on-stage may feed into life off. His beautiful new memoir, "Arguments with England", is perhaps better still - a pitch-perfect account of dreaming youth, driven, frustrated and eventually deepened by a realistic love of the theatre". (David Hare). In the days when Australians called England 'home', Michael Blakemore, an eager young man en route to RADA, made the long sea voyage to 1950s London to find himself in a distinctly foreign country...And so began his struggle to come to terms with the realities of a less than perfect Promised Land. Candid observations about life and art, from his shock on witnessing the poverty in the North to his sense of excitement on reading the works of Proust and Webster, sit beside colourful escapades at drama school and recollections of working with characters such as John Osborne and Tyrone Guthrie.
Rescued from the horrors of weekly rep by an exhilarating tour behind the Iron Curtain in Peter Brook's "Titus Andronicus" with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Blakemore recalls life as an actor before his directorial success with A Day in the Death of Joe Egg propelled him to the National Theatre and the start of a glittering career.
Rescued from the horrors of weekly rep by an exhilarating tour behind the Iron Curtain in Peter Brook's "Titus Andronicus" with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Blakemore recalls life as an actor before his directorial success with A Day in the Death of Joe Egg propelled him to the National Theatre and the start of a glittering career.
Reviews / Votes
'Anyone who has read Michael Blakemore's classic novel Next Season knows he is one of the best writers we have about how life on-stage may feed into life off. His beautiful new memoir,Arguments with England, is perhaps better still - a pitch-perfect account of dreaming youth, driven, frustrated and eventually deepened by a realistic love of the theatre.' David HareMore details
Person
Michael Blakemore arrived in the UK from Australia in 1950 and his first fifteen years in the theatre were spent as an actor. During this period he wrote his novel about an actor's life, Next Season. He began directing at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre and his first London success, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, transferred from there. Laurence Olivier then asked him to become an Associate Director of the National Theatre, where he directed Olivier in Long Day's Journey into Night. Among his many other National Theatre productions are The National Health, The Front Page, Macbeth and The Cherry Orchard.His work has embraced new plays by dramatists as diverse as Arthur Miller, David Hare, Peter Schaffer, Don DeLillo, David Mamet and David Williamson. He directed four of Peter Nichols' early successes, and the premieres of seven plays by Michael Frayn, including Noises Off and Copenhagen. His most recent productions are Democracy at the National and Three Sisters in the West End. His extensive work on Broadway includes two original musicals, City of Angels and The Life, and at the 2000 Tony Awards he won an unprecedented double as Best Director of both a play, Copenhagen, and a musical, Kiss Me Kate. He has written and directed two films, A Personal History of the Australian Surf (Standard Film Award, 1982) and Country Life.