The Oxford Book Of Theatrical Anecdotes

Author : Gyles Brandreth
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2020-10-08
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780191066528

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The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes by Gyles Brandreth Pdf

This is the ultimate anthology of theatrical anecdotes, edited by lifelong theatre-lover Gyles Brandreth in the Oxford tradition, and covering every kind of theatrical story and experience from the age of Shakespeare and Marlowe to the age of Stoppard and Mamet, from Richard Burbage to Richard Briers, from Nell Gwynn to Daniel Day-Lewis, from Sarah Bernhardt to Judi Dench. Players, playwrights, prompters, producers—they all feature. The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes provides a comprehensive, revealing, and hugely entertaining portrait of the world of theatre across four hundred years. Many of the anecdotes are humorous: all have something pertinent and illuminating to say about an aspect of theatrical life—whether it is the art of playwriting, the craft of covering up missed cues, the drama of the First Night, the nightmare of touring, or the secret ingredients of star quality. Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren—the great 'names' are all here, of course, but there are tales of the unexpected, too—and the unknown. This is a book—presented in five acts, with a suitably anecdotal and personal prologue from Gyles Brandreth—where, once in a while, the understudy takes centre-stage and Gyles Brandreth treats triumph and disaster just the same, including stories from the tattiest touring companies as well as from Broadway, the West End and theatres, large and small, in Australia, India, and across Europe.

Author : Peter Hay
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Entertainers
ISBN : OCLC:466089350

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Theatrical Anecdotes by Peter Hay Pdf

Author : John Gross
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780199543410

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The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by John Gross Pdf

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

Author : Peter Hay
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1991-12-12
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780195364422

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Movie Anecdotes by Peter Hay Pdf

Hollywood, Walter Winchell quipped, is where they shoot too many movies and not enough actors. Always looking for an angle, always, scheming, always the scene of clashing egos, the movie industry is where they place you under contract instead of observation--and if you don't have anything nice to say, write it down. "In 1940, I had my choice between Hitler and Hollywood," French director Ren'e Clair recalled, "and I preferred Hollywood--just a little." In Movie Anecdotes, Peter Hay treats us to a delightful ride through the world that has captivated audiences for almost a century, with stories that are often hilarious, sometimes tragic, and always entertaining. He takes us from the rough-and tumble early days (when one studio paid Pancho Villa $25,000 to launch his attacks only in daylight, after a film crew had set up) to the studio era (when Joan Crawford refused to cross the street on the MGM lot except in a chauffeured limousine) to the shenanigans of today's global industry. Here are stories about all the legends: Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Mae West, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Sophia Loren, John Wayne, and, of course, Ronald Reagan. There are the great directors from D.W. Griffith, Hitchcock, and Eisenstein, to Kurosawa, Bergman, Visconti, Huston, Ford, and Woody Allen. And Hay has selected tales of the writers, the wits, and the grand moguls, including perhaps the largest collection of Goldwynisms--both genuine and apocryphal. Along with the laughter, this volume recreates the conflicts that have torn the movie world, from battles over money and contracts, to discrimination, divorces, and scandals. Colorful, incredible, bitter, funny--the stories about moviemaking are as fantastic as the pictures themselves. Now they have been gathered together in an irresistible bouquet that is certain to delight every movie buff and provide fascinating insights for serious students of film.

Author : James Sutherland
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1407657158

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“The” Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by James Sutherland Pdf

Author : Heather Ladd,Leslie Ritchie
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2022-06-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781644532621

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English Theatrical Anecdotes, 1660-1800 by Heather Ladd,Leslie Ritchie Pdf

The essays in English Theatrical Anecdotes, 1660-1800 explore the theatrical anecdote’s role in the construction of stage fame in England’s emergent celebrity culture during the long eighteenth century, as well as the challenges of employing such anecdotes in theatre scholarship today. This collection showcases scholarship that complicates the theatrical anecdote and shows its many sides and applications beyond the expected comic punch. Discussing anecdotal narratives about theatre people as producing, maintaining, and sometimes toppling individual fame, this book crucially investigates a key mechanism of celebrity in the long eighteenth century that reaches into the nineteenth century and beyond. The anecdote erases boundaries between public and private and fictionalizing the individual in ways deeply familiar to twenty-first century celebrity culture.

Author : Kelly Oxford
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2013-04-02
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9781443408226

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Everything Is Perfect When You're A Liar by Kelly Oxford Pdf

Everything in this book is true. The time Kelly peed her pants in the gas station. The time she stalked Leonardo DiCaprio through Los Angeles as a stoned teenager. The time she used her son’s diaper explosion to get out of a speeding ticket. And especially the time she was convinced David Copperfield could read her mind. Kelly’s more than half a million Twitter followers already knew she was hilarious, and Everything Is Perfect When You’re a Liar has proven it, spending months on the bestseller list, earning her love from both reviewers and readers, and proving “not only has she mastered the 140-character barb, but the long-form essay as well.”* Kelly’s adventures are now in paperback, with a brand-new story about how she and her husband, James, got married to fulfill their son’s desire to be a ring bearer. (But blew it, by forgetting a crucial detail.) From childhood to motherhood, from the zany to the tearjerking, Kelly covers it all and proves that when you live life unapologetically, there’s no need to lie.

Author : Nicholas Hytner
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780451493415

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Balancing Acts by Nicholas Hytner Pdf

From the Tony Award and Laurence Olivier Award-winning former director of London's National Theatre--this is a fascinating, candid, eloquent memoir about his career directing theater, producing films and opera, and working closely with some of the world's most celebrated actors. The list of Nicholas Hytner's accomplishments is long and distinguished: as Artistic Director of London's National Theatre from 2003-2015, he directed and produced a great number of their most popular and memorable plays and musicals, many of which have come to Broadway: Carousel, Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors, David Hare's Stuff Happens among them. He directed both the London and Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, each of which ran for ten years. He directed Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III on both stage and screen. In short: He is one of today's most successful and admired theatrical impresarios. In Balancing Acts, Hytner gives us a detailed behind-the-scenes look at his creative process. From reviving classic musicals and mastering Shakespeare to commissioning new plays, he shows theater making to be a necessarily collaborative exercise, and he writes insightfully about the actors and playwrights he's worked with: Derek Jacobi, Richard Griffiths, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard among them. With a cultural range that spans from The Mikado to The Lady in the Van, Balancing Acts is not only a memoir but a gathering of illuminating notes on the art of directing and a thoughtful meditation on the purpose of theater.

Author : Jenny Landreth
Publisher : Random House
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2020-10-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781473563575

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Break a Leg by Jenny Landreth Pdf

'With spot-on injections of humour and a frequently raised sardonic eyebrow, joy and warmth shine from this fascinating and funny book' Jo Brand A joyful celebration of amateur theatre From the Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages, via the Georgian aristocrats who built opulent private theatres in their own homes, to the radical lefties taking political theatre to the streets, this is the story of amateur dramatics in Britain. We meet a cast of characters who tell us about the joy amateur theatre brings them and we follow the full arc of a production, from first auditions to last night party, with all the mishaps and forgotten lines that come in between. In a triumphant mix of memoir, social history and manifesto, Jenny Landreth opens our eyes to am-dram and shows us a vibrant world that is a crucial part of our culture.

Author : Peter Hay
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Humor
ISBN : IND:30000100437023

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Broadway Anecdotes by Peter Hay Pdf

Hay's marvelously entertaining collection of stories leads readers down that sparkling thoroughfare known as the Great White Way. Broadway embodies the entire history of live entertainment in America, and Broadway Anecdotes captures it in all its diversity.

Author : Ned Sherrin
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 574 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2008-09-25
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9780199237166

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Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations by Ned Sherrin Pdf

This hilarious collection of humorous quotations, full of wisecracks and wit, snappy comments and inspired fantasy, has been specially compiled by the late broadcaster and raconteur Ned Sherrin, with a foreword by leading British satirist, Alistair Beaton. Now packed with even more quotes and covering more subjects than before, from Weddings to the Supernatural, Australia to Headlines. Find the best lines from your favourite jokesters and wordsmiths, add that extra something to a speech or presentation, or just enjoy a good laugh. 'A chair is a piece of furniture. I am not a chair because no one has ever sat on me.' Ann Widdecombe on the announcement that Parliamentary language will now be gender-neutral. 'No wonder Bob Geldof is such an expert on famine. He's been feeding off 'I don't like Mondays' for 30 years.' Russell Brand On deciding to run for governor of California: 'The most difficult decision I've ever made in my entire life, except for the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.' Arnold Schwarzenegger 'Wanting to know an author because you like his work is like wanting to know a duck because you like p--acirc--;t--eacute--;.' Margaret Atwood 'I am so sorry. We have to stop there. I have just come to the end of my personality.' Quentin Crisp, closing down an interview

Author : Gyles Brandreth
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-16
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780241483732

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Odd Boy Out by Gyles Brandreth Pdf

The compelling, witty and remarkably honest autobiography from beloved star of Just a Minute, QI, Have I Got News For You and Celebrity Gogglebox THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Hilarious, ribald, eye-popping, unforgettable, will make you laugh out loud' DAILY MAIL 'Warm, witty, charming. A moving and very affectionate family history. An enthusiast for life' THE TIMES ________ Enter the world of Gyles Brandreth - broadcaster, actor, writer, former politician - as he takes us on an extraordinary journey into his past. From growing up in an apparently well-to-do but strapped-for-cash middle-class English family to his adventures in swinging London, Gyles encounters princes, presidents, pop stars and prime ministers, gets involved in everything from setting up Scrabble championships to examining Danish sex shops, and thrills us with countless tales of family, friends and acquaintances, both famous and infamous. Filled with incredible and sometimes shocking stories, Odd Boy Out is the story of Gyles Brandreth's fascinating life told with his unique wit and charm. ________ 'Staggeringly brilliant, funny and touching, I loved it' JOANNA LUMLEY 'Light-hearted and dark events alike are described with his customary jaunty style, making them funny, moving an sometimes deeply shocking ' Sheila Hancock

Author : David Wondrich
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2007-11-06
Category : Cooking
ISBN : 9781440622236

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Imbibe! by David Wondrich Pdf

The newly updated edition of David Wondrich’s definitive guide to classic American cocktails. Cocktail writer and historian David Wondrich presents the colorful, little-known history of classic American drinks--and the ultimate mixologist's guide--in this engaging homage to Jerry Thomas, father of the American bar. Wondrich reveals never-before-published details and stories about this larger-than-life nineteenth-century figure, along with definitive recipes for more than 100 punches, cocktails, sours, fizzes, toddies, slings, and other essential drinks, along with detailed historical and mixological notes. The first edition, published in 2007, won a James Beard Award. Now updated with newly discovered recipes and historical information, this new edition includes the origins of the first American drink, the Mint Julep (which Wondrich places before the American Revolution), and those of the Cocktail itself. It also provides more detail about 19th century spirits, many new and colorful anecdotes and details about Thomas's life, and a number of particularly notable, delicious, and influential cocktails not covered in the original edition, rounding out the picture of pre-Prohibition tippling. This colorful and good-humored volume is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the timeless appeal of a well-made drink-and the uniquely American history behind it. From the Hardcover edition.

Author : Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 834 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2016-01-26
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780804172707

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A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara Pdf

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Author : Michael Coveney
Publisher : Frances Lincoln
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780711252639

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London Theatres (New Edition) by Michael Coveney Pdf

This fully revised and updated edition of the hugely successful London Theatres features ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noël Coward Theatre. London is the undisputed theatre capital of the world. From world-famous musicals to West End shows, from cutting-edge plays to Shakespeare in its original staging, from outdoor performance to intimate fringe theatre, the range and quality are unsurpassed. Leading drama critic Michael Coveney invites you on a tour of more than 50 theatres that make the London stage what it is. With stories of the architecture, the people and the productions which have defined each one, alongside sumptuous photographs by Peter Dazeley of the auditoriums, public and backstage areas, this illustrated overview of London's theatres is a book like no other. A must for fans of the stage! Praise for the first edition: ‘This coffee table whopper ... dazzles’ Spectator ‘London Theatres ... will surely feature on any theatre buff's present list’ Sightlines