The Embalmer

‘Art can be whatever you want it to be.’

A man, a woman and a dead body.

After keeping the world’s most famous corpse in tip-top shape for three decades, Viktor plans to retire and grow roses at his dacha. But an unexpected visitor to his laboratory underneath the Lenin mausoleum has other ideas.

 John Morrison’s new play, set in post-communist Russia, asks universal questions about the nature of art.

‘Where’s Lenin? He’s in Poland.’ (Old Soviet joke)

John Morrison first visited the Lenin mausoleum as a schoolboy in 1965. He worked in Moscow as a journalist before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His last play, A MORNING WITH GUY BURGESS, was staged at the Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, in 2011.

‘Whatever you say, things like this do happen in the world; not often, but they do happen.’  (Nikolai Gogol, THE NOSE)

THE EMBALMER will be read at Player-Playwrights on 18 November at 7.30 pm.  The venue is the upstairs room of The Three Stags, 67-69 Kennington Road, London SE1 7PZ (3mins walk from Lambeth North tube station).

Guilty secret

November 11 is competition night. the theme this term is Guilty Secret. Ten short scripts, all read anonymously, by some of the finest acting talent in London, followed by the all-important vote.

Who wins? You decide.

Monday at the Three Stags. 7.30.

Update:

And this is how it panned out, as told by Peter Thompson:

"For the first time this century there were no disqualifications and 10 well-crafted entries completed the course. SALVATION, by Philip Mison, wrapped up a guilty secret in a Country and Western song that was being broadcast on a radio station in the Deep South. All very authentic, particularly the Southern commentary by Cyd Casados and the Willie Nelsonian ballad, but perhaps not sufficiently sophisticated for us Lunnon folk: 10th with 159 points. Just above was Angela Higson’s mysterious play THE WOUND in which junior staff pieced together the domestic secrets that were causing their boss, Silas Hawkins, so much pain: 163 points.

Giles Armstrong treated us to a tale of adultery and colonial uprisings in a beleaguered Indian fort, where Rez Kabir, the faithful(?) native servant, kept serving chota-pegs to Memsahib Courtenay and burnishing her ancient flintlock: 8th with 166.  New member, Katherine Woodrow, wrote CAR CRASH in which Caroline Langston pulled into a lay-by, glugged half a bottle of whisky and confessed to her son Jethro the terrible truth about murdering his father years before.  [Ajay and I gave her a lift home afterwards]  Seventh place with 173 points.  In sixth place, with 178 points was Michael Barry’s  NO GUILT AT ALL, which did what it said on the tin.  The more Carrie Cohen used hypnosis to expose his hidden history of immorality and crime the less guilty her patient, Chukwudi Onwere, felt.  That brought us to Debbie Maya’s MAYFAIR, which has always been a winning investment on the Monopoly board, unless you cheat, of course, as John Morrison always did as a 7 year old when playing his sister, Hannah Mercer.  Fast forward to the 70 year old John and he is still at it.  Only this time Hannah catches him out and he drops dead.  Ha! Fifth with 180 points.  Fourth was another entry by Michael Barry.  It was awarded 197 points and concerned THE FAMOUS FIVE, who made a great living in advertising and in showbiz as quintuplets.  Their guilty secret was that they each had a different father.

Peter Vincent’s entry took us to Bronte-land.  There is much musing below stairs about Mr Rochester’s Byronic philanderings all over West Yorkshire and how he gets away with it.  Governess Jane [Hannah again] decides to go and have it out with Mrs Rochester and THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF ED ROCHESTER is revealed:  there is no Mrs Rochester: she has been invented to fend off talk of matrimony! Third with 202 points.  ONE MAN’S MEAT was a lovely two-hander by Mary Conway, beautifully performed by Natasha Staples and Phil Philmar: two allotment-owning vegans torture each other with talk of steak and even MacDonalds: second place with 223 points.  Top of the class, with 225 points was, of course, Bill Gordon (who else) with UNDERWEAR IN THE HIGHLANDS: Paul Temple and Steve are lost in the Highlands in driving rain looking for McGuffin Grange, or some such.  As night falls they are lured into a mysterious motel by a Psychotic Scot [Silas again] who knows how to hum theCoronation Scot.  Fortunately Chris Prior is on hand to save the day and the patent for Harris Tweed underwear.  Another disaster averted.

Thank you, Natasha, for distributing these engaging scripts to such talented actors and managing a production of 10 little plays, back to back, without a hitch.  Great entertainment.

Result

Neil Rhodes was a winner in our INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR competition last term, and is coming all the way from Llanymynech, Powys for a reading of the play, Result, on Monday, 4th November. It is a medium length stage play about a local newspaper that is struggling for survival by creative news-reporting. Jane, the beautiful and highly principled freelance photographer is unhappy about this at first, but soon gets the hang of it and of other things too.

It's in the Evelyn Waugh vein and has more laughs than the Leveson report.

7.30 at the Three Stags.

AGM

There is no reading this week as it's the AGM. So if you want to rant or rave, get something off your chest, or bang the desk in approval, now's your chance.

Monday October 28th at 7.30 at the Three Stags.

It's also the deadline for the competition. So, get writing!

At The Heart of Everything

Monday 21st October is, of course, Trafalgar day and at Player Playwrights we have decided to celebrate by bringing you the latest drama from Mary Conway's hugely productive collaborative group. This one is written by Mary in association with Barry Fyfield, and we'll be seeing two episodes of a tv series:

"It’s Nigel’s first day on the senior management team of Runcible Further Education College. He arrives full of hope and a high minded determination to inspire the joys of learning in the masses.


However, nothing has prepared him for the realities of a management team lost in the mire of personal quirks and limitations, systemic failure and silent resignation.

Set in and around the college management boardroom in the space of one day, two half hour episodes of this TV series remind us of all the dysfunctional meetings we have ever attended as the managers try and fail to stamp any kind of control on a dramatic situation that is fast spiralling into an orgy of chaos and farce.

As the day progresses, we see the senior team intent on their own survival at all costs. Meanwhile Nigel dissolves into despair, his hopes derailed and his professional pride in tatters.

Familiar or what?"

7.30 at the Three Stags.

Frequent Seismic Activity

Monday October 14th brings us a new play by PP debutant Andy Moseley, who is a graduate of UEAs Creative Writing Masters Programme. He has written several performed plays including Casual Encounters, which enjoyed a sell out run at Etcetera Theatre, Camden in 2013, Are You Lonesome Tonight? A Bridge Game Too Far (winner of the Roy Purdue New Writing Trophy at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, 2011) Heart Shaped Box and Going For Gold. His book, Around the States in 90 Days was published in 2009, and is the true story of a road trip across the USA and Canada in 2006. So he's been around the block. Here's what he says:

"Frequent Seismic Activity is a play about a family holiday at the time of the Ash Cloud that caused flight cancellations and disruptions for weeks in 2010. The family’s relationship mirrors that of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, with issues and tensions that were building up before the holiday started, causing minor eruptions when they reach their destination. The fallout from these combine to make a major incident inevitable once the real ash cloud makes escape impossible. Whether things settle down afterwards, or whether the volcano remains active is open to question".

7.30 at the Three Stags.

Writing for Performance & Exit Through the Window

This Monday, 7th October, we have an enticing double bill. First up is our guest speaker, Gill Adams, who has writen for both stage and tv, including those trusty stalwarts Doctors and EastEnders. Her current claim to fame is Keeler which incidentally has a run at the Charing Cross Theatre starting at the end of October. Gill also does workshops on writing, which is how we have come to engage her for the evening.

After questions and an interval, we then have the return of Kevin Connor. He hasn't had anything read at P-P since “Harry and John” last November, his play about John Lennon. Could this be even better? It's a 30 minute stageplay in which "Two ageing gay men attempt to pass off an alcoholic Glaswegian graffiti artist as “Banksy” in a modern homage to George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion ". Has your appetite been suitable wettened? Come along on Monday to the Three Stags to have it satisfied.