Harley Granville Barker Reclaimed [Paperback]

Harley Granville Barker (Author), Jonathan Bank (Editor), Cover Design by Jude Dvorak; Photo by Richard Termine (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2007

Granville Barker Reclaimed includes the texts of three of his plays as performed at the Mint, including THE MADRAS HOUSE, along with our specially licensed 1999 adaptation of THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE and the one-act play, FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE, which we produced in 2000. This volume also contain an introductory essay by Gus Kaikkonen who directed all three of these plays at the Mint, plus a fascinating essay by Professor Lana Cable from SUNY Albany entitled Barkers Mohammedan first delivered as a post-show lecture during our 2007 run of MADRAS HOUSE. While Barkers plays are in print still in the U.K. there is currently no source of distribution in this country for any play other than VOYSEY (and that only became available this February) which surely contributes to the surprising paucity of productions for this great, neglected author.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER (Playwright) was born in London in 1877. He began his stage career on tour, performing with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, before he made his first London appearance in 1892. He was only twenty-three when George Bernard Shaw in 1900 cast him as Eugene Marchbanks in Candida, from which there grew a fifteen-year professional and personal relationship so binding that many came to believe Barker was Shaw's illegitimate son. He joined forces with the manager John E. Vedrenne to found the Court Theatre, London, in 1904 which was to become the first modern repertory theatre in the English-speaking world. Granville-Barker's best known plays are The Voysey Inheritance, Waste and Madras House. As a stage director he introduced to the London stage plays by Galsworthy, Masefield, Maeterlinck, Schnitzler, Hauptmann. As an actor he was acclaimed for his Shaw interpretations, creating the roles of John Tanner, Frank Gardner, Adolphus Cusins, and Louis Dubedat, and appearing successfully as well in such parts as General Burgoyne, Major Sergius Saranoff, and Mr. Valentine. He was one of the foremost champions of a national theatre for Great Britain, and the first to call for a subsidized theatre. His stagings in 1912 of The Winters Tale and Twelfth Night revolutionized Shakespearean production in the modern theatre through their concentration on stripped-down productions and analytical probing of character. In later years, his greatest achievements were the Prefaces to Shakespeare, recognized as among the finest contributions to Shakespearean criticism. Barker was 68 at his death in Paris on August 31, 1946, at which time Shaw recalled him as ""altogether the most distinguished and incomparably the most cultivated person whom circumstances had driven into the theatre.""

Product Details

• Paperback: 157 pages
• Publisher: Mint Theater Company/ Granville Press (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971826226
• ISBN-13: 978-0971826229
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,811,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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