Notes For Producers

With apologies for the formatting (lost in translation) here is the draft of the 'Notes for Producers' as it stands.



VILE BODIES


NOTES FOR PRODUCERS


The play, an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel, is in three acts. The novel comprises a swift sequence of set pieces which ostensibly suggest a filmic treatment. However this stage adaptation attempts a distillation of the text’s bleakly comic tone and is written with a view to a staging which can proceed successfully without elaborate period scenery or costume. A cast of eight actors is required, four male, four female. Two actors (playing the lovers, Adam and Nina) remain in character throughout and make their entrances from off-stage in orthodox manner. The remaining players cover multiple parts as listed below. Each character other than Adam and Nina is distinguished by an individual prop or item of costume and generally changes are made upstage as indicated in stage directions and in plain view of the audience. Each actor should wear a plain black base costume.


There should preferably be provision for the projection of images onto the back wall of the stage. Suggested stage layouts and sample images for projection are attached to these notes. These notes anticipate a proscenium staging. A curtain is not required.


CAST OF CHARACTERS


ACTOR 1 will play
ADAM FENWICK-SYMES: the actor remains in character throughout. He is as close as the play comes to a hero. Good looking in a rather unexceptional way, he is suave, educated and semi-detached.


ACTOR 2 will play
NINA BLOUNT; also in character throughout. Adam’s occasional fiancée. Ultimately soulless. Pretty in the emaciated style.


ACTOR 3 will play
LORD VANBURGH: (carries a notebook and pencil in his top hat) a young aristocrat with the bearing of his birth but none of its certainties. A gossip columnist for The Daily Beast who finds some final fulfilment as a war correspondent (at which point his notebook is replaced by a cine camera and his topper by a tin helmet inscribed ‘Press’); and
THE KING OF RURITANIA: (sports a naval full set and a monocle) a dispossessed and defeated monarch living in Shepheard’s, a London hotel; and
A JUDGE: (in judge’s wig) another habitué of Shepheard’s; and
LORD METROLAND: (in tail coat) industrialist peer, bewildered by the young but tolerant of them; and
COLONEL BLOUNT: (a distressed tweed jacket) eccentric and reclusive father of Nina.


ACTOR 4 will play
LOTTIE CRUMP: (a wide full length skirt) proprietress of Shepheard’s Hotel. A happy reminder of the splendours of the Edwardian era; and
MARY MOUSE: (classic flapper hat) the daughter of industrial new money and a sponsor of the party scene; and
MRS BROWN: (a pinafore) the wife of this week’s Prime Minister; and
FIRST CONSERVATIVE LADY: (a ludicrously stately hat) active in local association affairs.


ACTOR 5 will play
FATHER ROTHSCHILD: (clerical collar) peripatetic Jesuit; and
THE HON MILES MALPRACTICE: (Red Indian head-dress) problematic aristocratic second son. Homosexual; and
AN UNNAMED AMERICAN: (thick rimmed glasses) a guest at Shepheard’s; and
FIRST POLICEMAN: (a helmet) called to investigate an incident at Shepheard’s; and
LORD MONOMARK: (carries a silver topped cane) proprietor of The Daily Excess.


ACTOR 6 will play
AGATHA RUNCIBLE: (Hawaiian garland and head-band) the BYT par excellence. Fashionably androgynous. Doomed; and
DEAD SHOWGIRL: (a diamante fascinator) in unfortunate collision with a chandelier at Shepheard’s; and
SOCIAL EDITRESS: (a fox fur and dark glasses) of The Daily Excess.


ACTOR 7 will play
EARL BALCAIRN: (a white silk scarf, notebook and silver pencil) Vanburgh’s rival columnist, writing for The Daily Excess. Aristocratic, defeated, tragic; and
MR BROWN: (a proletarian moustache and an ill-fitting frock coat) this week’s Prime Minister; and
THE DRUNK MAJOR: (a moustache of regimental magnificence and a uniform dress cap) a drunken old buffer, residue of the last war who will find purpose only in the next; and
‘GINGER’ LITTLEJOHN: (a ginger wig and moustache) childhood friend of Nina. Rich, eligible and newly returned from Ceylon, and
ARCHIE SCHWERTZ: (a white dinner jacket) dissolute, rootless, penniless, parasitic. An essential but entirely disposable BYT; and
SECOND POLICEMAN: (another helmet) assisting investigations at Shepheard’s.


ACTOR 8 will play
JANE BROWN: (a simple headband) daughter of this week’s Prime Minister, would be BYT; and
LADY METROLAND: (masses of pearls and a cigarette holder of improbable length) disgraceful and undignified socialite. Too old to be a BYT but mentally attuned to that generation; and
SECOND SHOWGIRL: (a diamante fascinator) at a party at Shepheard’s; and
SECOND CONSERVATIVE LADY; (another ludicrous hat); and
MILES’ CATAMITE: (leather helmet and motor goggles) a beautiful young racing driver.


THE SCHEME OF THE PLAY


The play does not mimic the linear narrative of the novel. Its Prologue takes an incident from the book’s pre-penultimate chapter and the Epilogue follows the novel’s ironically titled final chapter Happy Ending. The intervening three acts are divided thematically with each accorded a sub-title borrowed from other Waugh novels. Act I (Unconditional Surrender) considers the parties of the Bright Young Things; Act II (Officers and Gentlemen) is centred on hotels and restaurants and stresses itineracy; in Act III (Men at Arms) death and destruction intervene on a metaphorical battlefield, preparing the way for the literal battlefield of the Epilogue.


If the scenes were to be acted chronologically their order would be: 2.1, 1.1, 2.2, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.3, 2.4, 1.5, 1.6, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, Prologue, 3.4, Epilogue.

There is a footnote to the original which explains that the cross-gender casting of Actor 8 is quite deliberate, just in case you thought I didn't know what a catamite was. I have read Earthly Powers you know - best opening sentence in the modern novel?