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Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:21 am
- even if only from Harry Potter! The main character in the play is
reminiscent of Rosamund Lilley - the scholarship girl who does good,
although Rosamund is not subjected to the same class criticism as Joan
Baker. So, has any CBBer ever seen the play in question? | Quote: |
| Golly gosh, it's time for the revival of the girls' boarding school caper
Nearly 20 years on, 'Daisy Pulls it Off' returns to the London stage. But will the 'Bliss' generation get the joke, asks Claudia Pritchard Published: 29 April 2002 A really rather ripping old girls reunion gets under way this week. Nineteen years after they first took London by storm, the girls of Grangewood School don their gymslips once more as Denise Deegan's comedy Daisy Pulls it Off returns to the West End. Daisy, the product of an initiative to encourage women's writing, was inspired by the hearty boarding school adventures of Angela Brazil and Eleanor Brent-Dyer under titles such as The Jolliest Term on Record, A Fourth Form Friendship and Joan's Best Chum. Its innocent, eager characters and their dormitory conspiracies made audiences roll with laughter in 1983 when Andrew Lloyd Webber – with Cats already up and running, but Starlight Express and Phantom of the Opera still to come – imported the show into London after seeing it at the modest, campus-based, 450-seater Nuffield Theatre in Southampton. The nattily-staged, small-scale and above all, youthful comedy made the giant leap with the help of local backers, including the "Q" of B&Q, David Quayle. Its overnight success in the West End was helped by the publicity surrounding its lavish first night party in fashionable Dolphin Square at which the producer introduced the next Mrs Lloyd Webber, Sarah Brightman. Off to a roaring start, it ran for three years and toured for two. The (then) artistic director of the Nuffield and director of both the original Daisy and this revival is David Gilmore, whose five-year stint at the Nuffield encouraged new faces, audiences and writing alike. "Denise Deegan did a brilliant job," he says. "She wrote the play that none of the schoolgirl novelists wrote. We believe every word these girls say, despite its wonderfully heightened style." The girls in question at the play's first outing included the then unknown Samantha Bond, Lia Williams, Gabrielle Glaister, and Kate Buffery as the noble head-girl Clare. Alexandra Mathie played Daisy, the first scholarship girl on roll at Grangewood, top in everything, a demon on the hockey field, and victim of class prejudice. Two original cast members, Roger Heathcott as the mysterious Russian music master and Charlotte West-Oram as the headmistress, resume their original roles, and this term's intake includes Hannah Yelland in the title role, Katherine Heath, and Katherine Igoe. Since its Southampton premiere Daisy has gone into the repertoire, not least because it has parts for 23 women. With four times as many girls as boys applying for drama school, and four times as many male as female roles on offer, the play has a special appeal. David Gilmore is in no doubt that Daisy will strike chords with a generation brought up on Bliss rather than Bunty. "It's been fascinating watching the preview audiences being drawn into this world," he says. "We have American tourists who don't know the schoolgirl story genre, and they adore it. Good triumphs over evil; people who tell the truth triumph over people who tell fibs. "It lightly makes the point that children from deprived backgrounds, given the opportunity, can do just as well as those from privileged backgrounds. And we all get accused of something we weren't responsible for." Simultaneously earnest and tongue-in-cheek, Daisy straddles two worlds: the pupils' Dark Horse Secret Society abbreviates to DHSS. That Denise Deegan – she's such a wag. |
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:23 amPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:37 amPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:19 pm
:lol There was a performance of this attended by several Brisbane
members of the Abbey girls of Australia (the EJO society) that I
imagine still gives the performers nightmares due to the level of,
shall we say, audience participation!
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:24 pm
) and also we did it when I was at school. I remember thinking it was
fantastic and very funny too. It was a mixture between the girl's
school story and also more of a mystery type of book.
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:40 pm
Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:45 pmPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:53 pmPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:01 pmPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:13 pmPosted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 6:36 pmPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:48 pmPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 1:45 pmPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 2:31 pmPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:02 pm
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