Happy Warriors to Broadcast

A London theater website (mytheatremates.com) has announced that a performance of Happy Warriors, the play about Evelyn Waugh and Randolph Churchill in WWII Yugoslavia, will be recorded for broadcast. In connection with this, tickets for the performance on Friday, 13 April that is being recorded will be sold at a reduced price of £10. Booking information is available here. The story also contains several photos from the play, which will continue through 22 April at the Upstairs at the Gatehouse theatre in Highgate, North London. Details of the future broadcast are not available.

Meanwhile, another review has appeared on the internet. This is posted by thestage.co.uk and is written by Paul Vale. He describes Happy Warriors as

a quick-witted, intelligent comedy that pokes fun at the privilege and priorities of the officer class. … It’s a fascinating dynamic, astutely exploited by Macdonald, culminating in a battle of wills that’s both sharp and sophisticated. Simon Pontin plays Churchill as a remarkably familiar political buffoon, manipulating the rules to suit his own ends. Neil Chinneck’s Waugh is an intellectual too but less adroit at politics and absorbed by his own spiritual conflict. … While some aspects of Andrew C Wadsworth’s production may lack finesse and Sorcha Corcoran’s set design is flimsy, it picks up the tone and tempo of the writing perfectly.

The playwright James Hugh Macdonald is interviewed on the website London Live. He explains that it was Waugh’s description in his Diaries of the wager with Randolph Churchill over reading the Bible within a few days that convinced him that the wartime experiences would make good theater. The transcript of another interview where Macdonald makes the same point, inter alia,  appears on The Reviews Hub.

UPDATE (11 April 2018): Information added about review of Paul Vale.

UPDATE 2 (12 April 2018): Link to interviews of playwright added.

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