Hall Plays: 2: Mr Puntila; Mother Courage; A Servant to Two Masters; The Good Hope

Description

A collection of major play adaptations by the author of Billy Elliott MR PUNTILA: "Brecht's Puntila is the Jekyll and Hyde of the class war. When he's plastered this Finnish landowner drips with sugary human kindness; once sober again, he's a tyrannical bastard Lee Hall mixes in-your-face contemporary slang with endearing jokes .It's not often that you can write 'Bertolt Brecht' and 'knockabout fun' in the same sentence" - Paul Taylor, Independent MOTHER COURAGE: For Mother Courage, war is strictly business - a chance to trade in boots and brandy. She's determined to profit from the thirty years war, while protecting her family from the bloodshed that surrounds them. This is an updated, playable translation. THE GOOD HOPE: A voyage of the Good Hope is a journey on which the life of an entire community depends. A storm rages, the women and children wait ashore, the boat follows the Greenland catch A SERVANT TO TWO MASTERS: "is wildly and inventively farcical. More surprisingly still, it also contrives to find passages of deep feeling amid the comic mayhem the tremendously promising Lee Hall, who has come up with a superb new version of the play that brilliantly combines hilarity and darkness". Daily Telegraph

Lee Hall has won numerous awards, including a Sony award for his phenomenally popular radio play Spoonface Steinberg, which later transferred to the stage in a production with Kathryn Hunter. His play Cooking With Elvis had a sell-out run at the Whitehall Theatre throughout 2000, after his stint as Writer in Residence at the RSC. His adaptation of A Servant to Two Masters was a smash hit for the RSC and the Young Vic, and continues to tour worldwide. His two Brecht adaptations, Mr Puntilla and his Man Matti and Mother Courage and her Children were both sell-out successes in the West End. Lee Hall was Oscar nominated for his screenplay Billy Elliot.

Lee Hall's translation of Mother Courage and Her Children is witty, bawdy and vibrant * Laura Ennor, List, 31.3.11 *