Cider and some kind of smelling salts
In the appendices of Alzina Stone Dale's 1984 edition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne's Busman's Honeymoon (1936), reproduced for the first time from a handwritten sheet by Sayers with an additional scribble from Byrne, I have found perhaps the greatest production note I have read in a playscript in my life:
Warning
The murder contrivance in Act III Scene 2 will not work properly unless it is sufficiently weighted. It is therefore GENUINELY DEADLY.
Producers are earnestly requested to see that the beam, chain & attachments & the clearance above the head of the actor playing CRUTCHLEY are thoroughly tested at every performance immediately before the beginning of the Scene, in order to avoid a POSSIBLY FATAL ACCIDENT.
How is it that in this our era of infinite meta when See How They Run (2022) was a real film that came out in theaters and not someone's especially clever Yuletide treat no Sayers fan has ever worked this note into a fictional production of Busman's Honeymoon where the blasphemed aspidistra exacted a worse revenge than corroded soot? I don't want to write it, I'm just amazed no one's taken advantage of it. I wouldn't mind knowing either if the 1988 revival with Edward Petherbridge and Emily Richards found a way of reproducing the effect without risking their Crutchley, since Byrne's "Note to Producers" describes the stage trick in technical detail down to the supplier of the globes for the lamp and she still agreed with Sayers—she wanted the warning inserted before the relevant scene in the acting edition—that it could wreck an actor if not set up with belt-and-braces care. Otherwise I am most entertained so far that according to Dale, while the collaboration between the two women was much more mutual than an author and her beta-reader, Byrne characteristically put in the stage business and directions which it seems Sayers was less inclined to write than dialogue. This same edition includes Sayers' solo-penned and previously unpublished Love All (1941) and testifies to the further treasury of the Malden Public Library, whose poetry section when we were directed to it turned out to be a miscellany of anthologies, plays, and biographies shading into what used to be shelved as world literature. I have three more Christies for my mother, another unfamiliar Elizabeth Goudge, another unfamiliar Elleston Trevor, some nonfiction on an angle of women's war work and the Battle of the Atlantic that I actually know nothing about, and the summer play of Christopher Fry's seasonal quartet. I am running on about a fifth of a neuron at this point, but![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks bought me ice cream.
Warning
The murder contrivance in Act III Scene 2 will not work properly unless it is sufficiently weighted. It is therefore GENUINELY DEADLY.
Producers are earnestly requested to see that the beam, chain & attachments & the clearance above the head of the actor playing CRUTCHLEY are thoroughly tested at every performance immediately before the beginning of the Scene, in order to avoid a POSSIBLY FATAL ACCIDENT.
How is it that in this our era of infinite meta when See How They Run (2022) was a real film that came out in theaters and not someone's especially clever Yuletide treat no Sayers fan has ever worked this note into a fictional production of Busman's Honeymoon where the blasphemed aspidistra exacted a worse revenge than corroded soot? I don't want to write it, I'm just amazed no one's taken advantage of it. I wouldn't mind knowing either if the 1988 revival with Edward Petherbridge and Emily Richards found a way of reproducing the effect without risking their Crutchley, since Byrne's "Note to Producers" describes the stage trick in technical detail down to the supplier of the globes for the lamp and she still agreed with Sayers—she wanted the warning inserted before the relevant scene in the acting edition—that it could wreck an actor if not set up with belt-and-braces care. Otherwise I am most entertained so far that according to Dale, while the collaboration between the two women was much more mutual than an author and her beta-reader, Byrne characteristically put in the stage business and directions which it seems Sayers was less inclined to write than dialogue. This same edition includes Sayers' solo-penned and previously unpublished Love All (1941) and testifies to the further treasury of the Malden Public Library, whose poetry section when we were directed to it turned out to be a miscellany of anthologies, plays, and biographies shading into what used to be shelved as world literature. I have three more Christies for my mother, another unfamiliar Elizabeth Goudge, another unfamiliar Elleston Trevor, some nonfiction on an angle of women's war work and the Battle of the Atlantic that I actually know nothing about, and the summer play of Christopher Fry's seasonal quartet. I am running on about a fifth of a neuron at this point, but
rushthatspeaks bought me ice cream.
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Byrne characteristically put in the stage business and directions which it seems Sayers was less inclined to write than dialogue.
That's why St. Clair. It's the biggest quiet joke I've ever put in. I write the dialogue. You tell me about the stage directions, prop gun in hand.
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We could try blaspheming the aspidistra. You never know.
That's why St. Clair. It's the biggest quiet joke I've ever put in. I write the dialogue. You tell me about the stage directions, prop gun in hand.
It's not a quiet joke if you tell the internet!
(It had occurred to me to wonder.)
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Data point appreciated! There may be no way to do it without at least lightly risking a member of the cast. I am also impressed that you have seen Busman's Honeymoon twice, since I have never even heard of a production local to me. This edition is my first interaction with the play rather than the novel. (Except for Robert Newton, I refuse to acknowledge the 1940 Hollywood film.)
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It's the first thing I ever heard him sing. I would never stop you.
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It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing).
I hear you got the Ginger Rhubarb Crisp. Good, isn't it?
Nine
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Apparently always!
I hear you got the Ginger Rhubarb Crisp. Good, isn't it?
It was both very ginger and very rhubarb and was not so studded with crisp that I should have just been eating a pie instead. Would eat again.
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Well now I want it, too!
(Also: aaayyy Frank Turner <3)
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Thank you! I feel validated!
(Also: aaayyy Frank Turner <3)
WERS! Most of what I am listening to these days is college radio in the car.
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It was the first book I pulled off the shelf and it so rewarded.
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The Malden Public Library sounds wonderful.
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Sayers' descriptions of the dramatis personae are also neat to read, partly because it is unknown what she wrote them for. "There is no indication whether these notes were written to help cast the play or to aid the actors themselves."
The Malden Public Library sounds wonderful.
They have shelves of mid-century anthologies I didn't grow up reading and authors I don't recognize. We keep finding random, previously undiscovered sections. I forgot to mention that I also got an omnibus of five plays by Peter Ustinov, only one of which I had read before.
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well that's one of my birthday requests sorted!
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May your birthday and your book arrive soon!
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It is always worth trying to make a character lesbian.
and were all thrilled and delighted both by the warning and the fact that, as zoom thespians, we were completely safe from it!
I can see that! (Did you have foley?)
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P.
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It may have made my night.
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I love that stage direction.
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I would accept videotape! All I have ever seen of it are stills.
I love that stage direction.
I was not expecting it. It made me so happy.
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It's amazing how few productions involve lethal cactus and how many might be improved if they did.