The Fifth Column by Ernest Hemingway
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Two’s Company and Karl Sydow in association with Master Media present the London premiere of THE FIFTH COLUMN BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY programme Director Tricia Thorns Set Designer Alex Marker Costume Designer Emily Stuart Lighting Designer Neill Brinkworth Guitarist Ruben de Guillen Sound Designer Dominic Bilkey GUESTS AT THE HOTEL FLORIDA: Fight Director Toby Spearpoint Dorothy Bridges, war correspondent, Room 109 Alix Dunmore Production Manager Michael Ager Robert Preston, war correspondent, Room 110 Michael Shelford Stage Manager /Operator Remi Bruno Smith Philip Rawlings, Room 113 Simon Darwen Technical Stage Manager Paddy Brant STAFF OF THE HOTEL: Associate Sound Designer Manager of the Hotel Florida Stephen Ventura Joel Price Hotel Electrician Joshua Jacob Design Assistant Klara Beckers Petra, Hotel maid Catherine Cusack Costume Assistant Olwen Murray Hotel Maid Elizabeth Jane Cassidy Production photography Philip Gammon BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY Anita, a Moorish Tart Sasha Frost Rehearsal photographs Michael Shelford INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES: Master Media Stagetext captioned performance Alex Romeo Comrade, Abraham Lincoln Battalion James El-Sharawy Press guarding Room 107 Anne Mayer (020 3659 8482) Marketing Comrade Wilkinson, Abraham Lincoln Battalion Elliot Brett Clemmie Hill of Target Live Max, Thaelmann Battalion Michael Edwards Poster and programme design Jon Bradfield REPUBLICAN POLICE AND SECURITY: Production insurance Gordon & Co Antonio, Head of Counter-Espionage Michael Shelford Producer Graham Cowley Assault Guard Harvey Steven Meneses BAR CHICOTE: Our grateful thanks to Professor Paul Preston, Carlos Garcia Santa Cecilia, Martin Minchom, Waiter Joshua Jacob historians and authors, for invaluable advice about Madrid and the Civil War; Simon Mullins, Lizzy Harvey and Kathryn Waring of the Opera Tavern for hosting a wonderful fundraising lunch; NATIONALISTS: StageText for all the equipment for the captioned performance; Marilyn Harper for teaching us to sing like revolutionaries; Imogen Ffion Brown, Emma Clegg for help on the fit-up; Lizzie Sentry Elliot Brett Hunter for additional costume; The Mint Theater, New York, Artistic Director Jonathan Bank, for German General Carl Gilbey-McKenzie contacts and advice; Miss Dunmore’s hair by Lynne @ Emslie Griffin at Stars; Rose Bruford School of Theatre and Performance for props; Out of Joint for rehearsal space; Harriet Parsonage and General’s Aide James El-Sharawy The Questors Theatre Ealing; Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives; the National Theatre; Tim and Susie Battle; Nick Hern; Jane Jones; Naomi Wood; Duncan Coombe. Civilian Joshua Jacob Lighting and other equipment supplied by DCLX www.dclx.co.uk Signaller Harvey Steven Meneses Special thanks to Guy Chapman for his generous help with marketing and in all sorts of other ways. The play takes place in Madrid in the autumn of 1937, mainly in the Hotel Particular thanks to those who have contributed to the costs of this Florida, Plaza Callao; also in the Seguridad Headquarters, the Bar Chicote, production. The Fifth Column is generously supported by The Opera Tavern, The Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation, the Mercer’s Company, the Royal Victoria Hall THE FIFTH COLUMN Gran Via, and an artillery observation post on the Extremadura Road. 24 March - 16 April 2016. London Premiere. Presented by Two’s Company and Karl Sydow in associationPresented by Two’s with Foundation, Sir David Hare, Amanda and Howard Jennings and Sally Joyce. ERNEST HEMINGWAY did more to change the style of English prose than In the fall of 1937 when I took up playwrighting, there any other writer in the twentieth century, and for his efforts he was awarded weren’t any top floors to the hotel anymore. Nobody that the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative was not crazy would go up there in a bombardment. But sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. Publication of The Sun Also the two rooms where we lived were in what is called by Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Ernest Hemingway as one artillerymen a dead angle. Any place else in the hotel of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. could be hit and was. But unless the position of the batteries on Garabitas hill were changed, or unless they As part of the expatriate community in the 1920’s Paris, the former journalist substituted howitzers for guns, our rooms could not and World War I ambulance driver began a career that lead to international be hit because of the position of three different houses fame. Hemingway was an aficionado of bullfighting and big-game hunting, and across the street and across the square. I was absolutely his main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, sure of this after being in the hotel during twenty-two who suffered unseen scars, both physical and emotional. He covered the heavy bombardments in which other parts of it were Spanish Civil War, portraying it in fiction in his brilliant novel For Whom the Bell struck. It seemed eminently more sensible to live in part Tolls and subsequently covered World War II. His classic novella The Old Man and of a hotel which you knew would not be struck by shell the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. He died in 1961. fire, because you knew where the shells lit, than to go In Hemingway’s words: to some other hotel further from the lines, the angles of which you had no data to figure and where you would From the preface to the printed script of The Fifth Column: maybe have a shell drop through the roof. “The Play was written in the fall and early winter of 1937 while we were Well, I had great confidence in the Florida and when expecting an offensive.... Each day we were shelled by the guns beyond Leganès Franco finally entered Madrid, our rooms were still intact. and behind the folds of Garabitas Hill, and while I was writing the play the Hotel There was very little else that was though.” Florida was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells. So if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it. If it is a good play, perhaps those Some geography: thirty some shells helped write it. … The Casa de Campo, formerly a royal hunting park, lies to the West of the city, behind the Royal Palace. By the The title refers to the Spanish rebel statement in the fall of 1936 that they had autumn of 1937 Republican troops held the ground four columns advancing on Madrid and a Fifth Column of sympathisers inside up to the lake in the Casa de Campo. Beyond that was the city to attack the defenders of the city from the rear. If many of the Fifth Nationalist territory and their artillery was on Garabitas Column are now dead, it must be realised that they were killed in a warfare Hill. The Hotel Florida was vulnerable as it was in the where they were as dangerous and as determined as any of those who died in direct line of fire; the Fascists were often aiming at the the other four columns.” Telefonica tower – at that time the second tallest building From a letter intended for the New York Times in 1940: in Europe – a few yards further down the Gran Via, near Chicote’s, the famous nightclub (still open today). The “The old Florida was a great hotel. When we first lived in her in the early winter Telefonica was where the war correspondents went to of 1937 she was just eleven hundred yards as no crows were flying it, from phone their copy to Paris or London and was a prime the first line trenches in the Casa de Campo. But the Government made a six target. day offensive starting April Fifth of that year, that ended up with around nine The front line was much less certain in Carabanchel, a thousand casualties and the Florida eighteen hundred yards from the first lines. poor suburb to the south of the centre. House to house There were those who said it wasn’t worth it. It was at the start of that offensive fighting meant that nobody quite knew whose territory that I was asleep one night with the window open knowing that it was alright they were in. to sleep because when you had to go down there the noise would let you know. What woke me, though, was the noise of glass breaking. It was a machine gun The Plaza Callao is still the same hub of activity as it bullet that had come in the open window and hit the mirror of the armoire. I was, and many of the buildings, including the Cinema moved the bed over to a more secluded angle in the corner of the room, being mentioned in the play, still stand. The Hotel Florida was careful not to waken any of my friends, and that is all there is to that story demolished in mysterious circumstances in 1964. except that the management put in a new armoire and apologized for the ERNEST HEMINGWAY barbarousness of the fascists. … Members of the company in rehearsal Spain became a Republic in 1931. A new constitution established many new creating an international outcry. freedoms. The Catholic Church, which had long supported the old regime, was the object of particular hatred for Republicans, and many churches were Madrid continued to hold out, with extraordinary bravery. Helen Grant wrote in April burned down. 1937: “The main impression on walking about Madrid is that nobody even thinks about danger. The majority of the houses and shops in the Gran Via have been hit... Although Conservatives and landowners fiercely resisted the new constitution, sometimes the guns are quite deafening, no one appears to take any notice.” causing many of the reforms to be reversed.