Hotel Sorrento.Pdf

HANNIE RAYSON is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). She holds an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from La Trobe University, and is a Fellow of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. Rayson was a cofounder of Theatreworks, and has served as writer-in-residence at the Mill Theatre, Playbox Theatre, La Trobe University, Monash University, VCA and New Writing North (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK). Her plays have been performed extensively around Australia and several have been produced overseas. For Theatreworks she wrote Please Return to Sender (1980) and Mary (1981). Leave It Till Monday (1984) was first produced by the Mill Theatre. Room to Move (1985) won the Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Award for Best Original Stage Play. Hotel Sorrento (Playbox / Theatreworks 1990) also won an AWGIE, a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Green Room Award for Best Play. A feature film of Hotel Sorrento (1995) won two Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Screenplay. Falling from Grace (Playbox, 1994) won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Age Performing Arts Award. Scenes From A Separation, co-written with Andrew Bovell, was produced by the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1985, the Sydney Theatre Company in 2004 and The Orange Tree Theatre UK in 2005. Her satire on the deregulation in local government, Competitive Tenderness, premiered at Playbox in 1996. Her examination of the corporatisation of universities, Life After George (2000) enjoyed separate productions by the Melbourne Theatre Company and the Sydney Theatre Company. It was nominated for the NSW and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, and won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Green Room Award for Best New Australian Play, and two Helpmann Awards for the Best New Australian Work and for Best Play. It was also the first play ever to be nominated for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award. Life After George has also had major productions on the West End (2002), in Montreal (2003), Vienna and Frankfurt (2004) and The National Theatre of Slovenia (2004). Her rural saga Inheritance (MTC 2003) played in Melbourne and Sydney, winning the Helpmann Awards for Best Play and Best New Australian Work. Two Brothers (MTC/STC 2005) played to capacity houses at the Melbourne Arts Centre and the Sydney Opera House and then toured in NSW. Rayson has also written for newspapers and magazines and in 1999 she won the Magazine Publishers’ Society of Australia Columnist of the Year Award for her column in HQ Magazine. Her television scripts include Sloth (ABC, Seven Deadly Sins) and she co-wrote two episodes of the award-winning series SeaChange (ABC/Artists Services). For Kathy and Suzie Skelton PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: p.3 Above: Peter Curtin as Dick and Julia Blake as Marge in the Playbox production of Hotel Sorrento, 1990. Photographer: Jeff Busby. Below: Elspeth Ballantyne as Hilary and Robin Cuming as Wal in the Sydney Theatre Company production. Photographer: Branco Gaica. p.23 Above: Peter Curtin as Dick and Jennifer Claire as Marge in the STC production. Below: Caroline Gillmer as Meg and David Latham as Edwin in the Playbox production. p.47 Above: Elspeth Ballantyne as Hilary and Genevieve Picot as Pippa in the Playbox production. Below: David Latham as Edwin and Peter Curtin as Dick in the same production. p.83 Barry Otto as Edwin and Jennifer Claire as Marge in the STC production. HOTEL SORRENTO HANNIE RAYSON Currency Press, Sydney CURRENCY PLAYS First published in 1990 by Currency Press Pty Ltd, PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia [email protected] www.currency.com.au Revised edition published 1992 Further revised edition 1995 Reprinted 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 This revised edition published 2002 Reprinted 2003, 2005, 2006 (twice), 2007, 2008, 2012, 2015 Copyright © Hannie Rayson 2002 Copying for EduCational purposEs The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be copied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that that educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact CAL, Level 15/233 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000; tel: within Australia 1800 066 844 toll free; outside Australia +61 2 9394 7600; fax: +61 2 9394 7601; email: [email protected] Copying for othEr purposEs Except as permitted under the Act, for example a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All enquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above. Any performance or public reading of Hotel Sorrento is forbidden unless a licence has been received from the author or the author’s agent. The purchase of this book in no way gives the purchaser the right to perform the play in public, whether by means of a staged production or a reading. All applications for public performance should be addressed to the Estate of Nick Enright, c/- HLA Management, PO Box 1536, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012; ph +61 2 9549 3000; email [email protected] national library of australia Cip data Rayson, Hannie, 1957– Hotel Sorrento 3rd ed. ISBN 978 0 86819 681 7 1. Sisters - Australia - Drama. 2. Family - Australia - Drama. I. Title. A822.3 Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its art funding and advisory body. Cover design by Trevor Hood, Anaconda Graphic Design. Cover photo shows John Hargreaves as Dick and Joan Plowright as Marge in the 1995 Bayside Pictures film Hotel Sorrento. Printed by Ligare Book Printers, Riverwood, NSW. Contents A Sweet Pensive Sadness, Hannie Rayson vi The Quest for Certainty, Aubrey Mellor ix HOTEL SORRENTO Act One 1 Act Two 48 Film Stills 88 From Stage to Screen, Peter Fitzpatrick 91 and Richard Franklin A Sweet Pensive Sadness Hannie Rayson With Hotel Sorrento I wanted to write a play of ideas; something which would send an audience out into the night with all sorts of things to talk about over coffee. I also wanted to create a ‘sweet pensive sadness’ to pervade the experience, as there is something delectable about melancholy which seems to alter the way we see things. To date my plays have been a response to particular contemporary social phenomena which I want to understand more fully. I am interested in subject matter which is bursting with contradiction. As a playwright I am concerned with the task of posing questions, both in the process of writing and in the finished work. As a dramatic device it allows me to activate and engage an audience but perhaps more importantly it is a vehicle for both playwright and audience to embark upon a genuine line of enquiry together. With Hotel Sorrento my central question was how far we had come in terms of our quest to articulate an Australian identity and what kinds of changes had taken place during the past decade. I was interested in how the experience of living elsewhere alters one’s perceptions of home. And, conversely, for those who’ve stayed and contributed to the life of the culture from ‘the inside’, where is the line between a healthy nationalism and blind patriotism? I decided to focus on the relationship between literature and cultural identity and to exploit the debate in critical/literary circles about Australian fiction. To merely hold a mirror to reflect ourselves A SWEET PENSIVE SADNESS vii and our culture does not automatically constitute great art, some argued. In our bid to be counted as a country with important cultural heroes and myths were we overstating the calibre of our cultural products? Could we really look for profundity and passion in our own literature? My interest also was to try and weave themes of cultural identity through several layers of the narrative, so I could explore ideas about loyalty, for example, or betrayal, from the perspective of the expatriate’s response to her country, her fiction and her family. In 1986 I went to London on a research grant from the then Theatre Board of the Australia Council to do a series of interviews with expatriates. Peter Carey’s face was in all the bookshop windows and on sandwich boards on the street. He had been nominated for The Booker prize for his novel Illywhacker, and whilst he didn’t win that year, Oz literature was a talking point. In an interview in The Times, Carey said that he had lived in London for two years from 1968 and loved it like any other visitor. ‘But one day I looked at the man at the local service station and suddenly realised that if I lived here ten years I wouldn’t know that man any better. I decided to go home . What I missed was that ability to recognise instantly what people are, what they are thinking and feeling which comes effortlessly with your own kind.’ At this point, the idea of a novelist as my central character was born and that of her Booker-nominated novel forming the backbone of the play. I needed to create someone whose opinions were going to receive attention by the world press; someone passionate and outspoken about Australia so that the pendulum between my own sense of deep affection and frustration that this country can engender, could swing back and forth freely. In this way I could create a tension and interplay of often contradictory ideas.

Load more