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Diary of a Somebody

Diary of a Somebody

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There are fascinating possibilities in this situation. I’d get it down on paper if I were you” said Joe Orton once, the young playwright followed his own advice, and for a period of his short life kept a diary. American theatre critic John Lahr dramatized the diaries in 1989, and the result is Diary of a Somebody which has now opened as the second production at the new Seven Dials Playhouse in London. Book Genre: British Literature, Comedy, Contemporary, Diary, European Literature, Fiction, Humor, Modern, Novels, Poetry

Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a unique, original and hilarious novel. Here it is: ‘As I expected, that Masters man has not given up. He sent a card saying he’d show up at the house on Thursday and Friday at 5.30, but unfortunately he hasn’t put a date on the card. It could be a fortnight ago or it could be today.”’ Nobody must find out about this unique gem, because I'm giving it to EVERYONE, and I want to appear clever and discerning.' - Dawn French The pseudonymous Brian Bilston turns the base metal of comic verse into gold . . . Imagine a mash-up of John Cooper Clarke, Ed Reardon's Week and James Joyce, and you're about halfway there . . . Bilston is a magician with words . . . Read this novel in short bursts, pausing to savour its individual brilliancies * Guardian * But whenever I fantasised that she was somebody famous, I felt immediately, and as decisively as if the books had been dropped on my head, bored. The great excitement of an anonymous diary is that it might belong to anybody. Even giving “I” a name destroyed a vital thing that made the books interesting – a sense of quiet universality. Give the diarist a name, and she became just another stranger who didn’t want to accept my gaze. Imagine that she turned out to be some celebrity and the books (and my voyeurism) became almost nauseating.The midlife answer to Adrian Mole? It's a big comparison to make, in comic novel terms, but Brian Bilston is worthy. In Diary of a Somebody, Brian makes a New Year's Resolution to write a poem a day for a year. Hilarious results ensue, as well as the disappearance of a poetry (and love) rival. Laugh. Cry. Cringe -- Stella Magazine * Sunday Telegraph * He's a bit of a likeable fool. I particularly loved how Brian would enter a bookshop for one particular book and just had to buy a few more to keep it company. I'm sure that resonates with every book lover.

Occasionally, I’d peer inside one of the boxes. But I always felt slightly appalled. The books marked a time when Dido was well. They emphasised that she might be dying. They were hateful. Taken verbatim from Joe Orton's private and often explicit diaries, this raucous and poignant new production is directed by Nico Rao Pimparé (The Start of Nothing, 2020; Rainer, Arcola Theatre; Candy, King's Head Theatre). The cast is completed by Jemma Churchill (Doctor Who, BBC; Birthdays Past, Birthdays Present, New Vic Theatre; NATIVITY! The Musical, UK tour), Jamie Zubairi (Cucumber, Why The Lion Danced, Yellow Earth; The Letter; Wyndham's Theatre), Sorcha Kennedy (Rainer; Arcola Theatre, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Comedy of Errors - Sam Wanamaker Festival; Shakespeare's Globe) and Ryan Rajan Mal, making his stage debut. If you like a) laughing or b) words which rhyme with each other, you will love Brian Bilston -- Richard Osman Laura and I are now friends. She has read the biography I have written of her life twice, and approved it all.

How on earth am I supposed to review this book? It's part fiction, part poetry, part diary. The sum of the parts though is, in my opinion, a work of genius. Word play, laugh-out-loud poems and the deft skewering of office life are part of the fun in this brilliant comic debut. -- Eithne Farry * Sunday Express *

The other four members of the cast play a cavalcade of figures, famous and unknown, who breezed through Orton's life at the height of his short-lived fame. Jamie Zubairi delivers a deliciously camp Kenneth Williams, instantly recognised by many in the house a third of a century after his death. Jemma Churchill is terribly good reading the letters Joe wrote to the BBC to complain about... Orton of course! Sorcha Kennedy gives us a neighbour wholly unconcerned about Joe and Ken's lifestyle and fame - just preoccupied with the usual working class Londoner's worries. Ryan Rajah Mal nails the closeted, but also doomed. Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager.

To avoid thinking about dying, she and I increased the amount of work we did on each other’s manuscripts – both of us were writing types of detective story: she about the hunt for the bones of Saint Thomas More; me the hunt for “I”. I was now working on the diaries every spare minute of my time. Stāsts pats varbūt ir diezgan vienkāršs (un mietpilsonisks kā mūsu vairākuma dzīves), bet dzejas rindas ir burvīgas, smieklīgas un ar dažādām lieliskām atsaucēm. Un bija jauks un negaidīts sižeta pavērsiens. Un skaisti par to, kā bieži vien vieglāk ir rakstīt, nekā runāt, kā reizēm vārdu ir par daudz, kā var nepietikt ar visu gudro vārdu zināšanu.

You probably get the picture that Brian makes a few mistakes during the course of the book, but it's impossible to do anything but like him. Perhaps the diaries had belonged to a Trinity don, I thought, and got depressed. I slid the boxes down the corridor to my study and shoved them under a table. I think it was because they looked so interesting that I didn’t want to read them. I was deep at work on a biography and didn’t have time to get interested in anything new. You feel three generations of gay liberation (and catch a glimpse of a fourth, linked to race) in Nico Rao Pimparé's revival of John Lahr's play, Diary Of A Somebody. The brilliant thing about this whole structure is the way the banalities of life are turned into rhyming ditties and entries in the diary which are so wonderful to read. Most people's diaries would be quite boring I suspect, but Brian's life is just so fraught with calamity and misunderstanding that the banal becomes interesting, even though it's not dramatic. He just ploughs on hoping for the best.Life just gets worse. He sinks deeper and deeper into a state of lethargy, with only the cat for company, and his funny and sometimes subversive poems to lighten his mood. His focus narrows down to his neighbours’ bin day and other habits. He finds it difficult in his depressed state to engage with his teenage son Dylan who visits once a week. Sophie acquires a dynamic partner, the paragon of all virtues, a man whose success does not stop him from doing good deeds and who inspires Brian’s son with motivational quotes. As if life couldn’t get worse, this paragon decides he will relocate to the US taking Sophie and Dylan with him - this, just when Brian was starting to bond really well with his son. His son is reluctant to go. What the hell is poetry anyhow? The tearing open of the heart? the baring of the soul? The sharing of a universe? Or is it all mere postrue and pantomine? Of the supporting cast, Jemma Churchill is most adept at chopping and changing roles. Churchill gets to personify Mrs Edna Welthorpe, a fictional letter writing character created by Orton. Churchill also has the honour of delivering one of the funniest lines of the whole play, one which received a solid minute of sustained laughter from the audience.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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