Читать книгу The Marowitz Compendium - Charles Marowitz - Страница 23

Tea with Lady Bracknell, is a previously unpublished one woman show that Marowitz wrote for actress Hermione Baddeley. Hermione Baddeley (1906-1986), was effortlessly funny and authoritative and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Room at the Top (1959) and she portrayed Ellen the maid in the 1964 Walt Disney film Mary Poppins. In this play Lady Augusta Bracknell’s wisdom lies not only in her pessimistic yet advanced philosophy of life and marriage, but also in her mastery of language. Her words are loaded with sharp arrows that aim at her ultimate purpose, which is to test the suitability of those in her orbit. The play is reminiscent of the Stanislavski exercise whereby an actor is interviewed in-character and caries on a conversation and goes about their business. The iconic mandarin Lady Bracknell shares her hilarious subjective view of the world of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.