Search results for ""Author Andrew Crowther""

These so-called Stupid Stories for Tough Times are a tonic for our times a search for sense in the strange and baffling times we live in, shot through, as all good stories should be, with humour and observational wit, with purpose, fate and dogs. 'Brilliant deadpan dystopia' (on Down to Earth)' Mike Leigh

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‘Take care. The consequences of an act are often much more numerous and important than people have any idea of.’ Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, a creative partnership that diverged over the supernatural. Unlike Sullivan, Gilbert was a great fan of fairy tales, and Foggerty’s Fairy, one of his most unjustly neglected plays, is a brilliant farcical comedy that hinges on the wish-granting of a fairy. Loosely based on his short story ‘The Story of a Twelfth Cake’, Foggerty’s Fairy considers the dangers of playing with the past. Trying to shore up his relationship, a man enlists a fairy’s help to make a few tweaks in his past – he soon realises, however, these small changes have made great waves through time, and his present becomes unbearable.

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'"What?" said the reverend gent, "Dance through my hours of leisure? Smoke? Bathe myself with scent? Play croquet? Oh, with pleasure!"' Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, but another of his great - and numerous - literary contributions were his humorous ballads, written and illustrated under the pseudonym 'Bab'. Combining his trademark absurdist wit with keenly observed character studies, the ballads are a satirical tour de force that lambast society figures. This new selection, chosen and introduced by Andrew Crowther, Secretary of the W.S. Gilbert Society, brings together the very best of the ballads and presents the 'Bab' works for a new readership.

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Engaged, W.S. Gilbert’s most popular stage work after the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, is a farcical comedy that has long lived in the literary shadows – although wildly neglected today, the play influenced literary names as great as George Bernard Shaw, and directly inspired Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Centring on a rich young man’s search for a wife and his uncle and best friend’s attempts to hinder him, the play toys with conventional notions of love and sincerity. In this edition, which also contains notes and an essay by the undisputed authority on W.S. Gilbert, Andrew Crowther, Engaged deserves to step out into the spotlight once more.

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