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    The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)
    Unavailable
    The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)
    Unavailable
    The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)

    By Patrick Hamilton

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    1943, Henley-on-Thames. Miss Roach is forced by the war to flee London for the Rosamund Tea Rooms boarding house, a place as grey and lonely as its residents. From the safety of these new quarters, her war effort now consists of a thousand petty humiliations, of which the most burdensome is sharing her daily life with the unbearable Mr Thwaites.

    But a breath of fresh air arrives in the form of a handsome American lieutenant and things start to look distinctly brighter. Until a new boarder moves into the room next to Miss Roach’s – outwardly friendly, she soon starts upsetting the precarious balance in the house.

    Nicholas Wright’s play The Slaves of Solitude weaves a fascinating blend of dark hilarity and melancholy from Patrick Hamilton’s much-loved story about an improbable heroine in wartime Britain. The play premiered at Hampstead Theatre, London, in October 2017.

    'Brilliantly transformed for the stage by Nicholas Wright… although there is some wonderful sly comedy from the start, [the play's] strength is in a humane, rueful, oddly hopeful understanding of loneliness and of the way we try to make real connections… no character is all bad, nor all good; even the most minor of them, in fleetingly sketched moments, reveal both their handicap and their hope. It’s lovely' - TheatreCat

    '[A] witty, evocative, gnarly human drama… the home front is a hotbed here as people who look like heroes or villains reveal themselves to be more complex while they make their small but crucial claims for territory… wonderful' - The Times

    'Nicholas Wright’s adaptation captures the familiar emotional notes of Hamilton’s fiction, the pervading loneliness, the melancholy, the use of booze as a crutch and a shield' - The Stage

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateNov 18, 2017
    ISBN9781780019802
    Unavailable
    The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)
    Author

    Patrick Hamilton

    Patrick Hamilton was one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists and dramatists, whose significant contribution to literature has often been overlooked. Born in Hassocks, Sussex in 1904, Hamilton spent his early years in Hove. His first novel, Monday Morning was published in 1925, quickly followed by Craven House (1926). Among his novels are The Midnight Bell (1929), The Siege of Pleasure (1932), The Plains of Cement (1934), Hangover Square (1941), The Slaves of Solitude (1947) and The Gorse Trilogy, which is comprised of The West Pier (1952), Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse (1953) and Unknown Assailant (1955). Hamilton’s trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1929–34) was adapted into a successful BBC Four series in 2005, directed by Simon Curtis. His plays include the psychological thrillers Rope (1929) – on which Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope was based – and Gaslight (1938), which gave rise to the term gaslighting: a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into questioning his or her sanity. A successful revival of Gaslight, starring Keith Allen and Kara Tointon, toured the UK in early 2017. Hamilton died in 1962 of liver and kidney failure, after a long struggle with alcohol.

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    Reviews for The Slaves of Solitude (stage version) (NHB Modern Plays)

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    • 5/5
      A fabulous read, in which the older reader leading an essentially pointless life sees much to identify with!It's halfway through WW2, and in a small town near London live a group of older folk in genteel poverty, every trifling event noteworthy. The only one working is 39 year old spnster, Enid Roach; she forces herself to meals, presided over by bullying and rather stupid Mr Thwaites; she starts a rather tentative 'romance' with a hard drinking American lieutenant. And she goes out to tea with a nice German girl friend....But the humdrum life is to become filled with violent passions, even though nothing really huge occurs. "In this still, grey winter-gripped dining room, this apparent mortuary of desire and passion (in which the lift rumbled and knives and forks scraped upon plates), waves were flowing forward and backward, and through and through, of hellish revulsion and unquenchable hatred!"Absolutely fabulous writing, conjuring up a time and a place. I loved how the author evokes Miss Roach re-playing conversations in her head (IS she imagining the slights, or are the others truly horrible to her?)"Miss Roach had now reached the point (she saw) at which she was inventing conversations with Vicki, inventing Vicki's answers, and then getting white with anger at these invented answers." Haven't we all been there?
    • 4/5
      I liked this book a lot, it is set in a town near London during ww2, the main character, a middle age woman is living in a boarding house. her apartment in london had been destroyed by a bomb. it is a sad story, while there is a war in the background there is a war in the boarding house. she had to deal with a bully and a friend that turns out not to be a friend.
    • 4/5
      Hamilton tackling a subject unfamiliar to us now...the mid 20th century necessity of boarding house living. A study of bullying, trechery and triumph. Great writing.
    • 5/5
      Patrick Hamilton's work is gaining attention as a result of a 2007 publication of The Slaves of Solitude by The New York Review of Books. Originally published in 1947, it tells the story of residents in a boarding house in a small village located on a train line to London. Although they share the same dining room and lounge, the characters live their lives in solitude, limited by the conditions imposed on civilians by 1943 World War II. The distinguishing factor is the insight of the players that ranges from minimal to obsessive. This is a very engaging novel that immerses the reader in the era, location, and interaction of the characters. Readers are confronted by their own solitude and learn that insight is the result of sharing experiences with others. Hamilton's novel shows that war prevents isolation but encourages people to explore their solitude.
    • 5/5
      The only thing a boarding house can't tell you is what it's like to have a helluva lot of money. But it can tell you everything else, and will, whether you want to know or not. Patrick Hamilton has such an excellent boarding house reach, the Rosamund Tea Rooms even tell us a thing or two about the war. There's one going on between Mr. Thwaites, an old bully who has it in for the spinster of the species, and Miss Roach, who just might be one. From there on it's pure boarding house.The centre of the other war is going on elsewhere. London. Berlin. I liked the way Hamilton had it sneaking around the edges of the bigger war going on in the boarding house. It is elsewhere stealing light at night, and sugar, and the wider world. There is a wonderful scene where Miss Roach, out with the American Lieutenant (he has a habit of asking women to marry him over whisky) in a carload of drinkers, imagines other cars all over England full of people getting tight and rumbling around to forget what is impossible to forget except in cars full of drunk people. Miss Roach often expresses this awareness she has of living a different, temporary life. And that reminded me how we all get fooled into thinking that we're living some kind of anomalous, temporary life when the whole time this is the one. It really is the one.Bravo Patrick Hamilton.
    • 5/5
      ecommended by others on LT. In 1943, in a sleepy market town by the Thames, are numerous boarding houses, long stay hotels where the dispossessed, abandoned or bombed out members of society find a room, some food and some warmth. Miss Roach, 38, a secretary at a London publishing house, finds herself at one such boarding house, the Rosamund Tea Rooms, having been bombed out of London. She muddles along with life, her daily commute into London, the routine of mealtimes at the boarding house, the bizarre targeted comments of her fellow boarded, Mr Thwaites. Her routine livens up when Miss Roach meets an American lieutenant who takes her to the pub and gets her drunk, and kisses her on a park bench in the moonlight. When Miss Roach's friend, Vicky moves into the boarding house, things take a turn for the worse as quiet Vicky is revealed to be a cruel and selfish person. I really enjoyed this novel, its depiction of skewed wartime life and the results when people are thrown together is fascinating. 5 stars - one of my favourite reads of the year.
    • 5/5
      I've had this book on my shelf for eons but it wasn't until earlier this year when I read Laura Talbot's The Gentlewoman, that I felt the urge to pick it up. In the Introduction (which I always read AFTER I read the book: lesson learned) I learned that Talbot and Hamilton were married for a few tumultuous years but he was a raging alcoholic and it didn't work out even though she allowed him to live with her when they were both nearing the ends of their lives. At any rate, I enjoyed this tale of a spinster living in the London countryside after escaping the Blitz in the early years of WWII.Miss Roach now resides in a boarding house, the Rosamund Tea Rooms in its former life, with other solitary souls. As the story opens, it is 1943 and Hamilton concentrates his story on the interactions among the boarding house residents but hones in on Miss Roach and the totally obnoxious Mr. Thwaites. His know it all attitude is insufferable and he decides Miss Roach is an easy target. Discussion of the war prevails and the town is filled with military men and soon Miss Roach takes up with an American lieutenant. Things seem to go along along smoothly although the lieutenant is a very heavy drinker, much like the author, until Miss Roach's German friend, Vicki Kugelmann, takes up residence and things go all amok.The theme seems to be the the inconsequence of these solitary souls but it is also an indictment of life in Britain during the war: the shortages (of just about everything) and its impact on the populace. So well written and with brilliant humorous touches and an unlikely heroine, I highly recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      One could trouble oneself with establishing Hamilton's protagonist Enid Roach in a tradition stretching from Jane Eyre to Bridget Jones, but, then, that isn't really the argument. The inhabitants of the boarding-house were all developed in that sitting room profile manner. Their coexistence stems from the Blitz, the privation, the War. That is the spectral presence which haunts this novel.