Far from the Madding Crowd (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Thomas Hardy.

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 146

Beschreibung

Thomas Hardy.s popular and enduring novel, adapted for the stage by Mark Healy. Having inherited her father's farm, the spirited and feisty young Bathsheba Everdene finds herself playing mistress in a man's world. She is pursued by three would-be lovers: the constant shepherd, Gabriel Oak; the obsessive landowner, William Boldwood; and the reckless Sergeant Troy. But are any of them a match for the headstrong and independent Bathsheba? This edition includes notes by adaptor Mark Healy on producing the play yourself, including advice on cast size, staging, music and accents. 'Haunting... brooding... smouldering... dynamic drama' - Guardian

Leseprobe

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel by

Mark Healy

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Production Notes

Characters

Scenes

Far from the Madding Crowd

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

This adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd was first performed by English Touring Theatre at Exeter Northcott Theatre on 11 September 2008, and subsequently at Cambridge Arts Theatre; Oxford Playhouse; the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich; Northern Stage, Newcastle; Richmond Theatre; Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford; Malvern Theatres and the Theatre Royal, Brighton. The cast was as follows:

FARMER BOLDWOOD

Stephen Billington

FANNY ROBIN/TEMPERANCE

Jennifer Bryden

GABRIEL OAK

Phil Cheadle

SERGEANT TROY

Adam Croasdell

LIDDY SMALLBURY

Laura Elphinstone

BATHSHEBA EVERDENE

Rebecca O’Mara

HENERY FRAY/SHEPHERD

Jack Sandle

MARYANN/MRS HURST

Cleo Sylvestre

MATTHEW MOON/SOLDIER

Gwynfor Jones

SOBERANCE

Ruth Westley

JAN COGGAN/VICAR

Noel White

JOSEPH POORGRASS

Gareth Williams

PENNYWAYS

Johnson Willis

All other parts played by members of the company

Director

Kate Saxon

Designer

Libby Watson

Movement Director

Georgina Lamb

Composer

Gary Yershon

Lighting Designer

Oliver Fenwick

Sound Designer

Duncan Chave

Production Notes

by Mark Healy, adapter of Far from the Madding Crowd

This adaptation was commissioned by English Touring Theatre (ETT) in January 2008 for a major national tour of the UK later that same year. These notes draw on that first staging and the creative ideas behind it.

Adapting the Novel

Adapting ‘classic’ novels can be a tricky business. Condensing a very popular, four-hundred-page novel into two-and-a-quarter hours, concertinaing the action, themes and passage of time whilst trying to maintain a coherence of story and location can become restricting and frustrating. I first read Far from the Madding Crowd over twenty years ago. This began my great admiration for Thomas Hardy and, of all the authors I have worked with or on as an adapter, he is the most theatrical. He was fascinated by the theatre himself, its immediacy and storytelling power. Thanks to the episodic structure necessitated by its original magazine publication, as well as the wonderful dialogue and the dramatic twists and turns of the plot, Far from the Madding Crowd lends itself very readily to adaptation.

Most of all it was the characters that attracted me to adapting Hardy’s 1874 novel. His Shakespearean cast, from the lowly farm workers to the rich landowners, never slip into caricature but reveal a great humanity in this seemingly bygone age – their troubles at work and of the heart so similar to our contemporary ones. They all have such rich, dramatic journeys for actors to explore and there are so many theatrical possibilities with the big set pieces. From Boldwood’s obsessive need of Bathsheba, via Troy’s egotistical desire to conquer, through to Oak’s steadfast, humble love, we see not only the Victorian world of manners and society laid bare but recognise our own passions examined and questioned today. I suppose this is what makes a novel a ‘classic’. In Bathsheba Everdene, Hardy gave us his first great heroine and, potentially, one of the best leading stage roles to be adapted from any nineteenth-century novel. She is a captivating, courageous, flawed young woman fighting to establish herself and live her life on her own terms. As Posy Simmonds showed so excellently in her recent updating of the story, Tamara Drewe, Hardy’s heroine was way ahead of her time. Like the folk songs he loved (which are included here), Bathsheba’s ironically titled journey may indeed be away from the infuriating hustle and bustle of the city, but it takes her into a very modern turmoil of love and loss, desire and obsession, and, ultimately, murder and marriage.

I have remained as faithful as possible to Hardy’s novel and, although knowledge of the book is by no means necessary, I encourage reading and using it during rehearsals of the play.

Staging and Design

I wrote the play with an all-purpose, non-literal set in mind. Minimal props and furniture should be used, as the action should be fluid with no blackouts or cumbersome set changes. Although there are many locations these can be moved to by using different areas of the stage and/or lighting to denote any change. Indeed, in certain scenes more than one location has to be represented on the stage at the same time. In the original production any setting up of scenes (e.g. a table and chairs being brought on) was incorporated into the action and covered by dialogue or songs where appropriate. Libby Watson’s outstanding set provided various levels and different playing areas with additional traps and moving sections that revealed a water trough and allowed characters to climb up and down ladders and trees. Equally, I would like to think this play could be presented with an absolute minimum of set or even in a black box.

The stage direction ‘Cross to –’ is used when two or more events are represented in the same scene. In these cases the lighting should take the audience’s focus back and forth, but the actors in all the elements should remain on the stage at the same time. This use of crossing between various places and events is used to heighten the sense of the characters’ destinies running concurrently and eventually ‘converging’ in Hardy’s world. It allows characters in different times, situations and places to occupy the same theatrical space. This provided some powerful and strikingly visual moments in the original production.

Music

Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy’s folk song to a world from his childhood which was passing into history, and which could live on through his words. I wanted to incorporate live and authentic folk music as part of creating the world of the play, and I have used some of Hardy’s own poems along with traditional songs to this end. It is a harsh world where the farmers must work or die, where failing crops or blasted sheep result in disaster for the community, where mothers die in childbirth and a ruined reputation and broken heart bring shame, humiliation and even murder. All these dramatic elements can be accentuated by the tradition of folk song.

There are existing traditional melodies for some of the songs, and these may be found by searching online or in collections of traditional music of the period. ‘The Banks of Allan Water’, the song which Bathsheba sings on pages 49-50, is a broadside ballad believed to be written by Matthew Lewis (1775-1818) and features in Hardy’s novel. Its melody can be listened to on the internet.

The songs based on Hardy’s poems (e.g. ‘My Love’s Gone A-Fighting’ on page 55, and ‘We Say We Shall Not Meet’ on page 90) will require original music. I would encourage companies to be bold and use the folk song in an ‘earthy’ way rather than a sentimental one. The melodies should by no means resemble a musical, but be heard as the lifeblood of the community, their way of sharing and expressing themselves.

Style

Essentially, this adaptation requires naturalistic acting, and all caricature or a broader ‘storytelling’ style should be avoided. There is no narration or breaking of the fourth wall. As far as possible, all doubling and theatrical mechanics should be hidden from the audience. Far from the Madding Crowd tells an intimate, psychologically truthful story and the acting should reflect this.

In deliberate counterpoint to this, there are places where a more physical, non-verbal style is used to express the emotions of the characters and tell the narrative of their inner lives or represent the workings of the farming community. Hardy’s novel presents us with great descriptions of the Wessex countryside and its seasons, as well as passages about the characters’ internal processes. The use of a physical style allows us to represent these important elements without the use of big sets or a narrator, using the powerful visual language of live performance. It must be up to the company how far they take this physical stylisation.

When I wrote the adaptation I had director Kate Saxon and movement director Georgina Lamb in mind, both of whom I had worked with before. I could trust them to create a physical language that would complement the story. Scene Twenty-Four (Bathsheba Decides) was an example of this, when Bathsheba’s inner turmoil was shown physically in a dramatic way. I would invite companies to experiment with this in rehearsal and be bold and poetic. To modern tastes, nineteenth-century novels can verge on the melodramatic, but if approached authentically and with emotional commitment Hardy’s story can be retold in a visually exciting and deeply moving way.

Casting

Originally, I intended Far from the Madding Crowd to be performed by ten actors, but as the ETT production grew it became a thirteen-hander with a cast of five female and eight male actors, and the following doubling:

BATHSHEBA EVERDENEGABRIEL OAKFARMER BOLDWOODSERGEANT TROYFANNY ROBIN/TEMPERANCELIDDY SMALLBURYJAN COGGAN/VICARJOSEPH POORGRASS/LAWYER BANKS/MERCHANT 1HENERY FRAY/SHEPHERD/MERCHANT 2MARYANN MONEY/MRS HURSTSOBERANCEPENNYWAYS/FARMER/MERCHANT 3/LABAN TALLSOLDIER/MATTHEW MOON/MESSENGER

The community is the lifeblood of the novel and became equally vital in the writing and performance of the play. The more in the cast, the better, as far as I am concerned (I would love to see a production using fifteen or more!). There are large ensemble set pieces with the fire, storm and Boldwood’s party that all benefit from a larger cast.

However, I would not wish to put off any company from producing the play, so with a little editing this text can also be used for smaller casts. Below is an example of how you might double and adapt the cast for ten actors (four women, six men):

BATHSHEBA EVERDENEGABRIEL OAKFARMER BOLDWOOD/MATTHEW MOONSERGEANT TROYFANNY ROBIN/TEMPERANCELIDDY SMALLBURYJAN COGGAN/LAWYER BANKS/FARMER/VICAR/MERCHANT 3JOSEPH POORGRASS/MERCHANT 1/PENNYWAYSHENERY FRAY/SHEPHERD/MERCHANT 2/ SOLDIER/MESSENGERMARYANN MONEY/MRS HURST

To accommodate this doubling, various changes would also have to be made to the text. For example, the character Soberance would be cut and her lines given to Temperance, and all references to the pair would have to become singular. So in Scene Nine (Mistress and Men), the lines would read as follows:

BATHSHEBA. Here it is, and the extra ten shillings. Now next, Temperance Miller? A woman, I suppose?

TEMPERANCE. Yes’m. Here I be, a’ believe.

BATHSHEBA. What have you been doing?

TEMPERANCE. Tending thrashing machine and wimbling haybonds and saying, ‘Hoosh!’ to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting Early Flourballs and Thompson’s Wonderfuls with dibble.

BATHSHEBA (not quite understanding). Yes, I see. (To HENERY.) Is she a satisfactory woman?

HENERY. Oh, ma’am, don’t ask me. A yielding woman – as scarlet as ever was.

In other instances, Poorgrass would have to be taken out of The Malthouse in Scene Six (The Malthouse/Pennyways Dismissed), so he could become Pennyways. His lines could be shared out, adapted or cut where appropriate. Laban Tall could be cut, along with all references to him (he has no lines). The Soldier could be the Messenger in Scene Thirty-Four (The Exchange Again), as indeed the original production chose to do. Short of printing the text twice, I trust companies may use this published one and exercise their own editing to accommodate fewer actors.

Accents

The novel is the first in which Hardy mentions Wessex as the region where his work is set. The regional accent should therefore be that of Hardy’s home county Dorset in the south-west of England. Much of the language will only work in this accent, and I feel it is important not to work with general West Country accents but to be specific to this area in order to avoid cod or ‘mumerset’ sounds. Accent-tuition tapes and CDs are better for teaching the accent, rather than watching and mimicking actors in television productions.

Most of the rural characters speak with fairly strong accents. Bathsheba, Boldwood and Troy have all been educated and so will, by varying degrees, have weaker regional accents, but, I believe, would still retain traces of it.

One further example of education is how all the farming characters call Henry Fray ‘Henery’ (and it is spelt phonetically to show this), whereas the educated Bathsheba reads ‘Henry’ correctly from the ledger in Scene Nine (Mistress and Men); again, indicated by spelling in the text.

Thanks

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those at English Touring Theatre. The excellent company of actors and crew along with the brilliant, hard-working creative team assembled by the management not only produced as good a show as I could have hoped for but also contributed, through their patience, talent and support, to the text finally arrived at here. Special thanks must go to Rachel Tackley for her constant belief in this adaptation and for commissioning me in the first place, and to Kate Saxon for her invaluable advice, vital contributions and resolute enthusiasm throughout the writing process.

Charactersin order of appearance

BATHSHEBA EVERDENE, early twentiesGABRIEL OAK, late twentiesMRS HURST, fiftiesLAWYER BANKS, mid-fiftiesSHEPHERD, mid-thirtiesFARMER, fiftiesFARMER WILLIAM BOLDWOOD, fortiesSERGEANT FRANCIS TROY, mid-twentiesSOLDIER, late twentiesJOSEPH POORGRASS, mid-fiftiesJAN COGGAN, mid-fortiesMATTHEW MOON, late twentiesTEMPERANCE MILLER, late teensHENERY FRAY, mid-thirtiesSOBERANCE MILLER, thirtiesLIDDY SMALLBURY, early twentiesMARYANN MONEY, fiftiesBAILIFF PENNYWAYS, fiftiesFANNY ROBIN, late teensLABAN TALL, fiftiesMERCHANT 1, mid-fiftiesMERCHANT 2, mid-thirtiesMERCHANT 3, fiftiesVICAR, mid-fortiesMESSENGER, late twenties

Plus various ensemble roles

Scenes

PART ONE

Prologue – Oak’s Dream Bathsheba, Oak

Scene One – Bathsheba Saves Oak Bathsheba, Oak

Scene Two – Oak Proposes Bathsheba, Oak, Mrs Hurst

Scene Three – Oak Loses His Sheep/Bathsheba Inherits the FarmBathsheba, Oak, Mrs Hurst, Lawyer Banks

Scene Four – Casterbridge Fair Ensemble

Scene Five – Fire at Weatherbury Ensemble

Scene Six – The Malthouse/Pennyways Dismissed Ensemble

Scene Seven – The Barracks Troy, Fanny

Scene Eight – Boldwood Rides UpEnsemble

Scene Nine – Mistress and MenEnsemble

Scene Ten – Mrs Twill’s Boarding House Troy, Fanny

Scene Eleven – The Corn Exchange Ensemble

Scene Twelve – All Saints and All Souls/Bible and Key Bathsheba, Liddy, Troy, Soldier, Villagers, Vicar, Boldwood, Fanny, Oak, Poorgrass

Scene Thirteen – Sheep Wash/Boldwood Proposes Ensemble

Scene Fourteen – Shears Sharpening Bathsheba, Oak

Scene Fifteen – Troy’s Search Troy, Soldier

Scene Sixteen – The Shearing Supper Ensemble

Scene Seventeen – Bathsheba Meets Troy Bathsheba, Troy, Liddy, Maryann

Scene Eighteen – Haymaking Ensemble

Scene Nineteen – The Malthouse AgainEnsemble

Scene Twenty – The Hollow Amid the FernsBathsheba, Troy

PART TWO

Scene Twenty-One – Servants’ Gossip Bathsheba, Liddy, Maryann, Soberance

Scene Twenty-Two – Blasted SheepEnsemble

Scene Twenty-Three – Boldwood Confronts Bathsheba Bathsheba, Boldwood

Scene Twenty-Four – Bathsheba Decides Bathsheba, Troy, Boldwood

Scene Twenty-Five – Troy and Boldwood Bathsheba, Troy, Boldwood

Scene Twenty-Six – Oak Hears of the Marriage Oak, Poorgrass, Coggan

Scene Twenty-Seven – The Harvest Feast/The StormEnsemble

Scene Twenty-Eight – Boldwood in RuinOak, Boldwood

Scene Twenty-Nine – Fanny Returns Bathsheba, Troy, Fanny

Scene Thirty – Troy Asks for Money Bathsheba, Troy, Liddy, Maryann

Scene Thirty-One – Death in the WorkhouseEnsemble

Scene Thirty-Two – The Coffin Bathsheba, Oak, Troy, Liddy, Poorgrass, Coggan, Moon

Scene Thirty-Three – Adventures by the Shore Bathsheba, Troy

Scene Thirty-Four – The Exchange Again Ensemble

Scene Thirty-Five – Mistress and Men Again Ensemble

Scene Thirty-Six – Boldwood Proposes a Second Time Bathsheba, Boldwood

Scene Thirty-Seven – Bathsheba Asks Oak for Advice Bathsheba, Oak

Scene Thirty-Eight – Converging Courses Bathsheba, Liddy, Boldwood, Oak

Scene Thirty-Nine – Boldwood’s PartyEnsemble

Epilogue – Together at Last? Bathsheba, Oak

PART ONE

Prologue – Oak’s Dream

Night. A moonlit river. The sound of a flute.

In his dream, GABRIEL OAK watches BATHSHEBA EVERDENE walk along a riverbank. She admires her reflection in the water, touching her face. OAK joins her and they dance together – it is strong and playful – they are very happy. In one moment she rides him like a horse, leaning right back across him and dangling her arms to the floor. In another he lifts her and draws her close to him, they almost kiss. Finally, he comes to rest in her lap. As she strokes his head, the music finishes and he sleeps.

Then BATHSHEBA suddenly slaps OAK’s face and the lights snap to –

Scene One – Bathsheba Saves Oak

Early morning. Norcombe Hill.

BATHSHEBA. Wake up! You must wake up!

OAK (waking from his dream, gasping for breath). What’s the matter?

BATHSHEBA. Nothing now, since you’re not dead… It’s a wonder you weren’t suffocated in that hut of yours.

OAK, choking, stares at her, hardly believing she is really there.

You shouldn’t have been so foolish as to go to sleep with the slides closed, and your fire still burning.

OAK (coughs). How did you find me?

BATHSHEBA. I saw the smoke billowing through your door when I came to milking. I had to drag you out, you were so overcome.

OAK. I believe you saved my life, miss –

BATHSHEBA. Don’t be foolish.

OAK. What’s your name?

BATHSHEBA. I would just as soon not tell it, rather not.