Nottingham Lawrence Studies
Talking Lawrence: Patterns of Eastwood dialect in the work of D. H. Lawrence ~ Two Lawrence Plays ~ "Art for Life's Sake": Essays on D. H. Lawrence ~ Working with Lawrence: Texts, Places, Contexts ~ Experiments: Lectures on Lawrence

Two Lawrence Plays: Empty Bed Blues and The Fox ... and the Little Vixen
by Stephen Lowe
 Date of Publication: 1 December 2010

Nottingham-born and Nottingham-based Stephen Lowe has written over fifty plays for the theatre including the award-winning Touched (directed by Richard Eyre); Comic Pictures (directed by Alan Ayckbourn); The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (for Joint Stock directed by Bill Gaskill and then Stratford East directed by Stephen Daldry); Glasshouses, Tibetan Inroads (Royal Court); and Divine Gossip (RSC). His TV/Film work includes the BBC Classic Serial, Scarlet and Black, starring Ewan McGregor; BAFTA-nominated thriller Tell-Tale Hearts and two BBC films set in Nottingham, directed by Alan Dossor: Ice Dance and Flea Bites (starring Nigel Hawthorne). Stephen has also written over a hundred episodes of Coronation Street. His 2006 play Old Big 'Ead in the Spirit of the Man (also directed by Alan Dossor) played to packed houses at the Nottingham Playhouse. He was a council member of Arts Council England and Chair of ACE-East Midlands.

PRAISE FOR STEPHEN LOWE'S LAWRENCE PLAYS

"Weaving Lawrence's short story with a sub-plot that sees Jill helping to stage Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen is both ingenious and satisfying." THE GUARDIAN

"Intelligent and well-performed live theatre is a rare commodity and shows like The Fox… and the little vixen should be grasped with both hands. More please." DERBY EVENING TELEGRAPH

"The drama is gutsy and explosive and Lawrence's original is grippingly revitalised." THE STAGE

"Like Lawrence, Lowe comes up with extraordinary moments of pathos and poetry." THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"[Empty Bed Blues] is faithful to the known facts of the visit the Lawrences paid to the Crosbys at their home on the outskirts of Paris for the weekend of 29 March to 1 April 1929 … All the characters are completely convincing, and Stephen Lowe uses that visit brilliantly and movingly to bring into focus the stresses in the relationship between Lawrence and Frieda in those final years (and, of course, Lawrence's exasperation both with the world of men and with his own dying body). It is more easy to understand and sympathize with Frieda in this play than in any other portrait of her I am aware of." KEITH SAGAR

"Empty Bed Blues is a very fine play about one of the more curious episodes in Lawrence's varied and eventful life … an entertaining, amusing, dramatic, moving and thought-provoking piece." PETER PRESTON

View the front papers and afterword of this title (PDF, 136Kb)

RETAIL DETAIL

TITLE Two Lawrence Plays (paperback,156pp)
ISBN 978-1-905510-28-3
PRICE £7.99