Christopher Fry

[ellenkushner]

I learned on chaoticgoodnik's blog that playwright Christopher Fry has died at the age of 97. (Like her, I hadn't realized he'd still been with us - which probably means he hadn't been, much.)

AP wire story

London Times obituary

I've loved his play The Lady's Not For Burning since I discovered it in the library at summer camp at the age of 14. I'll try and expand this post and write more about it later, but I wanted to get this up now.

Comments

The Lady's Not For Burning

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

This is the first play I think of when I hear Fry's name.

[larryhammer]

He was apparently with us enough to write a new play for his old school, first performed in 2000.

---L.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

He was apparently with us enough to write a new play for his old school, first performed in 2000.

YES???? AND??????

Are you just going to leave us hanging there? What was it called? What school??

[larryhammer]

All I know is in the AP story: "He continued to write plays, and in 2000 penned "A Ringing of Bells" for his old school; it was later staged at the National Theatre in London."

---L.

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

As fun to read as it is to see performed (which hasn't stopped me from grabbing up the Richard Chamberlain and the Kenneth Branagh versions on video).

I'd love to see more of his plays, not to mention those of Jean Anouih and Jean Giraudoux, all of whom seemed to be swamped in the tide of mundane naturalism that hit some time in the 50s. Why aren't they revived more? I feel unfairly deprived by the whims of fashion.

Nice poetic tribute to Fry by someone on my f-list:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/commodorified/67534.html

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

One of my colleagues had occasion to talk with him about six months ago, about a permission to use a quotation from one of his poems. She said he was courtly, alert, and very much all there; he sounded like an elderly gentleman with all his marbles and having a good time.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

My wife introduced me to The Lady's Not For Burning, and she and several friends quote it all the time. It's a significant part of our lives, like Dorothy Sayers quotations. When she was away recently, I was wandering the house aimlessly and ended up picking the play up off the shelf and skimming through it, reading the "good bits," of which there are many. I'll always be grateful to Mr. Fry for giving us (and the rest of the world) that marvelous work.

(I note that my wife also introduced me to your work, Ms. Kushner, and that Swordspoint is another work that gets quoted by our group of friends.)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I quote a lot, especially my beloved TLNFB. "The nuns were very quiet," I'll say wistfully; "especially in the afternoon." . . . and of course, the "bud of calm" quoted by winterbadger there below . . .or - in reply to Nicholas' "Mother - I've just been reborn": "Oh, Nicholas. You always think you can do things better than your mother." And Hebble's "Am I invisible? Am I inaudible? Do I merely festoon the room with my presence?"

Every now and then I'll quote something from Swordspoint, too, and then I stop and say, "Good lord. *I* wrote that."

It's startling.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Does it ever startle you when other people quote it?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I should live so long!

[winterbadger]

I'm sad to learn he's not with us any more, but I'm glad for him that comments are suggesting he got to be lucid and (at least somewhat) happy until the end. I remember seeing LNFB many years ago on TV (an Americna port of a British production), and I've read a couple of hsi other plays as well, borrowing them from my dad. And my mum still happily treasures her button with the quote "One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria." Thank you, Mr Fry, for your wonderful work!

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking how The Lady's Not for Burning:

1) embodied a fad for slightly atavistic verse plays that faded just in time to ensure that Mervyn Peake's The Wit To Woo would be a criticial and box office disaster, more's the pity;

2) enabled the noxious Margaret Thatcher to declare "the lady's not for turning."

This is slightly before my time, but surely the all-time champion "I hadn't realized he was still with us" obituary was Max Beerbohm's in 1956.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Beerbohm. Now he was a character. There's a good bit about him in his last days in Larry and Nancy Goldstone's Warmly Inscribed.