All is Fortune: And Other Theatre Stories

Description

This unusual collection of short stories captures the essence of life in the theatre. Behind the superficial glamour lies a world marked by ambition, jealousy and heartache.

Among stories featured in All is Fortune are an actress under stress at an audition, a struggling playwright committing a deception, a biographer falling out with his subject, a female playwright suffering sexual harassment, and many others. Lighter stories tell of the mysterious disappearance of a member of an amateur dramatic society, the unrequited love of a chorus girl in a musical, and a monologue by an elderly jobbing actor.

Jonathan Croall, a leading theatre historian and biographer, and the son of well-known actors, has created these imaginative stories with warmth, insight and humour, bringing vividly to life a host of well-drawn characters.

'Jonathan Croall has written extensively and illuminatingly about acting and actors. In these stories he attempts something different, a sequence of shiny, shard-like vignettes – some ironic, some poetic, some straightforwardly realistic – which reflect the life of the theatre in all its many aspects. Haunting.’ Simon Callow, actor and writer

Jonathan Croall is a theatre historian and biographer living in London. His books include acclaimed biographies of John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike, and Buzz Buzz!, a collection of interviews with playwrights, actors and directors working at the National Theatre. Other titles include Performing Hamlet and Performing King Lear in the Arden Shakespeare series, and the inside story of Peter Hall’s productions of The Bacchai and Waiting for Godot.