To Orwell Today,
re: CABARET COMING UP FOR ORWELL

Hi Jackie,

Hope you're well!

I'm glad to report that 'One Georgie Orwell' will be showcased with three other pieces of musical theatre at Greenwich Theatre on three nights in June 16th-18th, 2010 (7.30pm).

As a showcase it will have a simple setting - we thought a 1940s square table with a typewriter, mug of tea, roll-ups and a vase with a single red rose. Your thoughts welcomed!

Each show will get half an hour so we have chosen to start with 'Southwold Morning View' (a totally revamped version of Southwold Morning), followed by the initial narration capturing (I hope) my passion for Orwell; a link to a passage from 'Coming Up for Air', followed by the song of the same name; finishing with a passage from 'Down the Mine' and the song of the same name.

I managed to find a wonderful local singer-songwriter called Carl Picton and a fine local actor called Chris Knott. Both have been brilliant, as has the theatre director James Haddrell. Carl's band (the Carl Picton Cartel) will also be playing. Rehearsals have gone well and we hope everyone enjoys it. I will certainly be thinking of you during the evening.

Best wishes,
Peter Cordwell

Greetings Peter,

Thanks for the update on your Orwell production. It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that I wish I could be there.

I love the symbolic Orwell images of typewriter, tea, cigarettes and roses.

It's godcidental that ONE GEORGIE ORWELL is being performed in Greenwich because that's the area of London where Orwell often visited and sometimes lived for weeks at a time with his wife Eileen at her brother Laurence's house, who happened to be England's top tuberculosis specialist. See ORWELL'S TB DOC O'SHAUGHNESSY

Actually, looking up directions to Greenwich Theatre, I notice it's located on Crooms Hill, the very same street where Orwell stayed all those times.

As described in a previous article, when Orwell met Eileen she was living at 24 Croom's Hill, which borders Greenwich Park. The house belonged to her brother and his wife, Gwen, who was also a doctor. It was a Georgian house with elegant bay windows on two of its three floors, and was originally the home of an astronomer at the Royal Observatory. Eileen was happy there, and enjoyed playing at least a small part in her brother's brilliant career....

I think it would add ambience to the evening - after experiencing ONE GEORGIE ORWELL - to walk from Greenwich Theatre to 24 Crooms Hill - in remembrance of one George Orwell.

All the best,
Jackie Jura

ORWELL'S PERSONA

VISITING ORWELL'S GRAVE

VISITING ORWELL'S WALLINGTON HOUSE (...In a sentimental essay written seven years after leaving Wallington, Orwell described returning there for the first time since the death of his wife and being thrilled to see that the things he'd planted were still alive, except for one fruit tree and a rose bush. He'd planted "two rambling roses and three polyantha roses from Woolworth's; two bush roses from a nursery garden; and six fruit trees, three rose bushes and two gooseberry bushes from a job lot...)

A NICE CUP OF TEA ("...One should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half cold — before one has well started on it...")

ORWELL & THE ANARCHISTS (...Vernon Richards photographed Orwell...attempting to record the characteristic Orwell, worrying at his typewriter, or at his carpentry bench making a toy for Richard, dressing the boy for an outing, rolling his cigarettes from what George Woodcock remembered as "the strongest black shag that he could find", or "making tea for his visitors"...)

ORWELL'S TYPEWRITER A REMINGTON

To Orwell Today,

Hi Jackie,

Thanks for that and wish you could be here. If it ever makes a full performance maybe you'll be able to come over (free tickets!). Godcidentally, I cover the God angle in the final narration because, like you, I think all his work is deeply spiritual.

Best wishes as ever,
Peter

update 2: ...Peter sends the songs done so far toward his musical theatre production about "One Georgie Orwell"

update 1: ...Peter writes to say the performance of "One Georgie Orwell" in Greenwich went really well