Directed by Valerie Clarke
May 14, 15 & 16, 1998

Guests (at the engagement party and art gallery)
Bridget Allen, Mark Brown, Estelle Dunham, Pat Harper, Ann Taggart, Blair Taggart, Amy Williams

Programme Notes        [ Photographs ]
Note: Inside page of the programme shows year as 1997. It is really 1998.

The Forstye Saga
John Galsworthy's trilogy of novels A Man Of Property, In Chancery and To Let, make up The Forsyte Saga and the essence of their story covering three generations and thirty-four years is beautifully captured in this play.

The writer Derek Hoddinott had a varied career always writing in his spare time. He moved from newspaper journalism to children's publications and finally to the BBC where, in 1963, he became drama publicity officer responsible for launching, through the media, amongst other productions, The Forsyte Saga. Derek has written over 100 television and radio scripts and several plays, The Forsyte Saga being his latest and written in collaboration with his wife, Pat. The Hoddinott family used to live locally and Derek ran a dramatic group called Aquarius before he retired and moved away some ten years ago.

Those who have read the novels or remember the highly successful 1960s BBC series will realise that some of the main characters are missing from this version: Old Jolyon; Soames' sister, Winifred and Young Jolyon's children, Holly and Jolly. However, the story of Irene's unhappy marriage to Soames, her further liaison with the family outcast and its consequences are pivotal to the play. By using multiple locations contained within one set, a Victorian conservatory, flashbacks, simultaneous scenes and the gossiping aunts, the saga of the Forsyte family's burning passions unfolds.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
John Galsworthy was educated at Harrow and studied law at New College, Oxford. He travelled widely and at the age of twenty-eight began to write, at first for his own amusement. He considered The Island Pharisees (1904) his first important work. As a novelist Galsworthy is chiefly known for his roman fleuve, The Forsyte Saga. The first novel of this vast work appeared in 1906. The Man of Property was a harsh criticism of the upper middle classes, Galsworthy's own background. Galsworthy did not immediately continue it; fifteen years and with them the First World War intervened until he resumed work on the history of the Forsytes with In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921). Meanwhile he had written a considerable number of novels, short stories, and plays. The Forsyte Saga was continued by the three volumes of A Modern Comedy, The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), Swan Song (1928), and its two interludes A Silent Wooing and Passersby (1927). To these should be added On Forsyte Change (1930), a collection of short stories. With growing age Galsworthy came more and more to identify himself with the world of his novels, which at first he had judged very harshly. This development is nowhere more evident than in the author's changing attitude toward Soames Forsyte, the "man of property", who dominates the first part of the work.

Galsworthy was a dramatist of considerable technical skill. His plays often took up specific social grievances such as the double standard of justice as applied to the upper and lower classes in The Silver Box (1906) and the confrontation of capital and labour in Strife (1909). Justice (1910), his most famous play, led to a prison reform in England. Galsworthy's reaction to the First World War found its expression in The Mob (1914), in which the voice of a statesman is drowned in the madness of the war-hungry masses; and in enmity of the two families of The Skin Game (1920).