Bangkok Community Theatre holds regular weekday evening online play readings at 7:30pm. Each week we choose a new script and share it with the participants in advance.
Then we get together and read the play aloud on zoom, regularly switching up the roles so that everyone gets a chance to read, if they wish. Some BCT friends don’t want to read; they just like to listen. That’s okay, too.
These play readings are open to anyone who wants to join! Just RSVP@bangkokcommunitytheatre.com to get the link. It’s free and a great way to meet some other people who enjoy live theatre. Please join us; tell your friends.
On Tuesday, August 25th, 2020 at 7:30pm, please join us to read Oliver Goldsmith’s classic comedy “She Stoops to Conquer”
ABOUT THE PLAY:
She Stoops to Conquer is a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, first performed in London in 1773. The play is a favourite for study by English literature and theatre classes in the English-speaking world. It is one of the few plays from the 18th century to have retained its appeal and is regularly performed.
Kenneth Tynan wrote that ‘English drama is a procession of glittering Irishmen’. Oliver Goldsmith was one of those playwrights cited by Tynan as an example, alongside Oscar Wilde and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Goldsmith could turn his hand to most literary forms, including essays, poetry and novels. She Stoops to Conquer demonstrates a command and understanding of the theatre as well as a sharpness of wit and warm humour.
Initially titled Mistakes of a Night, the play is a ‘laughing comedy’, a satire on the excess of emotion prevalent in the ‘sentimental comedies’ popular at the time. It opens with a prologue in which an actor mourns the death of the ‘low’ comedy.
The Hardcastles are waiting for the arrival of Marlow, son of a family friend and a possible suitor to their daughter Kate. Mrs Hardcastle is hoping to marry her niece Constance to Tony Lumpkin, her son from an earlier marriage. Constance will come into a small inheritance of jewellery when she marries, but they do not care for one another, and Constance already has a beloved, who it just so happens is friends with Marlow and is coming to the house that night.
Marlow and his friend Hastings get lost on the way and Tony plays a practical joke on them by telling the men that they can obtain lodging at the old inn down the road – which is in fact the country home of the Hardcastles.
This set-up leads to various comic scenes in which they treat Mr Hardcastle as a landlord and generally behave poorly. It is revealed that Marlow has a tendency to get tongue-tied among well-to-do women. Kate is drawn to him so she pretends to be a barmaid in order to win his heart – or, as Goldsmith put it, she stoops to conquer.
Meanwhile, Constance and her lover Hastings decide to keep the deception going. Hastings conspires with Tony to steal Constance’s jewels so that they can marry.
The impending arrival of Marlow’s father in Act 4 threatens to undo all of their plotting. Marlow has fallen for Kate, but still believes her to be a poor relation and therefore a poor match. As the various deceptions are revealed Tony, Marlow and Hastings have a huge argument.
In the fifth and final act, all of the threads are resolved in a satisfying way. The two couples are given permission to marry and Tony gets to dodge matrimony altogether. According to Sheridan Morley, “This was in some ways the turning-point for Simon, the moment when he started to use his own life as something more than an excuse for a gag-fest. It was written as a tribute to Marsha Mason, his second wife, and her tolerance with his long-lasting grief over the death of his first wife…There is something very painful here, in among the gags, about a man trying to come to terms with death rather than a new life.