Five-Eleven
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The 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot fell on 5 November 2005. Kate Glover's play chronicles the events, and poses questions to which we still seek answers four centuries later.
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A young ingénue from rustic Dorset, Evelina finds herself in the midst of the sophisticated beau monde and social minefield of 18th century London. She is extremely beautiful and is pursued by many admirers, suitable and unsuitable. The story is complicated by the fact that no-one knows who she really is. This threatens to stop her marrying the man she really loves, the honourable and handsome Lord Orville. Adapted from a novel written more than 200 years ago, the themes are of timeless relevance. Evelina has no parents at the beginning of the play: her mother is dead and her father has rejected her. Part of her quest is to be known by her father, to be acknowledged by him, to be a somebody as opposed to a nobody ; throughout the play she is frequently taunted with this vicious slur. Evelina had its first airing as a rehearsed reading on 13 June 2002, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Fanny Burney, at Dr Johnson's House off Fleet Street. The reading took place. She was introduced to Johnson by her father, the musician and writer Dr Charles Burney. The actual novel Evelina was written during the reign of George III, to whose consort, Queen Charlotte, Burney was for some years second keeper of the robes. Johnson was full of praise for the novel and commented: “…there were passages in it which might do honour to Richardson ”. Directed by Kate Glover at the Pentameters theatre in Hampstead in March 2004, Evelina was very well received:
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Performed in 1997at the Hen and Chickens in Islington, A Passionate Englishman portrays the life of William Penn. Though famous as a Quaker and as the founder of Pennsylvania, Penn converted to the Quaker faith only in his 20s, and was in America for a mere four years. Penn's foundation of a place of asylum for the persecuted Quakers of 17th-century England has only too obvious contemporary parallels. Kate Glover surfaces the often-ignored fact that Penn and the diarist Samuel Pepys were acquainted, and were both incarcerated for a time in the Tower of London, accused of Jacobitism. It is this period of Penn's life that provides the setting for the play, which takes the form of a dialogue between Penn and Pepys. It explores Penn's life in a series of flashbacks, by turns dramatic, comic and affecting; in parallel, it charts how the relationship between Pepys and Penn develops.
The play was well received, both as drama and for the professionalism of its production:
"...a miniature West End spectacular in Islington.""...constant attention to detail...head and shoulders above so many other fringe productions."
"...as a historian, Ms Glover discovered plenty of surprising facts about her subject."
The play was successfully performed later at Chigwell School (Penn's old school), produced by a member of the 6th form.