Harvey Plays 2

A new collection of the latest plays from the writer of Beautiful Thing and TV's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme "JONATHAN HARVEY has an athletic and fantastical imagination, bawdy, funny and joyously blasphemous" Sunday Times GUIDING STAR: "Dry, funny, truthful, the writing buzzes with graceful perception and Scouse sarcasm...one of the best new plays of the year" Daily Mail HUSHABYE MOUNTAIN: "You would have to have a heart hewn from granite not to respond warmly to Jonathan Harvey's latest play" Guardian OUT IN THE OPEN: "A touching exploration of grief, the secrets and lies that evolve in friendships and the difficulty of telling the truth to those we love" The Times

A new collection of the latest plays from the writer of Beautiful Thing and TV's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme "JONATHAN HARVEY has an athletic and fantastical imagination, bawdy, funny and joyously blasphemous" Sunday Times GUIDING STAR: "Dry, funny, truthful, the writing buzzes with graceful perception and Scouse sarcasm...one of the best new plays of the year" Daily Mail HUSHABYE MOUNTAIN: "You would have to have a heart hewn from granite not to respond warmly to Jonathan Harvey's latest play" Guardian OUT IN THE OPEN: "A touching exploration of grief, the secrets and lies that evolve in friendships and the difficulty of telling the truth to those we love" The Times

THE STORY: When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, to guests at a society party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him c

F.W. Harvey was one of a generation whose lives were splintered by the First World War, and one of that group of war poets for whom the war changed everything. He joined the 5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment only days after war was declared, and was among the first Territorials to land in France. As a Lance-Corporal he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘conspicuous gallantry’ and was commissioned shortly afterwards. He survived the Somme offensive but in August 1916 was captured by the Germans while reconnoitring alone behind enemy lines. He spent the rest of the war in p-o-w camps.But Harvey was more than just a tough soldier. A contemporary of Sassoon, Brooke and Thomas – and with Ivor Gurney his closest friend – he wanted nothing more when ‘at rest’ than an interval of quiet in which to set down in verse his longing for his Gloucestershire homeland, his outrage at the waste of war, his joy in comradeship, his humour and his unflinching faith. This biography contains many of the poems, including the world-famous ‘Ducks’, and is illustrated with a wealth of contemporary photographs

Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) was one of Britain's leading composers: his music is frequently performed throughout Europe, the United States (where he lived and worked) and Japan. He is particularly renowned for his electro-acoustic music, an aspect on which most previous writing on his work has focused. The present volume is the first detailed study of music from Harvey's considerable body of work for conventional forces. It focuses on two pieces that span one of the most fertile periods in Harvey's output: Song Offerings (1985; awarded the prestigious Britten Award), and White as Jasmine (1999). The book explores the links between the two works - both set texts by Hindu writers, employ a solo soprano, and adumbrate a spiritual journey - as well as showing how Harvey's musical language has evolved in the period between them. It examines Harvey's techniques of writing for the voice, for small ensemble (Song Offerings), and for large orchestra, subtly and characteristically enhanced with electronic sound (White as Jasmine). It shows how Harvey's music is informed by his profound understanding of Eastern religion, as well as offering a clear and accessible account of his distinctive musical language. Both works use musical processes to dramatic and clearly audible effect, as the book demonstrates with close reference to the accompanying downloadable resources. The book draws on interviews with the composer, and benefits from the author's exclusive access to sketches of the two works. It contextualises the works, showing how they are the product of a diverse series of musical influences and an engagement with ideas from both Eastern and Western religions. It also explores how Harvey continued to develop the musical and spiritual preoccupations revealed in these pieces in his later work, up to and including his third opera, Wagner Dream (2007).