Series:

Acting Edition S.

4 total works

Cover of Billy Liar

Billy Liar

by Keith Waterhouse

Published March 1967
Billy Liar is a regional comedy about a youth who attempts to escape his dull family life through fantasy.

Cover of Good Grief

Good Grief

by Keith Waterhouse

Published 6 March 1997

Returning from the memorial service for her husband, a tough tabloid editor cut down in his prime, June Pepper sets about following his instructions to keep a journal, as therapy. But both grief and the journal prove elusive. Distracted by a problem stepdaughter and by a liaison with a man she discovers wearing one of her husband's old suits, she finds bereavement far from straightforward. And as she empties skeletons from closets, she learns there is far more to life than death.

Cover of Our Song

Our Song

by Keith Waterhouse

Published 1 July 1988
Roger Piper is married, middle-aged and middle-rung; he is a man who has elevated failure to an art form. His wife thinks he is up all night writing a novel. In fact, he's writing a suicide note, a long farewell letter to Angela Caxton, the girl with the marmalade-coloured hair, with whom he has shared a wild but hopeless affair. OUR SONG traces their entanglement from its carefree beginnings to its inevitable yet unexpected tragic end. Pouring out his heart, the former advertising executive - his career, as well as much else, sacrificed to the consuming trauma of his obsessive relationship - looks back upon the astonishing helter-skelter experience of falling unsuitably but violently in love.

Cover of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic and four-times married Jeffrey Bernard writes the "Low Life" column for the Spectator magazine chronicling Soho life as well as offering a very personal philosophy on vodka, women and race-courses. From this, Keith Waterhouse has brilliantly constructed a play (the title being the euphemism used by the Spectator when Bernard is incapable of writing his column) which is set in the saloon bar of Bernard's favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses. Having passed out in the lavatory, Bernard awakes in the early hours of the morning to find himself alone and in the dark. Unable to contact the landlord, he is resigned to spending the rest of the night with a bottle of vodka and an endless chain of cigarettes, narrating a story of hilarious anecdotes and witty reminiscences which are enacted by two actors and two actresses who bring to life the various characters who populate Jeff 's world. Starring Peter O'Toole, later succeeded by Tom Conti then James Bolam, the play enjoyed a hugely successful run at the Apollo Theatre, London.