A while back i came across the comedies Busybody by Jack Popplewell and Out of Order by Ray Cooney. I know they both are british and that they were great successes in the theater. However, i was unable to find out anything more about them, even using google. Is anyone familiar with them?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0691602/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0177774/
Popplewell is dead but Cooney is still with us. IMDB.com will give you a start, including reviews of works of theirs that have been made into movies or series.
D.E. Morant. Thanks. I should've checked imdb. There was some info there. Now i know something about cooney at least.
Cooney was hugely successful in the popular theatre. His plays were the modern equivalent of Feydeau, the 19th century French playwright. The plays also hark back to the British restoration period of the 17th century, with people like Wycherley (The Country Wife) and John Dryden (Marriage a la Mode). The Restoration plays were also called Plays of Manners, and usually involved sexual antics, affairs, wives been cheated on, and men being cuckolded. Cooney's plays did not get the critical attention that the 17th century playwrights did but many were hugely successful - Run For Your Wife particularly. I think the reason was not artistic snobbery on the part of the critics, but the slightness of Cooney's plays. Perhaps we might compare them to a lot of the Carry On series of films.
Jack Popplewell information updated on the English Wikipedia site at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Popplewell . I've pulled together a collection of sheet music, records, play scripts, theatre programmes, movie files etc if of any help. Purely casual interest in that he lived down the road from me when I was a child. His plays continue to be performed (esp Busybody) in the UK and I spotted recently in France. There's a nice Jazz version of If I should fall in love again by Sathima Bea Benjamin. His work is very much `of its time', and accordingly interesting.
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