All is Fortune: And Other Theatre Stories
By Jonathan Croall
(1 customer review)
Publication Date: 28 Jun 2023
£8.99
Categories: Poetry, Short Stories and Plays
ISBN: 9781915603814Description
This unusual collection of short stories captures the essence of life in the theatre. Behind the superficial glamour lies a world marked by ambition, jealousy and heartache.
Among stories featured in All is Fortune are an actress under stress at an audition, a struggling playwright committing a deception, a biographer falling out with his subject, a female playwright suffering sexual harassment, and many others. Lighter stories tell of the mysterious disappearance of a member of an amateur dramatic society, the unrequited love of a chorus girl in a musical, and a monologue by an elderly jobbing actor.
Jonathan Croall, a leading theatre historian and biographer, and the son of well-known actors, has created these imaginative stories with warmth, insight and humour, bringing vividly to life a host of well-drawn characters.
'Jonathan Croall has written extensively and illuminatingly about acting and actors. In these stories he attempts something different, a sequence of shiny, shard-like vignettes – some ironic, some poetic, some straightforwardly realistic – which reflect the life of the theatre in all its many aspects. Haunting.’ Simon Callow, actor and writer
Jonathan Croall is a theatre historian and biographer living in London. His books include acclaimed biographies of John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike, and Buzz Buzz!, a collection of interviews with playwrights, actors and directors working at the National Theatre. Other titles include Performing Hamlet and Performing King Lear in the Arden Shakespeare series, and the inside story of Peter Hall’s productions of The Bacchai and Waiting for Godot.
Reviews
Jonathan Croall - 03 Jun, 2024
Amazon reviews
alias44
5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining and absorbing collection
I enjoyed All is Fortune immensely. The stories are written by an author who has an insider's deep knowledge of the theatre and of actors, and are immensely sympathetic to the challenges, vanities, complexities and excitement of play-making and stagecraft. I especially liked the teasing connections between the plots of the actors' plays and their own stories. I think it's a very heartfelt collection, as well as being amusing and unusual as well.
Anne
5.0 out of 5 stars Witty and Compelling!
Do devour these delicious short stories of the theatre written by somebody who knows this world well. It's a gem of a book and many of the individuals snd incidents are only too life-like.
charles duff
5.0 out of 5 stars Much pleasure and enjoyment in these short stories.
‘All is Fortune’ is a collection of short stories, like a good musical, where each new number is different but as good as the one before. And all the many voices are so authentic.
My favourites were ‘A Brief Encounter’ which I found very moving (what a wonderful television play it would make). ‘A Holiday Humour’ is a delight, Felicity bringing Edward to self-realisation, as Rosalind does Orlando, and ‘Surviving’ which is told with such truth. I was at drama school in the late 60s with a girl who became much like Gwen. These theatrical short stories are very highly recommended.
KC
5.0 out of 5 stars Keep reading!
Here's a fine collection of stories and characters - back stage, front stage, aspiring, waiting, in rehearsal, in retirement, in decline. These are the tales of the people who make the theatre, told from a wealth of knowledge and experience and with a deep affection for the plays.
DJC
5.0 out of 5 stars A moving portrayal of characters in the world of theatre
I really enjoyed All Is Fortune, a collection of stories about characters who are all involved in the theatre. As someone raised in a theatrical family, I found it compelling to read these moving vignettes where the terms of reference all make sense me. It was rather like dipping into a book of poetry with each story having a different feeling. Sometimes I wanted to know more and find out what happens to the characters but in a way that is the point of a short story and, like the performances they portray, you are left wanting more.
RHD
5.0 out of 5 stars Good situations
I was sorry to finish 'All is Fortune'. Each story has an
interesting central situation and the observation is good too. What comes across most strongly is the underlying feeling of what it is to struggle in the world of the performing arts. Cleopatra had immortal longings, and so many of these characters have desperate yearnings which ring very true. I thought the comic tone in 'There's This Captain' was spot on and that 'Living in the Past' had the reek of a particular kind of vanity - but
there were so many to enjoy.
CL
5.0 out of 5 stars Sometime humorous, often poignant, a convincing picture of life connected with the theatre
I enjoyed this collection, presenting as it does a colourful mosaic of life in and around the theatre, mixing satire and pastiche in with more serious themes. The 21 stories feature a wide range of situations, characters and emotions, from a forlorn middle-aged actress whose career has not reflected her early promise, to the impenetrable egotism of a has-been star; from the transient relationships and passions of an often itinerant life-style, to a fluffed audition and the frustrations of a hopeful playwright. Six of the stories involve Shakespeare plays, while others by Chekhov, Ibsen, Euripides and Ayckbourn also feature.
Not only those interested in the theatre will appreciate the collection’s dreams and disappointments, the wasted talents, the thwarted aspirations, but also the compensations and rewards of this inherently insecure, yet often exciting and essentially creative, lifestyle. After all, the lows and highs are not so very different from those encountered in life in general, where, as in the theatre, ‘All is fortune’.
