When Nightingales Sang
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When Nightingales Sang
For as long as she could remember, Jessica Gray had wanted to be a singer - until the terrible day when the powerful and famous band leader Ken Peters told her that her husky contralto voice would never be good enough for the stage. Every day for two years she had lived with the bitter disappointment, spending her time as a teacher in a small Kentish village, trying to keep her impossible mother from interfering in her life. Then came war, and Kent was in the front line. And just as the Battle of Britain was about to begin, two momentous events occurred: Jessica discovered the truth of what had happened two years previously, and she met John Gales, Spitfire fighter pilot. At first, Jessica saw John as a means to an end: through him she could sing with the squadron band, and through him she would meet the American pilot Will Donaldson, gifted clarinetist and inspired song-writer. Will had plans for their future. But, possessively, John extracted a promise from Jessica - to sing for no one but him - that would have far-reaching ramifications when tragedy struck, and would bedevil Jessica's path to fulfilment and happiness.
When the Nightingale Sang
Mixing romance with a nostalgic flavour of the era, this is the true story of a nurses's training in Hammersmith, London, in the late 1950s, before detailing her working life as a district nurse in East Sussex in the 1960s.
Good' & 'A Nightingale Sang'
Good is a story about a liberal-minded university professor who drifts well-meaningly into a position in the upper reaches of the Nazi administration. It is a profound and alarming examination of passivity and the rationalisation of evil. John Halder, a professor of literature, seems to be a good man; he diligently visits his blind and senile mother and looks after his vacant wife and three children. He is unremarkable, other than an unusual neurotic tic: the imaginary sound of band music plays in the background of his life, particularly at moments of high emotion. But by writing a book – the result of his own experience – discussing euthanasia for senile elderly people and by lecturing on the delicacy of German literary culture, John has unintentionally made himself a very desirable acquisition for the Nazi party. By rationalised and intellectually reasoned steps he is absorbed into the direction of the death camps, a transformation all the more chilling because it does not seem dramatic, until the last horrible resounding note of the play. Good is a structured stream of consciousness, punctured by the musical medley that plays inside Halder's head. The first production was staged at the London Warehouse in 1982. And A Nightingale Sang . . . opens on a house in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne filled with well-meant and bustling domestic chaos. Set just before the beginning of the war, the scenes are partly related by Helen, who is stoical and self-deprecating and walks with a limp. Her grandfather Andie is recruiting mourners to attend the burial of his dog; her devout Catholic mother is fretting about the health of the local priest; her father is serenading an unwilling audience with the popular songs that light up the whole play. Joyce, Helen's younger, prettier sister is dithering over whether to accept a marriage proposal from Eric, who is being deployed to France. Helen, depended on for guidance by the whole family, has never had any attention from men – until she meets Norman, who shows her that she can waltz and fall in love. But for all the family, nothing can be the same after the war. And A Nightingale Sang . . . was first staged in 1977 by Live Theatre in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and was presented in this version at the Queen's Theatre, London, in 1979.