Stanley
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Written byPam Gems
Date premiered1996
Place premieredCottesloe, National Theatre, London
Original languageEnglish
SubjectA painter wants two wives simultaeneously.
GenreDrama
Setting1920-1959; Cookham in Berkshire and Hampstead in London,

Stanley is a 1996 play written by English playwright, Pam Gems. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London.

Plot synopsis

The play explores the complicated life of British painter Stanley Spencer, who was played by Antony Sher in the play's London and Broadway debuts.

Spencer was a twentieth century painter, whose work attempted to combine the sexual with the divine in contemporary English settings. His paintings frequently showed biblical scenes taking place in ordinary English villages, particularly Cookham, and often depicted, or used figures inspired by, his friends, relatives and lovers.

Spencer married two different women; he left his first wife, Hilda Carline, an artist who put her ambition aside to make a home for him, to marry Patricia Preece, a defiantly unconventional lesbian who made her reputation as an artist by passing off the works of her lover, Dorothy Hepworth, as her own,[1] and who was incapable of loving him. Much of the play revolves around his passionate attachment to both women.

Awards and nominations

Awards
Nominations

References

  1. ↑ "Lives Laid Bare / The second wife of the British painter Stanley Spencer wouldn't live with him -- and, it turns out, she didn't paint her own pictures". 19 July 1998.
  2. ↑ Evening Standard Awards Retrieved on 8 October 2009
  • Gems, Pam (1996). Stanley (First ed.). London: Nick Hern Books. ISBN 1-85459-254-8.
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