Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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London Assurance On a warm starry night, a group of fifteen boys and a master (Mr. Burns), wound their way across the 401 in the general direction of Toronto. Arriv- ing at the Royal Alexandra, which conspicuously lets everyone know that it is ‘since 1907’, we des- cended from the bus and entered the theatre in a manner becoming a regal procession. London Assurance is a rather old play written by Dion Boucieault (1820-1890) in 1841 and pro- duced on the fourth of March at Covent Garden in the same year. As an Irishman of great wit and sar- casm, Boucieault went to London (England of course! ) at the age of eighteen and wrote poetry and plays. With the immediate success of ‘London Assurance’ the author achieved recognition and with it personal assurance that he had left the group of artists and playwrights who would never see their work produced. He had given up formal schooling, had tried acting, was sensitive about his paternity, and unsure of his future. However, after that Thurs- day night he could write to his mother in Dublin, Today I was elected member of the Dramatic So- ciety ... I am looked upon as the great rising drama- tic poet of the age. Grandiose words, perhaps, but not excessive considering the impact of his play at that time. Only recently have Boucicault’s plays met the acid test of time. The highly successful pro- duction of London Assurance’ by the Royal Shake- speare Company in 1970 is a testament that the play has retained its attraction and sparkle. Dion Bouci- cault wrote more than 150 plays, many of which are currently in production in London or New York. The London Assurance seen by us at the Royal Alex has only four of the London cast in it. (In my opinion the best were kept and the rest were dis- creetly disposed of.) Donald Sinden (Sir Harcourt Courtly), John Carter (Monk Middle), Elizabeth Spriggs (Lady Gay Spanker), and Sydney Bromley (Adolphus Spanker ), were part of the original cast. Donald Sinden has been a leading actor in the West End for many years, dividing his time be- tween classical work for the Royal Shakespeare Company and some highly successful as well as po- pular comedies. His role as Sir Harcourt Courtly, the naive London socialite who smells like a French perfume factory, dates back to the revival of Lon- don Assurance in 1970. Elizabeth Spriggs is also a well known West End actress who joined the Royal Shakespeare Com- pany in 1962 and has had various film and television parts. As Lady Gay Spanker she portrays the slight- ly elderly, but very active wife of a country squire. She leads Sir Harcourt on with illusions that she loves him and is prepared to elope with him. The play is a rather sarcastic attack on British so- ciety, English Country and Town Life typical of the eighteenth century. This is particularly true in the caricatures of Sir Harcourt and his unruly son, Charles, along with the climbing fortune hunter and adventurer Dazzle, and of that lively but rather silly country woman, Lady Gay Spanker, whom we could all imagine as being alive today. To add to this collection of laughable people is Grace Harka- way, who changes from the original hard headed women’s libber’’ into a starry eyed lover. Solomon Isaacs, who is the perfect money lender, and all round nuisance, loves to file slander suits in court. I feel that London Assurance’ is one of the best plays that I have ever seen at the Royal Alex. A lit- tle bit of all of us is seen in at least one of the char- acters in the play and after one hundred and thirty years, London Assurance still ridicules English life. James Bursey 14

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Eisenstein’s Drawings Sergy Eisenstein, a noted Soviet, was a theoreti- cal genius in the field of film making. In October the foyer housed an exhibition of the man ' s draw- ings, which proved to be magnificent. For Eisenstein the drawing was a visual short- hand as opposed to an intricate replica of the sub- ject. In fact he used the drawing as a guide for the organization and construction of a film. The drawings in the exhibit consisted of simple charcoal and watercolour sketches in an abstract form. His subjects included the working people of Russia, political figures, Greek gods, and the Cruci- fixion. Indeed the majority of sketches gave the impression of a light hearted thought jotted down on paper, yet in reality no one picture lacked theore- tical value. The highlight of Eisenstein s films was his excel- lent use of montage, a technique which he initially developed. Montage is the grouping of unlike ob- jects in such a way that they suggest a new meaning and he uses this in some of his drawings as well. For example, we see one sketch of the woman putting the cloth to Jesus’ face while he carries the cross. The next drawing is one of a matador holding a cloak over the head of a bull. These are good exam- ples of the man’s imaginative mind. Sergy Eisenstein had an understanding of art in every form of the word. We were fortunate to wit- ness this man’s genius. Rod Kirkwood 13

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Literary