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Cover of Big Drum

Big Drum

Arthur Wing Pinero

Length
4 h 28 min
Chapters
6
Language
English
Genre
Plays
First published
1915

Another Pinero play. Biting satire this time, ironic comedy - not a farce. The Big Drum, a novel being written by Phil, one of the main characters, is "an attempt to portray the struggle for notoriety—for self-advertisement—we see going on around us to-day." "Oh, I believe any world would content me that's totally different from the world I've lived in so long; any world that isn't flat and stale and stifling; that isn't made up of shams, and petty aims and appetites; any world that—well, such a world as you used to picture, Phil, when you preached your gospel to a selfish, common girl under the chestnuts in the Allée de Longchamp and the Champs-Elysées! ... I've been waiting—waiting for you—in my dreams—for ten years! " - Summary by ToddHW

NOTE: There is an Author's Preface. Because it contains spoilers, it has been put at the end of the Act 4 file.

Cast list:

Philip Mackworth: Nemo

Sir Randle Filson, Knight: ToddHW

Bertram Filson (his son): Tomas Peter

Sir Timothy Barradell, Baronett: alanmapstone

Robert Roope: Adrian Stephens

Collingham Green: Larry Wilson

Leonard Westrip (Sir Randle's secretary): Shashank Jakhmola

Alfred Dunning (of Sillitoe and Dunning's Private Detective Agency): Son of the Exiles

Noyes (Mr. Roope's servant): Steven Fellows

Underwood (servant at Sir Randle's): KevinS

John (Mr. Mackworth's servant): Devorah Allen

Ottoline de Chaumié, Comtesse de Chaumié, née Filson: Eva Davis

Lady Filson: Sonia

Honourable Mrs. Godfrey Anslow: Leanne Yau

Mrs. Walter Quebec: TJ Burns

Miss Tracer (Lady Filson's secretary): Availle

Stage Directions: MichaelMaggs

Edited By: ToddHW

Chapters

From LibriVox, read by volunteers and in the public domain. LibriVox page (opens librivox.org), the text (opens gutenberg.org), all files on the Internet Archive (opens archive.org).