Nicol Williamson

Torrent Update.

Luke — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:08:14 +0000

The Arturo Ui torrent is back up, should have Bofors Gun back up shortly. Once you download, please help seed until we get enough seeders going. I believe i have a copy of The Reckoning here too, which i may upload as well if it’s not available to purchase anywhere.

Update!

Val — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:42:45 +0000

This is Luke Posting on Val’s admin acct as i seem to be having a problem with my account at the moment. I apologise for the lack of activity here, i moved back to the states and im working very long hours and as im about to move again, i dont have an ISP set up. So it’s taken me a little while to get around to checking up on things!

Regarding the torrents, Bofors Gun, Ui and The Reckoning- I have found someone willing to torrent them for me, should any of you wish to do so as well I can try to send out a few copies.
I apologise again for the delays, my time is so limited right now, but in the next few months that should change.

Thanks for your patience,

Luke

PS i have the interview ready to be uploaded soon as well, so keep an eye out for that!

The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui

Luke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:12:29 +0000

Jack: A Night On The Town with John Barrymore

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:09:47 +0000

“Jack” was a one man play, written and performed by Nicol and directed by Leslie Megahey. It played in the West End of London at the Criterion Theatre, and was critically acclaimed. It then moved to the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles where it ran for several months, before finishing on Broadway.
Here then is the unexpurgated audio version in 15 parts. I’m uploading the first seven parts now, and the rest over the next couple of days.

Update

Luke — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:21:33 +0000

Time is fast approaching for the interview, which should be up in the next 10 days. So if you have any questions to add to the list of questions so far submitted, now is the time to let me know!
Apart from that, ill be uploading the audio recording of Nicol’s one man play “Jack, A Night On The Town With John Barrymore” in the same time frame. I’ve also located a tape of at least some of Nicol’s performance at The White House, and when i get that converted to CD, I’ll be putting up some excerpts.

Luke

Poetry

Luke — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:17:01 +0000

Here, then, are some of Nicol’s poems..some funny, some melancholy, a window into the soul.

The Beckett Piece

Luke — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:30:00 +0000

Samuel Beckett was a legendary Irish dramatist, writer and poet. His most famous play was probably “Waiting for Godot’ but he wrote many plays and books and also poetry and prose. He and Nicol became very good friends, and this work is, in part, a recounting of their friendship.

A Reading of Lawrence Durrell’s ‘La Valise’

Luke — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:35:20 +0000

This is something Nicol did for fun, as he loves Durrell’s work. He nipped into the studio one afternoon a few months ago and brought this back, I thought I’d share it with you, hope you Durrell enthusiasts will enjoy!

Other Hobbit Clips

Luke — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:12:45 +0000

As requested, Im putting up these clips back up, so you can hear the audio quality of the torrent Hobbit files.

Scenes from Arturo Ui

Luke — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:30:15 +0000

Arturo Ui was filmed by the BBC in the early 1970’s. It was deliberately filmed to emulate the early gangster movies, in grainy black and white. From the Wiki encyclopaedia…

“The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (original German title: Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) is a play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, originally written in 1941. It chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional ’30s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition.

It was written by Brecht in only three weeks in 1941 whilst in exile in Helsinki awaiting a visa to enter the US. The play was not produced on the stage until as late as 1958, and not until 1961 in English. In spite of this, Brecht never envisioned a German language version of the play, intending it for the American stage.

The play is consciously a highly satirical allegory of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, whose rise Brecht represented in parallel to that of Ui. All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Röhm, Dogsborough representing Paul von Hindenburg (a pun on the German Hund and Burg), Emanuele Giri representing Göring, the Cauliflower Trust representing the Prussian Junkers, the fate of the town of Cicero standing for the Anschluss in Austria and so on. In addition, every scene in the play is based on a real event, for example the warehouse fire which represented the fire at the Reichstag, or the Dock Aid Scandal which represented the Osthilfeskandal (East Aid) scandal. The play is similar to the film The Great Dictator (1941), which also featured an absurd parody of Hitler by a hero of both Brecht and Hitler, Charlie Chaplin.

Dramatically it is in keeping with Brecht’s Epic style of theatre. It opens with a prologue written in the form of a direct address to the audience outlining all the major characters and explaining the basis of the upcoming plot, allowing the audience to better focus on the message than the suspense of what may happen next. It also describes in its stage directions the prominence that technical aspects of theatre should play in a production, most notably in the use of signs or projections appearing after certain scenes which present the audience with relevant information about Hitler’s own rise to power, in order to clarify the parallels. The play also uses frequent references to Shakespeare and other writers to further its didactic messages. To highlight his evil and villainous rise to power Ui is compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III in both the introductory prologue and in scene 14 when he experiences similar visitations from the ghosts of his victims as Richard does; while Hitler’s own learned prowess at public speaking is referenced by Ui receiving lessons from an actor which include him reciting Mark Anthony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.”