By far the most important information is the setting of the action on Kay's twenty-first and fortieth birthdays: this will not be missed by the audience as it is repeatedly stated, and reflected in the action (a birthday party, giving of presents, speculation about whether Robin will forget it, and so on). As the first act is dated precisely (references to the war, demobbing and strikes) in 1919 (Kay actually recalls the year at the end of Act Two; see p. 59) the author's statement that Act Two is set "at the present time (1937)" must be an approximation: the action is set a year ahead of the first date of performance (this, of course, is no longer a problem). Act Two plunges us into the shattered lives of the Conways exactly eighteen years later. Gathering in the same room where they were celebrating in Act One we see how their lives have failed in different ways. Robin has become a dissolute travelling salesman, estranged from his wife Joan, Madge has failed to realise her socialist dreams, Carol is dead, Hazel is married to the sadistic but wealthy Ernest. Kay has succeeded to a certain extent as an independent woman but has not realised her dreams of novel writing. Worst of all, Mrs Conway's fortune has been squandered, the family home is to be sold and the children's inheritance is gone. As the Act unfolds resentments and tensions explode and the Conways are split apart by misery and grief. Only Alan, the quietest of the family, seems to possess a quiet calm. In the final scene of the Act, Alan and Kay are left on stage and, as Kay expresses her misery Alan suggests to her that the secret of life is to understand its true reality – that the perception that Time is linear and that we have to grab and take what we can before we die is false. If we can see Time as eternally present, that at any given moment we are seeing only 'a cross section of ourselves,' then we can transcend our suffering and find no need to hurt or have conflict with other people. A new BBC Radio 3 adaptation was broadcast on 14 September 2014 [13] with Harriet Walter as Mrs. Conway, Anna Madeley as Kay, Rupert Evans as Alan and Michael Bertenshaw as J. B. Priestley. [ citation needed] Priestley uses the idea to show how human beings experience loss, failure and the death of their dreams but also how, if they could experience reality in its transcendent nature, they might find a way out. The idea is not dissimilar to that presented by mysticism and religion that if human beings could understand the transcendent nature of their existence the need for greed and conflict would come to an end. This guide is written for teachers and students who are studying J.B. Priestley's play Time and the Conways. The guide is written specifically for students in the UK, but I hope it may be helpful to users from other parts of the world. Time and the Conways is sometimes set as a text for assessed work in drama for English and English literature exams. It may also be studied for teacher-assessed coursework in English in Key Stages 3 and 4 (GCSE reading).

Madge arrives, explaining that she has only come because she was in the neighbourhood, being interviewed for a job as headmistress of a girls' school. She insists that she has no connection with the person she once was, and dismisses Alan's attempt to contradict her: at the end of the act he will explain his ideas to Kay. Remember to quote or refer to textual details. If you use quotation, set it out conventionally. And finally, say whether you like either or both of these works and why! It is in Act Three that the seeds are sown of the characters' future unhappiness: and it is because we already know (having seen Act Two) how different their future is to be from what they expect, that this Act is so painful to witness. Priestley's skill as a playwright also appears in the way in which he has shown us in the previous act what to look out for here. The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (the Great War) generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to 'the next war'.

The Music Man Last Performance

Robin suggests playing "Hide and Seek" - he wishes to be alone in the dark with Joan; at first Alan follows her but she insists that he leave her (she hopes Robin will find her). Madge (who quotes Blake's poem popularly known as Jerusalem) and Gerald have a heated debate about politics; though he argues against her, he is genuinely moved by her intelligent and fiery speech: Mrs. Conway sees this, is jealous, and ridicules Madge, and the moment is lost (it is this of which Madge accuses her mother in Act Two).

The play emerged from Priestley's reading of J. W. Dunne's book An Experiment with Time in which Dunne posits that all time is happening simultaneously; i.e., that past, present, future are one and that linear time is only the way in which human consciousness is able to perceive this. [3] The action we see is set in a family living-room (not the formal drawing-room where the guests are assembled). A game of charades is being played, and the six Conway children and their widowed mother appear as they find costume and props, and prepare their lines, before going (off-stage) into the drawing-room to perform the charade. In the course of this act, a number of their guests also appear: in fact the whole cast (save for Carol in Act Two) is on stage at some time in each of the three acts. Although Priestley gives information in the stage directions about the ages of all of the characters, this is not wholly clear to the audience: apart from Carol, all the Conway children are in their twenties, and they seem to have been born about a year apart: Alan is the eldest, then come Madge, Robin, Hazel, Kay and Carol.The Long Mirror, in which a woman artist has a curiously intimate relationship with a musician she has never met but has shared his life for five years in the spirit finally meet at a Welsh hotel;

Just saw this for the first time in some thirty years... Priestley wrote three 'Time' plays: "Dangerous Corners" is the best known other one (I think). He's also the author of "An Inspector Calls" which manages to be paranormal without spooky.

A BBC Radio 4 adaptation was directed by Sue Wilson and broadcast on 12 August 1994 (later re-broadcast on 23 May 2010 over BBC Radio 7). The cast included Marcia Warren as Mrs. Conway, Belinda Sinclair as Kay, John Duttine as Alan, Toby Stephens as Robin, Emma Fielding as Carol, Stella Gonet as Madge, Amanda Redman as Hazel, John McArdle as Ernest and Christopher Scott as Gerald.[12] Hazel Conway, the most beautiful and popular of the Conway sisters. Fair-haired, elegant, and seemingly self-confident, she is at her best at parties and games. She is pursued by and finally married to Ernest Beevers, a social-climbing young man who represents everything that the Conways scorn. She becomes a weak and terrorized wife. At the other end of the scale is her future brother-in-law Gerald, a heartless Northern capitalist and another character borrowed from Chekhov, whose awfulness is a tribute to actor Adrian Scarborough.

In terms of the play's structure, then, first we see a promising situation; next, we see what it becomes; and, finally, as we wonder how and why things go wrong, we see that things are already less than perfect in the life of the seemingly happy family. Priestley applies this to the standard three-act 1930s boulevard entertainment, so that act two of Time and the Conways runs concurrently with act one (only in a different spatial dimension), while acts three and one are simultaneous. All that considered, you may conclude that the play finishes before it begins, and there is no need to go to the theatre at all - except that it would be a shame to miss some very fine acting.Comment on how well, in your view, these parents bring up their children. Who would you rather have as your father or mother? Note the significant difference, that Mr. Gradgrind sees his mistake and changes, very much for the better, while we have no reason to suppose that Mrs. Conway ever does this. The Conway children enter the stage at different times. What we witness is the destruction of relationships over time, as well as the destruction of the family estate to due Mrs. Conway’s inept management of funds. Each character is harsher with no golden glow of happiness on their faces. Kay faces her life alone in a job that does not interest her, Robin is a drunk and an absent father, Hazel becomes an insecure and timid wife. Madge becomes a strict and joyless headmistress, and Mrs.Conway is a pathetic and spiteful shadow of herself. The only ones unchanged are Carol, and Alan. His inability to be angry, or what his family may refer to as his inability to think deeply about anything, is arguably a reiteration of his understanding of Blake’s poem. Alan does not feel the constraints of time like other characters. He understands that the heartwarming memories of his family in 1919 are equally as important to his makeup and his life as the grim times. In it we join the 21st birthday celebration party of Kay, middle daughter of the fictional Northern town of Newlingham's esteemed and prosperous Conway family. The year is 1919 and in this post-war period, with the return of peace, soldiers de-mobbing, families reuniting and prosperity on the up, you would think that all in the garden is rosy, as the matriarchal mother figure presides over the gathering which also includes a smattering of family friends and plus-ones Madge has already accused her mother of spoiling her hopes of happiness (p. 57; note that she uses the metaphor of sowing: "A seed is easily destroyed, but it might have grown into an oak tree"). This enables us to see the significance of an apparently trivial intervention by Mrs. Conway (p. 74) where she ridicules Madge's appearance and Socialist beliefs, accusing her of "boring poor Gerald". Madge becomes an embittered old maid, successful (to a point) in her work but (as Mrs. Conway spitefully points out; p. 55) having no idea of "what a woman's real life is like". But she is not the only one harmed by Mrs. Conway: Gerald has become "drier and harder", in Kay's words (p. 45) "like all those Newlingham men rolled into one" - a fate from which Madge could have saved him, and which, though he claims not to remember saying this, he had determined would never befall him. Hazel predicts a bright future for herself, married to a tall handsome man and living outside Newlingham, while Robin forecasts great things for himself (he has no idea what). Mrs. Conway now takes it upon herself to predict her children's futures: it is clear that she does not really know or value them, and the audience sees that her ideas are all mistaken. Carol joins in the predictions - at first she says, ironically, only that she wants "to live".