The Dame and the Showgirl, an audio play by Simon Berry is to be released as an Audible Original, available from 6 May 2021.
‘The Dame and the Showgirl was that rare thing – a script that landed in your lap fully formed and perfectly executed, as funny as it is poignant and a wonderfully imagined encounter between two of the most extraordinary women in the 20th century. I shall be forever grateful to Simon Berry for having the idea and asking me to be part of it.’ (Emma Thompson)
Most people when they retire take up a new hobby, decide to train for the marathon, get a pet or look after their grandchildren one day a week.
Simon Berry has done none of those things. Instead, having retired on his sixtieth birthday, Simon has forged an entirely new career as a playwright. He has written a sparklingly witty audio play based on an unlikely real-life encounter between Dame Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe and landed one of the UK’s best loved actors, Emma Thompson, to play Dame Edith. Sinead Matthews, known for Pride & Prejudice and Nanny McPhee, plays Marilyn.
The play will be available from Audible, a leading provider of spoken-word entertainment, from 6 May. The Dame & the Showgirl will appeal to the new wave of listeners to audio drama, launching at a time when what would have been staged productions are now being offered up for listeners to enjoy remotely in audio form. It paves the way for a new approach to drama, followed by recent Audible Theatre successes including On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Barry, Avalanche by Julia Leigh and performed by Maxine Peake and Massive by Charlie Josephine.
Simon Berry initially joined Britain’s oldest wine and spirit merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd – the seventh generation of his family to do so – in 1977 and retired on his 60th birthday in November 2017. A lifelong thespian, and former RADA Trustee, Simon then turned his hand to playwriting, with spectacular results.
The inspiration for The Dame & the Showgirl came by chance when Simon attended a lecture given by Edith Sitwell’s great niece, Alexandra Sitwell, which featured a photograph of the poet and critic Dame Edith and Monroe when the two first met for an interview for Life Magazine in 1953. When Simon asked Alexandra if such a meeting had really taken place, she told him the background. Now, 68 years later, that encounter has become the inspiration behind Berry’s first audio play, The Dame and the Showgirl.
Playwright Simon Berry, says, ‘I’ve always been fascinated by Edith Sitwell, the twentieth century grande dame of poetry, and this extraordinary encounter in 1953 seemed to be the perfect setting for my first play. Against all the odds, the 25 year old rising star Marilyn and the formidable Dame Edith got on brilliantly and so the interview which Dame Edith had been commissioned to write for Life magazine – which was envisaged as a hostile encounter between two very different worlds – never appeared.
‘Writing my first play has been a fascinating process. I’m used of course to writing about wine and have tried my hand at writing for the stage in the past, but this was a completely different experience. Writing for audio is so direct, you’re writing straight into the ear of the listener and, of course, there are more listeners for drama during lockdown particularly while the theatres are still closed.
‘An added bonus for anyone tuning in is that they will be given the recipe for the definitive Dry Martini, as defined by the Dame and enjoyed by the Dame and the Showgirl alike.’
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