10:33am Tuesday 26th January 2010
By Ruth Meech
THOMAS Hardy expert the Rev Dr John Travell has been telling us some fascinating facts about the Hardy Players.
Dr Travell, who lives in Dorchester, also sent us these photographs of the Players, dating back to 1921.
One of the pictures is a group shot taken at Riverside, near Sturminster Newton, where Thomas and Emma hardy lived between 1876 and 1878.
The second is of Gertrude Bugler in her role of Eustacia Vye in a stage adaptation of The Return of the Native.
Gertrude was the elder sister of Norrie Woodhall, now 104, and founded the New Hardy Players. It was said at the time that Hardy’s wife Emma took against her because she was an attractive young woman and a favourite of the writer, but Dr Travell discounts this.
“Gertrude was the most important of the Players and Hardy was interested in her because he wanted to get his own version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles staged by professional actors and people like Sybil Thorndike,” he said.
“However, the professionals would not do the play because Hardy’s script was not actable – he didn’t think there was a difference between a novel and a stage play.
“Then Gertrude came along. The Hardy Players were amateurs and would do anything Hardy asked them to do – so now he could get his version of Tess done.”
In recent years, people have largely forgotten the fact that the Hardy Players were widely considered to be one of the most important drama groups in the county.
They regularly made the front pages of national newspapers, often to the detriment of other major stories of the time.
“The fact that they were as famous as they were has been forgotten,” said Dr Travell. “They made the front page of the Times.
“And in the year that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutenkhamun, there was a big feature on Carter but also two pages on Thomas Hardy in London staging The Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall.”
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