Days of Hope

Days of Hope is set in Spain in 1939, in the dying moments of the Spanish Civil War. The story begins with a family celebrating the marriage of the daughter, Sofia, to an English volunteer, but the wedding meal is tinged with anger at Franco and his fascists. They plan to escape that night to England with Sofia’s groom, Stanley, but before the plan is executed, various visitors over the course of the evening bring different perspectives upon their condemnation of Franco, of Mussolini and Hitler for their intervention, and of Britain’s non-intervention… The family ends up being torn apart, trying to decide whether to flee or stay and fight.

DAYS OF HOPE received its first performance on August 14th 1990 at The Newman Rooms in Oxford. It was revised and produced again at Hampstead Theatre in April 1991, subsequently touring England. During its 6-week run at Hampstead, a large group of the surviving International Brigaders saw the show and met its cast. It is not a conventional through-composed musical but a play punctuated by songs. Characters do not sing the songs 'to' other characters but to the audience directly, rather in the manner envisaged by Brecht & Weill.

Songs: 1. DAYS OF HOPE Sofia & Stanley, full company. 2. DEMOCRACY Pablo & full company BEER, BOMBS AND MARCHING BOYS Maria, the men. 3. HARVEST full company 4. SONG OF THE BRIGADES Stanley & company 5. DEMOCRACY Pablo then full company. 6. LONG LIVE DEATH Jose & company 7. SCARBOROUGH FAIR Stanley 8. SAY GYPSY SAY the women 9. SONG OF THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEER Stanley 10. MARKET DAY Maria, Teresa 11. GOD SAID TO FRANCO full company 12. IF NOT TODAY full company 13. LORCA Sofia & Teresa 14. ANTONIO Carlos & Teresa as boy 15. DAYS OF HOPE Teresa & Pablo, full company.

Days of Hope is scored for two guitars, piano and double bass. Perusal copies of the vocal score can be found by clicking here (Sibelius Scorch score).

The script by Renata Allen can be downloaded here.

The original London cast recording is available on iTunes.

[Romanian soldiers celebrating the overthrow of Ceausescu; picture Austral/International]

What the critics said...

"Socialist musicals are rare enough; good socialist musicals almost unknown. Howard Goodall’s Days of Hope is very good… the production was both humourous and moving and, through it’s music, ultimately inspiring." The Guardian

"The songs are a joy to listen to… The warmth of the songs humanises the political argument, and the show is uplifting and joyful… Days of Hope is that rarity nowadays: an intelligent musical. It gives us food for thought and it also sends us out humming some very tuneful songs." The Oxford Times

"..a story told with deceptive simplicity in Renata Allen's script, punctuated with hauntingly beautiful songs by award-winning Howard Goodall with huge debt to Kurt Weill and Spanish folk song. The savagery of battle pauses briefly to allow the snatched happiness of the wedding before the desperate flight from anger and betrayal. It is beautifully staged and compassionately acted." Southend Evening Echo 5/3/91

LINCOLNSHIRE ECHO 13TH MARCH 1991:

Hope is inspiring

No more than now is the effect of war on people more sharp. But last night’s performance of Days of Hope at the Theatre Royal brought it even more into mind. Audiences did not need to have a degree in Spanish history or be very politically minded to enjoy this marvellous Oxford Stage Company production. The musical is set in a small fishing village in Spain in 1939 and Franco’s fascist army is on the march against the socialists fighting for a democratic country. Village girl Sofia (Carla Mendonca) has just married Stanley (Nicholas Caunter) a lad from Scarborough who joined in the socialist cause and now must escape to England. Days of Hope by Howard Goodall, is touchingly funny with a terrific performance from Una Stubbs as Sofia’s grouchy mother. The music is inspiring and the set shows us a Spain most package holiday tourists from Britain have never seen - a truly great performance by all.

SOUTHERN EVENING ECHO 20TH MARCH 1991:

Days of Hope, Theatre Royal, Winchester

The 1930’s Spanish Civil War hardly sounds a likely source of material for a musical, but this breathtaking new production sweeps away any such preconceptions in the opening bars of its first song. Quite simply, composer Howard Goodall and writer Renata Allen have produced a masterpiece of a musical that outshines anything the Rice-Lloyd Webber machine has come up with. That it should have opened in Winchester is the town’s privilege, for next stop must surely be the West End. A remote 50 year-old war is brought movingly to life by focussing on one family caught up in the strife. At times the intensity of emotion produced by the songs and the rapidly paced action is almost unbearable. There was no one star among the seven-strong Oxford Theatre Company cast, which includes seasoned performers Una Stubbs and John Turner, but young Phyllida Hancock’s voice was memorable in her role as Teresa. There simply aren’t enough superlatives in the dictionary to describe this show. You just have to see it.

PLAYS AND PLAYERS JULY 1991:

Nick Curtis at Hampstead Theatre

Sentiment flows like sangria from Howard Goodall’s endearing, low-concept Spanish musical. It’s the end of the Civil War and Scarborough Communist Stanley has brought his comrade, the wounded, illiterate fisherman Carlos, back from defeat at the front, only to fall in love with and marry Carlos’ daughter, Sofia. The play takes place at the impoverished nuptial dinner, a beanfeast which is more beans than feast, hurriedly conducted before the family set sail for freedom from Franco’s revenge. Of all the Spanish offerings currently going the rounds (Matador, The last days of Don Juan), this is the one which wears its political and emotional heart most obviously on its sleeve. Goodall’s songs and Renata Allen’s script shamelessly stoke the fires of nostalgia in what is, at heart, a romantic and simple celebration of love, honour and heroism here embodied by the brave Spanish Republicans.

The melodious signature ‘Days of Hope’, which opens the play proper, hints at what is to come. A pleasing, simple tune, it nonetheless holds the same unwitting prescience of doom as the crushing declaration of hope that ends David Hare’s Plenty: ‘There will be days and days and days like this.’ An even stronger sense that the delirious idyll of the newlyweds may not last comes when Sofia relishes the names of the wondrous new cities of opportunity she expects to find in 30s Britain: ‘Leeeds! Man-chester!’

Although dark shadows of death and political strife do eventually loom over the wedding feast, most of the play is dedicated to exploring the bonds of love and camaraderie that hold the family, and the volunteer Republican units, together. While the initial focus is on Carla Mendonca’s winningly pert Sofia and Nichola Caunter’s pragmatic Stanley, it’s really the story of Carlos and his wife Maria. John Turner plays the ageing fisherman with real earth grandeur, as a bombastic, jovial and very likeable man who’s not going to let a little thing like a shrapnel-torn stomach spoil his enjoyment of the feast. Much of the dialogue consists of his sparring with the fussy Maria, played by Una Stubbs with her mouth winsomely pursed, as a nagging old dear, forever patting cheeks or making throwaway Hispanic gesture of disgust.

Together the characters rehash the ideals and the failure of the War; young Pablo, who is due to marry Sofia’s cousin Teresa, appears as a representative of the laissez-faire Spanish who swallowed Franco’s propaganda, and Carlos’ ex-comrade Jose, once heroic and now vicious, shows his face to add some objective balance. It’s not the most subtle or well-argued defence of Republicanism ever posited, but John Retallack handles the script’s gentle wit with loving care and the actors present well-rounded characters who can be slickly identified with their politics.

They also acquit themselves well in Goodall’s repertoire of wistful or stirring songs, accompanied by a piano and two Spanish guitars. These are grafted onto the action rather than springing naturally from it, but they slot in very well. Stubbs’ voice sounds a little strangled in her solos (she also has the least felicitous line to sing, concerning a market trader who offers ‘his nuts, at a price’), and Turner’s deep tones can get swamped in the harmonies.

But the seven actors make up a fine ensemble, and many of the songs are very affecting. Towards the end, Carlos sings of a young Republican, Antonio, who mistakenly believed he had a charmed life. Phyllida Hancock, whose bell-like voice is otherwise employed as Teresa, sings the chorus as the young boy. But it was when Turner took over the sad refrain, ‘You will never die’, after the boy’s death that tears came into my musical-weary and schmaltz-inured eyes. This ultimately, is how Days of Hope works, by going direct for the heart rather than the brain. It’s not very authentically Spanish, or politically shrewd. But it is a good, old-fashioned tear-jerker, and none the worse for that.

RUTH LEON - LBC:

"…. What was for me, however, is a very charming small musical by Howard Goodall at Hampstead. It’s called Days of Hope and Howard Goodall, you remember, did Girlfriends and before that The Hired Man based on the novel by Melvyn Bragg. Every few years he comes up with a musical, this one I think is probably the best of them, with wonderful songs. Marvellous, melodic, gentle, tuneful songs. Sung, in this case, very beautifully, very simply. It is a musical about the Spanish Civil War. A small cast on the tiny Hampstead stage. Somebody has really managed to make a moonlit Mediterranean on that stage and get six people on it as well which is fairly amazing. Simply, honestly performed. Gentle piano, two guitars to emphasise the Spanish theme. Musically, I think, quite complex.

The book as always happens with Howard Goodall’s musicals, leaves a good deal to be desired. Nothing much happens and then everything happens in the last fifteen minutes. So not, perhaps, a plot musical. Lovely performances, really beautiful performances from all kinds of people. There’s Una Stubbs and John Turner being a kind of Spanish Tevye and Golde. Loving, bickering - you really end up caring about this family who are on the losing end of a war. A rather charming, beautiful evening in the theatre.

"...Goodall's songs raise it to a height at which it is difficult to remain untouched" Peter Hepple, The Stage & TV Today 25/4/91

Original Cast (Oxford): Tim Hardy, Nicola Scott, Phyllida Hancock, Kiran Hocking, Nicholas Caunter, William Relton; directed by John Retallack, designed by Will Bowen (costumes Jill Parker), guitars Max Brittain & John Coverdale, lighting design by Ray Cross.

Original Cast (London): John Turner, Una Stubbs, Carla Mendonca, Nicholas Caunter, Phyllida Hancock, Darryl Knock, Danny Cerqueira. Musical director Paul Smith, Director John Retallack, designer Will Bowen (costumes Jill Parker), guitars Max Brittain & John Coverdale.

Production team, Hampstead Theatre 1991

Exeter Northcott Theatre Community Company Production 2004, directed by Nick Stimson. Photograph by Alan Winn. More of Alan's photos of this outstanding revival can be found at the Days of Hope gallery.

Website for the 2007 London revival of Days of Hope can be found here.

[Spanish Civil War posters courtesy of the UCSD Southworth Collection]

[Other poster links can be found here]

Some texts that inspired Days of Hope:

from The Nabara

Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage

Of statesmen, the tyrant's dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer's mad

Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made

In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage

But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed.

Mortal she is, yet rising always refreshed from her ashes:

She is bound to earth, yet she flies as high as a passage bird

To home wherever man's heart with seasonal warmth is stirred:

Innocent is her touch as the dawn's, but still it unleashes

The ravisher shades of envy. Freedom is more than a word.

(by C. Day Lewis, reprinted from The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse)

Harvest in 1937

The road from Valencia to Madrid descends in a series of dramatic hairpin bends to the gorge of the Rio Gabriel; and rises again as dramatically. In those swooping few miles one changes country, leaves behind the orange groves and the olives, the oleanders growing wild along the dried winterbournes, the roses edging the dusty road; and comes into a vast austere tableland that rolls onwards towards distant Madrid, and grows corn. Here, as we drove on our way to attend the Madrid sessions of the Second Congress of the Writers in Defence of Culture, the harvest was being reaped, reaped with a sickle.

It is a beautiful gesture, if one cares for the picturesque. As the reaper stoops, grasping the locks of corn, and swings the sickle with a movement made elegant by the centuries of hereditary use, and casts the swathe behind him, and stoops and grasps and swings the sickle again, it is as though one watched a series of caresses. And along with him his shadow, small under the midday sun, repeats the movement in a contracted perspective.

Women reap among the men. Looking closely, one sees how these groups acknowledge war. Women of all ages, old men, children, make up the greater part of these bands. The babies sit along the edge of the corn-strips, sometimes there is a dog with them, or a tethered mule or donkey, chewing at the harsh stubble.

The reapers are too sunburned to look hot. Faced and bared arms are dark, shining with sweat they look like oiled wood. The men wear broad-brimmed hats, the women muffle their heads in thick kerchiefs, sometimes they have a white cloth bound over the mouth. This prevents the rasping straw dust from irritating the throat. The dust settles on faces and bared arms, the flies buzz.

Mile after mile the beautiful reaping gesture persists, tireless, identical. And one begins to remember the feel of corn, to remember that those locks of corn which seem so yielding are in truth harsh and spiky; that to tread on corn-stubble is like treading on metal filings; that along with the sweet scent of corn flies the teasing, tickling corn dust. Among the corn are the sharp, low-growing thistles, the small aggressive weeds of a dry soil, clawing and scratching the feet of those who tread them.

There are many weeds among the corn. By our English standards it is a poor crop, short in straw, light in the ear. Scanty as is the corn, the reapers are scantier yet. As the road goes on over the interminable plain one begins to wonder if the corn will ever be reaped, the landscape is so large, the little groups of reapers so widely spaced.

At intervals along the enormous horizon mountains appear. The plain is a general sunburned tawny colour, the rock of the mountains is painted by distance to a lovely colour like lavender. But in spite of the tender colour given to them by depth of air, these mountains have an inimical aspect, they seem to have the watchfulness of tyrants, not of guardians, as they overlook this landscape of poor corn and scattered reapers.

And where do they live, these reapers? Bound to the soil, it is as though they rose out of it to serve the corn, and, the harvest gathered, sank into the ground again. The villages lie leagues apart, sometimes they are not even villages, only long barrack-like farmsteads, what old Scotch husbandry called 'a town', the bailiff's house, and the barns and stables and granges, and the field-workers' quarters all enclosed within one wall. No lesser roads, no lanes, branch off the main road, only a few tracks and footpaths. A signpost is an eye's wonder on this journey.

It is the harvest of 1937, the first harvest these peasants have ever reaped for themselves. When the great landowners fled these melancholy miles of corn-land were allotted among the workers. This year, like every other year, the harvest goes on, the harvesters repeat their gesture, the babies, docile with heat, sit patiently along the edges of the corn-strips. The harvest goes on, the sickle swings forward. And as though it were a ground-bass in a piece of counterpoint the rhythm of harvest after harvest becomes apparent, is a recurring gesture like the movement of the reaper, stooping to grasp the locks of corn, swinging the sickle, casting the swathe behind him. Subdued to this rhythm, working on under the heavy sun, the corn-dust flying, the flies buzzing, the beat of the swollen vein, the ache in the loins… to those who reap it can this harvest of 1937 seem so very different from the harvests of other years?

There is a heavy sound on the road behind us, an imperious klaxon. Our car draws to one side, and one of the new Government lorries tears past. The reapers lift themselves from the corn, with stiff, awkward movements they straighten themselves, the sweat pouring off their faces with the effort of wrenching themselves so suddenly upright. They hold up their clenched fists in the salute, they cheer and shout greetings, and the soldiers salute and shout in answer. The lorry passes, the reapers stoop to the corn again. All along the road the groups of reapers, one after the other, straighten themselves out of the corn to salute and cheer as the lorry sweeps on to Madrid.

Sylvia Townsend Warner (reprinted from The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse)

Days of Hope links:

Musical Heaven

Footlight.com link

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