Unfinished Histories

Company Name: Les Oeufs Malades
Established:1976
Founders: Gerard Bell, Jessica Higgs, Bryony Lavery
Reason: To produce a double bill of Bryony Lavery plays
Current Status: Disbanded 1981
Area of Work: New writing
Policy: To produce the plays of Bryony Lavery
Structure: Run by common consensus with company members undertaking the administrative and funding tasks as required and when available
Based: London
Funding: Arts Council project funding was received for productions from Helen and Her Friends onwards but the company was never constituted
Performance Venues: Young Vic Studio, Action Space, Warehouse Theatre Rotherhithe, Oval House, Old Red Lion, Kings Head, National tours, Edinburgh Festival and Holland
Audiences:  Typical London fringe, and small and middle scale touring audiences of the period
  

Company work and process:   Les Oeufs Malades was formed in 1976 when Gerard Bell and Bryony Lavery were working for Incubus theatre company. Bryony had written a short two-hander play called Sharing which Gerard and his friend Jessica Higgs asked if they could perform. Bryony agreed and the three set about rehearsing. An accompanying piece was written, I Was Too Young At The Time To Understand Why My Mother Was Crying, and they were first produced as a double bill at the Warehouse Theatre, Rotherhithe, or ‘Crunchy Frog’ as it was affectionately known. There followed performaces at the opening season of plays at Action Space (now Drill hall) entitled The Festival of the Audience, and at Oval House Upstairs under the company name ‘Les Oeufs Malades’. The much feted La Grande Eugene was performing at the Roundhouse at the time to sell out houses and it was thought rather inspired to come with up a name that implied the company might be French.  Favourite French words of the company such as as ‘oeuf’ and ‘boeuf’ morphed into Les Oeufs Malades.  The original program was in French with a coined quote attributed to Baudelaire in which it was stated, ‘Quand les oeufs malades restent sur la table a petit dejeuner, tous le monde est degoute.’ The French connection was dropped soon after but not before Ned Chaillet in The Times observed, 'Les Oeufs Malades…borrowing their name from Baudelaire…' Further productions followed: Grandmother’s Footsteps (1977), The Catering Service (1977), Helen and Her Friends (1978), Bag (1979) and Family Album (1980). All the plays were written and directed by Bryony Lavery. Company members and performers were drawn from a small pool of actors who were also close friends, most notably Gerard Bell, Su Elliott, Jessica Higgs and Pippa Sparkes all of whom, with the exception of Jessica, had worked together in Incubus. The style was comic, oftentimes surreal comic, at other times darkly comic, and very reflective of the lives and modes of expressions common to those involved. All of the pieces were performed in London, The Catering Service, Bag and Family Album also toured nationally. Helen and Her Friends was performed at the Lantaren, Rotterdam as part of their Festival of Death, and Family Album at Projects Arts, Dublin.  

Reviews:  Sharing and I Was Too Young at the Time to Understand Why My Mother Was Crying ‘…at Edinburgh a company like Les Oeufs Malades would have been hailed as a discovery.’  The Times 1976   Grandmother’s Footsteps ‘.. contains a quick, glancing, surreal wit…’  Time Out 1977 ‘..shows a developing and original style… Miss Lavery;s talent is for the oblique, the unrealistic’.   The Times 1977   The Catering Service ‘..a valuable piece of theatre…confident strength of the acting…’ The Scotsman 1977 ‘…as disciplined and as chilling a piece of theatre as you are likely to come across anywhere…adds a new dimension to both theatre of politics and the theatre of experiment.’   The Stage  1977   Helen and Her Friends ‘…smart, tart production…beautifully acted.. alternatively funny and moving..’ Time Out 1978 ‘…finely written, sensitively directed and beautifully acted…Helen and Her Friends haunts the mind, but it needs no exorcism.’  The Stage 1978  Bag ‘The play throws up numerous questions relating to the nature of friendship while observing with consistent accuracy and occasional brilliance, the gruesome minutiae of holiday mishaps.’  Time Out 1979
 

Interviewee reference: Bryony Lavery
Links: Bryony Lavery Collection at www.londonmet.ac.uk/genesis
Existing archive material: Original photographs, scripts, programmes and articles are held by original company members . 

Productions:

Les Oeufs Malades was disbanded in 1981 when Bryony Lavery’s Extraordinary Productions was formed by Bryony Lavery
and David Jones. 

This page has been constructed by Jessica Higgs (co-founder) with thanks to Gerard Bell, Su Elliott, Bryony Lavery and Pippa Sparkes, April 2010.