At Freddie's

At Freddie's is a 1982 novel by the British author Penelope Fitzgerald. The last of her novels drawing directly on her personal experiences, it focuses on an august but shabby London stage school for children, The Temple. Fitzgerald had herself been a general studies teacher at the Italia Conti stage school. The school in the novel is known as Freddie's after its elderly principal Freddie Wentworth, a character partly based on that of the impresario Lilian Baylis. The book received mixed reviews on its first UK publication, and on its 1985 appearance in the US. Plot The novel is set in Central London, in 1963. The Temple stage school (often known as Freddie’s) has been owned and run on traditional lines by its principal Freddie Wentworth for 40 years. An august but shabby institution, it offers training in Shakespearean and other stage drama to child actors, deliberately eschewing more profitable types of work such as TV, film and modelling. In spite of pressure to modernise from her solicitor brother, and from Joey Blatt, an intending investor, Freddie prefers to beg or borrow anything she needs from the local theatre community, relying on her reputation and charm. She spends as little as she possibly can on staff, engaging just two temporary general studies teachers for the students: Hannah Graves and Pierce Carroll. Hannah comes from a Catholic Northern Ireland background, and has taken the role as an entree into her much-loved theatre world. Carroll, about 10 years older, is from a repressive Protestant background; he has no interest in the theatre, and has taken the post merely because he can get no other. The teachers see a lot of each other during their long working hours, and Caroll becomes attracted to Hannah. Realising his incompetence at teaching, as in everything else, Carroll's attraction turns into unhealthy infatuation and after Hannah out of pity offers him sex she finds him assuming that marriage will follow. Hannah, however, has taken up with ‘Boney’ Lewis, an older professional actor who is appearing in a West End production of Shakespeare's King John. Freddie’s is to provide two child actors who will play the young Prince Arthur in King John. Mattie Stewart will take the part at the start of the run, handing over to Jonathan Kemp later.