Analysis of East of Suez (1922) by W. Somerset Maugham

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East of Suez stage scene 1
East of Suez stage scene 1, from Basil Dean's Seven Ages

East of Suez. A Play in Seven Scenes. London: Heinemann, 1922.

I am at the moment a little bit upset with myself because it seems that with years I haven't grown wiser.

Last night I finished reading East of Suez, and I had been all excited waiting for the first free moment to write about it. Industrious as I always am, I went to have a look at Mander and Michenson's Theatrical Companion to Maugham, to see about the photos and reviews. And here I am now, soaked wet and shivering from a cold bucketful of water. I still have to see whether this will only strengthen my crier voice or temper with my heart-felt enthusiasm.

Let's start from the beginning. The experience of reading East of Suez was very intense. It reminds me of the times when I first read Of Human Bondage, Mrs. Craddock, The Painted Veil, The Hero, Theatre, and strangely Maupassant's Une vie.

True, all these books don't seem to go together, but they all incite some inner emotions, pulling your heartstrings, occasionally giving you a lump in the throat, forging a sickening stomach. You sigh and sigh and face the inevitable.




East of Suez -- Story


East of Suez scene 6
East of Suez scene 6, from Mander & Michenson

This is a very unusual subject in Maugham's works. Or should I say the creation of a very unusual character. Daisy is a half-caste, English father and Chinese mother. Maugham has written many half-caste characters, but never as protagonist.

Please forgive me for the use of this term. I will retain it for the rest of the post, because it describes perfectly the discrimination used against them, which I believe (and hope) has experienced quite a turnaround, at least in my time and circle.

This goes against Maugham's own advice. He says over and over again that one should only write about one's countrymen, and that was the reason why he made Charles Strickland into an Englishman in The Moon and Sixpence, a novel based loosely on Gauguin; or told the story of Larry Darrell from the point of view of an English narrator in The Razor's Edge; or similarly, used an English young man to tell the story of a Russian and a French in Christmas Holiday.

Half-castes in Maugham's works are denoted (not by the author but the European expat community) as lazy, untrustworthy, illegitimate, sub-human. I surmise this isn't unreasonable, since they are the very personification of the Europeans' own weakness. If you believe in sin, half-castes are the materialization of the Europeans' sins, more real than hell fire.

They are the in-betweens, rejected by both groups, expats and natives. When they appear in Maugham's stories, they are more like props, backdrops to the exotic background, portrayed by the others' reactions towards them, and seen as ridiculous if they want to claim their European heritage.

Keeping this in mind, it is extraordinary that Maugham chooses to put one on centre stage. He is confronting his audience with a half-caste protagonist, a beautiful woman who has as much feeling as the next, calling them on to witness her struggles, obsession, passion, degradation, rejection.

When talking about East of Suez, the attention goes to the spectacle. As the subtitle shows, the play is divided into 7 scenes, the focus is on the setting. The first scene is a street in Peking, full of details of the bustle of different groups of people. Maugham gives detailed description to create a sensation of foreignness. He explains in details his decision. Since it's not too long, I'll quote the full text here:

East of Suez purports to be a play of spectacle. I had long wanted to try my hand at something of the sort and a visit to China presented me with an appropriate setting. The bare bones of a story that I had for twenty years from time to time, recurred to me. It seemed very well suited to my purpose. I kept my ears open and from this person and that heard little incidents that fitted in with my scheme and gave it the fullness, colour and variety that it needed. For the first and only time in my career as a dramatist I wrote the scenario which the professors of play-writing teach their pupils to do. It is a practice in which I have always felt there was great danger. For one thing, it is very difficult to hold in the mind's eye the whole development of a play; the imagination (mine, at least) provides you only with the important scenes, the beginning, the curtains of the acts, and the end, it leaves out the necessary scenes of transition, the scenes of preparation, and the scenes necessary to the mechanism of the play; these passages will in a scenario generally be set down perfunctorily, to make it coherent, and when you come to write your play you will very likely find that the fact of having written them down cramps you. Having forced your imagination to work by an effort of will, it fails then to work with proper freedom. It seems to me better to keep your general idea in your head, with your theme and your chief scenes fluid, as they must be before they are set down in black and white, and trust to the natural development by which, if you have the dramatic instinct, one scene leads to the next. A scenario seems also to paralyse the amiable and useful little imp that dwells in your fountain pen and does for you all your best writing. The prudent writer gives him his head and if the little fellow has a mind to write something quite different from what he intended, knows that it is only common sense to yield. After all it is to this wily sprite that is due whatever merit the ignorant ascribe to the unimportant instrument who holds the pen. But the story of East of Suez was so complicated that I thought it necessary to construct a very detailed scenario. I must admit that it made the subsequent writing an easy matter. In a play of this sort, in which exotic and beautiful scenery is used to divert the eye and crowds to give movement and colour, it is evident that the spectacle should be an integral part of the theme. Looking back, I realise that in my inexperience I did not always adhere to the canon and in this edition I have omitted a marriage procession which I inserted because I thought this common sight in a Chinese city picturesque and amusing, but which had nothing to do with my story. On the other hand, I cannot think that anyone who saw the play will have forgotten the thrilling and strangeness of the mob of Chinese, monks and neighbours, who crowded in when the wounded man was brought in after the attempted assassination in the fourth scene. With their frightened gestures and their low, excited chatter they produced an effect of great dramatic tension.

Note Maugham's little tribute to the fountain pen! He has more to say about it in his preface to Dorothy Parker's stories and poems. Remember my last post in which it was claimed that Maugham had out-used 62 fountain pens! In one of the manuscripts I have seen, there is a huge blot of ink left on the page when Maugham was refilling his pen. Too bad I can't post the picture! Still more years to wait until one can post all his unpublished stuff freely. I can understand his enthusiasm towards fountain pen. It does write differently from a pencil or pen. There is definitely something imp-like in the scratching sound of the paper.

Let's focus on the story. After the first scene giving us a sense of place, a foreign and exotic atmosphere, we are introduced to the characters in scene 2. Naturally you are drawn to the story, I can well imagine even more so if you are watching the play. It is when you think back you realize how expertly Maugham tells his story. Let's hear the words of Alan Stanford, who directed The Constant Wife:

Maugham was a genius novelist and a genius user of language. He also understood theatre very brilliantly, in that he manages to set up all the information you need to know without letting you know that he's just filling your mind with facts. It's all done with beautiful dialogue; it's all done with wonderful characters.

Harry Anderson is all in a flutter and trying to get Harold Knox away from the room. Harold Knox later has a part to play, only that you don't know it yet. It is so economical that he appears here to show Harry's listlessness and serves his purpose in a later stage.

Amah, an old Chinese servant, appears, and her unsavoury character is expressed through her nonchalant appropriation of Knox's pin while the two men were talking.

Then George Conway, the friend that Harry has been anxiously waiting for, appears. The subject of the three men is steered into that of inter-racial marriage, since George just came back from Fuchow, where he was bound to meet a guy who did just that. Their conversation demonstrates the social prejudice towards such matches and how a man's social position and career development are affected by having a Eurasian wife.

George is the mouthpiece for the common perception of half-castes:

GEORGE: Somehow or other they seem to inherit all the bad qualities of the two races from which they spring and none of the good ones. I'm sure there are exceptions, but on the whole the Eurasian is vulgar and noisy. He can't tell the truth if he tries.

M
GEORGE: He's as vain as a peacock. He'll cringe when he's afraid of you and he'll bully when he's not. You can never rely on him. He's crooked from the crown of his German hat to the toes of his American boots.

It is important to keep in mind George's view of the Eurasians. In the course of the conversation between the two friends (Knox has left meanwhile), we find out that Harry wants to tell George of his engagement, and he wishes George to be his best man.

The problem of course is that the bride-to-be is a Eurasian. George tries half-heartedly to dissuade Harry, but Harry doesn't care about his social position. He is in love. And George reveals that he has been in love with a Eurasian before, to whom he almost marries. However, he cares more about his career than love. With the slightest hint from his boss, he gave the girl up.

Naturally in the world of the theatre, Harry's bride is George's former girlfriend. George is taken by surprise. At this point, Knox again serves his purpose and comes in to interrupt and get Harry to some business, leaving George and Daisy alone.

In this dialogue, we get to know more about Daisy and her dubious background as kept woman, and possibly more promiscuous than that. However, we also get to know that it is a direct result from George's abandonment of her. Her predicament comes to forefront.

Educated as an English girl in England since she was 7, she was called to China by her father whom she hadn't seen for 10 years. Worse, he died and left her penniless before her arrival. It was then she fell in love with George. After he abandoned her, she was a stranger in a strange land. She was rejected by the mission she was left in the care of. Her mother at that point took charge of her, but she was an abomination to Daisy. Daisy didn't have much choice and left with her mother, who then sold her as mistress to Lee Tai Cheng, a rich Chinese. From there, she became a mistress to an American.

East of Suez, scene 5
East of Suez, scene 5, from Mander & Michenson

To twist the knife more to the wound, George regretted his move almost immediately and was prepared to give up his career for Daisy, but by that time, Daisy was already with Lee Tai Cheng.

George, with his sense of justice and his love for Harry, is going to tell Harry all about Daisy. He abhors her dishonesty and her pose as a widow to an American, but Daisy threatens to kill herself. George at the end agrees to keep his mouth shut.

This very complicated background history that has taken me so many words to present, Maugham does it all in scene 2 through the dialogue between George and Daisy, with the passionate exchanges between the two, regrets, guilt, hatred, so much unhappiness.

The relationship starts to get complicated in the subsequent scenes. The steady marriage with Harry and his devotion and love to her presumably would give Daisy happiness, but seeing George again has reignited her passion towards him.

All of Daisy's energy now is channelled towards George, and how to get him for herself. Harry has become nothing to her but hindrance. Meanwhile, Lee Tai Cheng continues to pursue her. He hasn't given up the thought of having Daisy back. On the other hand, Amah begins to inject into her mind the solution of getting rid of Harry for good, by murder.

Unfortunately, Harry proposes to move from Peking to Chungking, which leads Daisy to make up her mind. She can't tolerate the thought of being away from George, especially after he has admitted that he still has feelings for her.

Harry, on his part, realizes the difficulty of going against society's opinions:

HARRY: We've been married a year now. I don't want to hurt your feelings, darling, but it's no good beating about the bush, and I think it's better to be frank.
DAISY: Surely you can say anything you like to me without hesitation.
HARRY: Things have been a little awkward in a way. The women I used to know before we married left cards on you——
DAISY: Having taken the precaution to discover that I should be out.
HARRY: And you returned those cards and that was the end of it. I asked George what he thought about my taking you to the club to play tennis, and he said he thought we'd better not risk it. The result is that you don't know a soul.
DAISY: Have I ever complained?
HARRY: You've been most awfully decent about it, but I hate to think of your spending day after day entirely by yourself. It can't be good for you to be so much alone.
DAISY: I might have known Mrs. Chuan. She's a white woman.
HARRY: Oh, my dear, she was—Heaven knows what she was. She's married to a Chinaman. It's horrible. She's outside the pale.
DAISY: And there's Bertha Raymond. She's very nice even though she is a Eurasian.
HARRY: I'm sure she's very nice, but we couldn't very well have the Raymonds here and refuse to go to them. Her brother is one of the clerks in my office. I don't want to seem an awful snob...
DAISY: You needn't hesitate to say anything about the Eurasians. You can't hate and despise them more than I do.
HARRY: I don't hate and despise them. I think that's odious. But sometimes they're not very tactful. I don't know that I much want one of my clerks to come and slap me on the back in the office and call me "old chap."
DAISY: Of course not.
HARRY: The fact is we've been trying to do an impossible thing. It's no good kicking against the pricks. What with the Legations and one thing and another Peking's hopeless. We'd far better clear out.
DAISY: But if I don't mind, why should you?
HARRY: Well, it's not very nice for me either. It's for my sake just as much as for yours that I'd be glad to go elsewhere. Of course everybody at the club knows I'm married. Some of them ignore it altogether. I don't mind that so much. Some of them ask after you with an exaggerated cordiality which is rather offensive. And every now and then some fool begins to slang the Eurasians and everybody kicks him under the table. Then he remembers about me and goes scarlet. By God, it's hell.

Harry's defence of the Eurasians in scene 2 doesn't mean he is free of prejudices. Maugham presents several levels of biases.

  • It is all right for European men to have a fling with a Eurasian woman. After all, European men are but humans; and there are such charming and alluring Eurasian women.
  • Now, we may even forgive them if occasionally one of them marries a Eurasian woman. This is very unwise, but to a certain extent we can pretend that this never happens.
  • However, we draw the line with a European woman marrying a Eurasian man. That is a disgrace!
  • We also draw the line when the Eurasians are of lower classes than one. We only tolerate Eurasian ladies and gentlemen.

Slowly we begin to see Daisy's unscrupulousness. She has only one goal, which is to have George; nothing else matters. She would make a terrific tragic heroine. Together with Amah and Lee Tai Cheng, she plans Harry's murder.

However, by mistake George takes the shot that is meant for Harry. Daisy looks after George devotedly. Knox now comes back on stage with his sister, Sylvia, to fulfil his function. Sylvia is everything Daisy isn't, fresh, honest, goodness itself, and English. She feels the injustice of the expat community of shunning Daisy and insists on visiting her.

Harry suddenly has to go away, leaving George and Daisy alone. George, almost fully recovered, insists on leaving, but Daisy tells him she still loves him. Finally he succumbs when Daisy faints. George's sense of righteousness doesn't seem to carry him very far. First he promises Daisy not to reveal her true history to Harry when she threatens to kill herself, now he becomes her lover when she faints.

They begin their illicit affair. Daisy finds her peace and happiness, but George is tormented by his self-loathing. A question that comes up in my mind is whether he would have felt the same if Daisy were a fresh English rose like Sylvia. They meet in an apartment in Peking, which is subsequently bought by Lee Tai Cheng, who wants to keep his grip on Daisy.

It turns out that Lee Tai Cheng is by no means a lowly despicable Chinaman with lots of money. He is highly educated and resents European influence. Maugham gives him a speech that he includes in On a Chinese Screen, a speech by a famous Chinese philosopher that he met during his trip to China. However, George is unimpressed.

He has come to tell Daisy that they can't carry on like that anymore, and he is leaving for Vancouver. They won't meet again when he comes back. This time she fails to change George's mind. Daisy is distraught. In her desperation, she is willing to do anything to retain George.

After George quits the apartment, Lee Tai Cheng gives Daisy to understand that George is leaving because he is going to marry Sylvia. Daisy gives all George's letters to Lee Tai Cheng and bids him to take them to Harry, so that Harry will divorce her, with George as co-respondent, and George will have to marry her out of his sense of honour.

There doesn't seem to be anything at the moment between George and Sylvia. However, the potentials are there. Daisy asks to see George again before he leaves. She arranges it so it will be at the same time when Harry comes back. She reveals to George what she has done. He realizes it is to trap him into marriage, and he also realizes that Daisy has meant to kill Harry before, and he took the shot by mistake.

Failing to see a way out or any redemption of his future life, George locks himself up and shoots himself. Meanwhile, Harry has come. Amah tries to get Daisy away. Presumably Lee Tai Cheng will do all the arrangements to keep them safe. But Daisy isn't afraid. Instead, she puts on a Manchu dress, which Harry bought her earlier in the play, and when Harry gets to open the door, he is awed by the majestic sight of Daisy, and kneels down to her.

This is an impressive ending, but needs some interpretations.

East of Suez -- Analysis


East of Suez, film 1924
East of Suez, film 1924, from Mander & Michenson

I find East of Suez a very powerful play. The racial issue goes beyond exposing social prejudices and discriminations. There are many questions to which I have no definite answers.

I have already mentioned the different levels of biases present in the expat community against Eurasians. Maugham's choice of having the protagonist as half-caste is significant, because then he also deals with the first-hand experience of these prejudices and explores the question of self-identity.

The simplistic picture presented by the Europeans is skin deep. Through Daisy, Maugham looks at the internal conflict of a person of mixed race. Maugham seems to be saying that racial memory is so strong that one can never totally rid of its influence.

Daisy was sent to England when she was 7 and received English education. It is not clear how she was treated in England. From what she says, it seems that she wasn't treated differently from any English girl. However, she doesn't appear to have any communication with her father's relations in England, who get all that he left behind.

In the world of East of Suez, blood is stronger than upbringing. Once having set foot in China, Daisy suddenly is English no more. She is seen as Eurasian, a half-caste. She is first sacrificed by George for his career. It matters little what one's intrinsic value is, how you are viewed is what makes the difference.

Daisy is further rejected by the mission. She is not Eurasian either, in the strict sense. She was brought up in England; she is a foreigner for the Eurasians. She is not Chinese either. Her mother must have been living apart from her father, or perhaps they were never married. When Daisy's mother appears, she is disappointed because she doesn't look like a Chinese princess, as it has been in her imagination.

Daisy's mother is portrayed as ruthless. Though she follows Daisy and takes care of her, she has a completely different set of standards. She does try to protect Daisy, but she also uses her as a weapon to mock European values and beliefs. She appears to see right and wrong from an entirely different perspective. She will get what Daisy wants, regardless of the ways.

This trait can be used to describe Daisy too. At first she wants to marry Harry, and she doesn't care what lies she has to feed him. Then she gets obsessed with George, and she is prepared to kill Harry to get him.

Lee Tai Cheng, on the other hand, wants Daisy, and he doesn't mind at all what he has to do to help her in order to get her firmer into his control, even helping her to get another man. Moral squirms seem to belong only to the Europeans.

But then it would seem that both the Chinese and the Eurasians are precisely as George describes at the beginning: "on the whole the Eurasians is vulgar and noisy. He can't tell the truth if he tries." Is Maugham saying that George isn't far wrong?

I guess one can stop here and say yes. I would have felt very disappointed though. I doubt if Maugham identified with the point of view of the expat community he met in China. I would venture to say instead Maugham is making the point of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like in the case of Daisy, she has to bear the burden of the whole traditional perception of the Eurasian that is imposed on her. Her fate is directed by it. There is no escape. She is shaped into the ready-made mould.

Her gradual transition into her Chinese identity is unsettling. She doesn't speak Chinese and her only cognizance of Chineseness is through her mother and Lee Tai Cheng. Both have ulterior motives, which could be summarized as destroying the European parts of Daisy. Her mother does it by adhering to Daisy's unrestrained desire, using means that outrage any European sensitivity towards honour and honesty, which thus pulls Daisy farther away from her European identity even though she gets what she wants.

Lee Tai Cheng, on the other hand, wants Daisy for himself. He is by no means the filthy rich Chinaman one would have thought at the beginning. He disguises himself as such in front of the European men, same as Daisy's mother disguising herself as Amah. It is only a front, easily transformed like the shedding of a piece of clothing.

When Lee Tai Cheng reveals himself in front of George, who now has a chance to see the real representation of China, he fails to recognize it and refuses to go further. An interesting detail which may not be significant. Maugham gives the name Lee Tai Cheng, and throughout he is referred as Lee Tai, which would mean that Cheng is his surname, but then the only time when he is called by his surname is by George, who is supposed to be one of the rare white men who knows about Chinese culture, he calls him Mr. Lee.

Lee Tai Cheng is the one who wakes up Daisy's Chinese identity. The idea is that the strength of the Chinese blood is much stronger than the European. He is the one who passes himself off as a curio dealer and sells Harry a Manchu dress for Daisy, evoking her true identity.

In the last scene, Daisy realizes all is ended. Her scheme to keep George is forever thwarted. She puts on her Manchu dress, a sight that has made Harry completely in awe before, and there he falls again and his courage fails him when he sees the real Daisy, the magnificent Chinese whom he doesn't understand.

The two cultures don't seem to be able to understand each other. The Europeans see what they want to see, and the Chinese show them what they want to see. The only communication occurs by spectacles when words fail.

The term east of Suez is made famous by Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay," which comes to denote the geographical space east of Suez Canal. The poem recounts a love affair between a British soldier and a Burmese girl, with him back in England yearning for the East. Maugham's title evokes not only the setting of the play, but the all-too-common interracial love affair and the irresistible attraction of the East, an attraction towards doom "where the best is like the worst," or better, a place in which values are upside down.

Two years after East of Suez, Maugham finished The Painted Veil. Certain parts of the story is similar, but Maugham has changed Daisy into Kitty Fane, a thoroughly English girl. Perhaps racial identity is too ominous a subject, perhaps Maugham realizes that people don't want to think about it too much.

As a novel, Maugham has more space to develop his characters. We will see more detailed renditions of George (Charles Townsend) and Harry (Walter Fane) in a later post. They are not exactly the same characters and their relations are different.

"The dog it was that died"


East of Suez, scene 7
East of Suez, scene 7, from Mander & Michenson

I have come across a very notable thing, which has to do with The Painted Veil. For those who have read it, Walter Fane's last word is "The dog it was that died," which is the last line in Oliver Goldsmith's poem "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog." It puzzles Kitty Fane why Walter mutters that on his deathbed.

Now comes the meat. I always thought that was very clever. Now observe the review by James Agate on East of Suez in Saturday Review on 17 September 1922:

My apprehensions were ill-founded. In East of Suez it was the play which swamped the spectacle. 'The man recovered of the bite, the dog it was that died.' The beginning was most promising...

Isn't it possible that Maugham read the review and thought the reference jolly good, and then later added it to be Walter's punchline? Maugham began writing The Painted Veil in 1923 and the first instalment came out in November 1924, in Hearst's International Magazine.

East of Suez -- Editions


East of Suez 1922 Heinemann Plays, vol. 5
East of Suez 1922 Heinemann & Plays, vol. 5, 1934

The editions I have aren't very exciting. Just the usual first by Heinemann, in cherry buckram and the collected plays edition with the infamous University of London library label.

Suite of East of Suez


You may like to read the play listening to the original music made for it. The play was first directed by Basil Dean at His Majesty's Theatre with music by Eugène Goossens. Let's see what Dean says in his autobiography:

Maugham began his play with a spectacular street scene, for which he had provided no dialogue, merely a general indication of the activities to be seen in the narrow streets bordering on the Great Gate of Peking. George built the gate in low relief and placed it at the back of the stage; it towered forty feet high, with various shops clustered round it. There were street-lamps complete with modern arc lighting, a Ford motor-car and goodness knows what other realistic details beside. On the flat roof of a café we placed a Chinese orchestra. For music in the Chinese style, to be played throughout this scene and during the various interlude, I turned to Eugene Goossens. He and I went down to Chinatown where, in a crowded pub, Eugene took out pencil and paper and jotted down tunes played endlessly on stringed instruments by smiling Chinese.

The forty or more Chinese of both sexes, engaged to act as shopkeepers and general crowd in the street scenes, were not easy to handle. The majority of them could speak no English. Instructions had to be relayed to them in their own language. If I suggested 'business' to which they took exception all action ceased immediately, like a 'held frame' in a movie, and dozens of almond eyes stared relentlessly at me. However, I was fortunate in having the assistance of Henry Petersen, whose knowledge of Chinese behaviour and ways of thought was invaluable. He was at my elbow throughout rehearsals to relay my instructions and to correct any that might be regarded as loss of face. News of our preparations soon spread beyond the stage-door. The Sunday Express wrote a special article, praising the fact that the new group of artists to whom the destinies of the great theatre were about to be entrusted, citing Harris and myself, Eugene Goossens, and especially Meggie Albanesi, 'were all young—young—young!'

M

In the first act, Daisy, the half-caste, played by Meggie Albanesi, calls upon her English fiancé at his office in Peking, and tea is served. At the mention of tea my stage manager looked up suddenly: 'China tea, I suppose, Mr. Dean? And what sort of sandwiches would you like?' Feeling self-conscious with the distinguished author sitting beside me, I said rather irritably: "Oh, I don't know. Cucumber, I should think.' Then Maugham suddenly spluttered: 'It's the l-last th-th-thing they'd have'

Throughout the rehearsals he remained withdrawn, neither helpful nor obstructive, never offering advice unless it was asked for. I think he found the whole business tiresome and the actors' arguments rather petty. Yet, when appealed to, he was always ready with the unconvincing response: 'Oh, ex-excellent!' Once I asked him whether I might cut certain lines: 'Wh-wh-why not?' he spluttered. 'The st-st-stage is a w-w-workshop.' The significance of his attitude was that Maugham lacked genuine enthusiasm for the theatre.

I wonder what he would have said if Maugham were to refuse all types of corrections...

Oh well, here, with Basil Dean's words, finally we come to the end of this post. My initial response holds. This is a remarkable and powerful play. The incomprehension between the two cultures, ironically, carried on outside the play as Basil Dean inadvertently witnessed. One can only hope a director will pick it up again. Racial issues are more than ever present in our societies and politics, and this would be a good opportunity to reflect and ask some soul-searching questions.

A few notes: You can see the stage of scene 1 at the beginning of this post. The original scores and cover are available for those who are interested. The pianist in the youtube video is Antony Gray, track information on youtube page. And finally, you can also read the full text of East of Suez.


East of Suez, 1st Ed. at ABE

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