All Is Fortune2023

This unusual collection of short stories captures the essence of life in the theatre. Behind the superficial glamour lies a world marked by ambition, jealousy and heartache. Among stories featured in All is Fortune are an actress under stress at an audition, a struggling playwright committing a deception, a biographer falling out with his subject, a female playwright suffering sexual harassment, and many others. Lighter stories tell of the mysterious disappearance of a member of an amateur dramatic society, the unrequited love of a chorus girl in a musical, and a monologue by an elderly jobbing actor. Jonathan Croall, a leading theatre historian and biographer, and the son of well-known actors, has created these imaginative stories with warmth, insight and humour, bringing vividly to life a host of well-drawn characters. 'Jonathan Croall has written extensively and illuminatingly about acting and actors. In these stories he attempts something different, a sequence of shiny, shard-like vignettes – some ironic, some poetic, some straightforwardly realistic – which reflect the life of the theatre in all its many aspects. Haunting.’ Simon Callow, actor and writer