The Southbury Child

The Southbury Child
1 July to 27 August 2022 at the Bridge Theatre

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Habit of Art

Playbill.com announces that Alex will star with Michael Gambon in Alan Bennett´s new play "The Habit of Art" at the National's Lyttelton this November. Alex will play WH Auden, Gambon will play Benjamin Britten. The play will be directed by the National's artistic director, Nicholas Hytner.

Playbill.com says: "The play is based on an entirely fictional meeting that takes place when poet Auden and composer Britten are respectively aged 70 and late 50s, when Auden was living in Oxford in the early 1960s before he died. In fact, though the two had collaborated on several works earlier in their careers – which included Auden writing the libretto for Britten's operetta Paul Bunyan and the song cycle "Our Hunting Fathers" – their relationship came to an uneasy end and they had not spoken since the mid-1940s."

Dates and further production details are still to be announced.

Full article at: Playbill

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This will be the best birthday present to me EVER. :-)

Lori in Florida

pennyforyourdreams said...

Whatsonstage says that Alex is playing Britten and Michael Gambon is Auden. Which, I think, makes sense: if Alex is playing a 70 year old poet, his loyalty to Nick Hytner seems to have a hefty price and involves a great deal of makeup.

http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8831240589538&title=Plays+Cast%3A+Gambon+NT+Habit%2C+Baxendale+Friends