"Gets so, nobody's story's true.
Not yours, not mine. But it's all we've got." First and Fiftieth
The Covid-19 crisis has caused my stage version of the classic Latin comedy, The Satyricon, to be postponed indefinitely. I am currently working on an audio version and producing podcasts of my own and other people's work.
JULY 2020: LATEST PODCAST
WRITER / DIRECTOR
podcast
youtube
A 14-year-old boy is troubled - or is he fascinated? - by an old man who never stops watching him.
In Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (filmed by Luchino Visconti) the ageing Gustav von Aschenbach becomes obsessed with the beauty of young Tadzio. Although the two never speak, a silent relationship grows between them, a relationship which persists as the old man's health fails and the city is beset by cholera.
Decades later Tadzio remembers that fateful summer. What went through the boy's mind when he realised what was happening? What impact did it have on his adult life? Finally, the silent youth speaks.
Originally the title story in my collection A Sense of Loss, Death on the Lido was later adapted for the stage as Tadzio Speaks . . . with Christopher Peacock ("deeply poetic" Views from the Gods). This audio version with John Vernon brings to life one of fiction's most memorable and least understood characters.
POSTPONED from March 2020
MARCH 2021
DIRECTOR
Hay Fever
I was pleased to be directing Noel Coward's masterpiece Hay Fever for
the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group ("The Grads"). This would be the third production (after The Rose and Crown
in 2016 and Volpone in 2017) they entrusted me with and before Covid-19 struck.
Coward's work is deceptive - to create his light comedy requires intense preparation by the actors, who have to give pitch-perfect characterisations - but I was fortunate to have a talented cast who were creating a
memorably frothy and funny production and to have working with me assistant director Vanashree Thapliyal.
The production has provisionally been rescheduled for March 2021 and I hope that as many possible of the original cast will return. Uptodate information can be found on the
The Grads website.
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