Due to the overwhelming demand for tickets we have managed to obtain permission to screen a recording of the performance transmitted on Thursday 22 April. The repeat performance is on Sunday 25 April at 3pm.

A new play by Alan Bennett
Director: Nicholas Hytner

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn’t otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so different.

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.

Alan Bennett’s new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

‘In the end,’ said Auden, ‘art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one’s living and loving one’s neighbour.’

Read Michael Billington's review from The Guardian

Cast credits:
    Frances de la Tour
    Richard Griffiths
    John Heffernan
    Alex Jennings
    Elliot Levey
    Adrian Scarborough
    Stephen Wight

Production credits:
    Designer: Bob Crowley
    Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson
    Music: Matthew Scott
    Sound Designer: Paul Groothuis