Brief Lives
Written byPatrick Garland
Date premiered1967
Original languageEnglish

Brief Lives is a British play about John Aubrey, a 17th-century Englishman who met and kept accounts of many of the famous men of his day, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Christopher Wren.[1] It premiered in 1967 and became one of the most successful one person shows in history. Roy Dotrice played Aubrey in many productions.[2]

The play came out of an episode about Aubrey in Famous Gossips (1965), the BBC television series Garland made with Alan Bennett.[3]

The play was profiled in the William Goldman book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway.

Productions

The play originally opened at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967. It then ran at the John Golden Theater in New York City, and had a 400 performance run at the Criterion Theatre in London. Following a 1974 run at New York's Booth Theatre, the play was toured globally. At the end of the tour in 1979, Dotrice had completed over 1700 performances.[4]

Outside of Broadway and the West End, the play was produced at Canada's Stratford Festival in 1980 with Douglas Rain as Aubrey.[5][6]

References

  1. ^ Playbill for 1967 New York production accessed 15 June 2013
  2. ^ Tim Walker, "Two old stagers find vigour in Brief Lives", The Spectator 30 January 2008 accessed 15 June 2013
  3. ^ Obituary in The Guardian 22 April 2013 accessed 15 June 2013
  4. ^ "Roy Dotrice in "Brief Lives" on DVD". Archived from the original on 2019-02-18. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  5. ^ Alan B. Somerset (1991). The Stratford Festival Story. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-27804-0.
  6. ^ "Past Productions | Stratford Festival Official Website".
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