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Afterlife

a new play by Michael Frayn

Buy tickets for Afterlife  

FOUR STARS
'Frayn's erudition sparkes and there's a buoyant sense of fun in Blakemore's production to match its braininess.'
The Times

Max Reinhardt, one of the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had a lifelong ambition – to dissolve the boundary between theatre and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg festival he directed a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures that money can buy.

Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death into Austria – whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself. Michael Frayn’s Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have foreseen.

Roger Allam, last seen at the National Theatre in Michael Frayn's Democracy, plays Reinhardt. Michael Frayn's other recent productions at the National were Copenhagen and Noises Off.

See photos of Afterlife on stage.

Ends 30 August

 

Cast credits:

Max Reinhardt : Roger Allam

Ensemble : David Baron

The Prince Archbishop : David Burke

Helene Thimig : Abigail Cruttenden

Rudolf 'Katie' Kommer : Peter Forbes

Franz : Glyn Grain

Gusti Adler : Selina Griffiths

Ensemble : Colin Haigh

Ensemble : Sarah Head

Everyman/Ensemble : Nicholas Lumley

Ensemble : Elizabeth Marsh

Ensemble : Charlotte Melia

Ensemble : Hugh Osborne

Ensemble : Peter Prentice

Friedrich Muller : David Schofield

Ensemble : Claire Winsper

Ensemble : Rupert Young

Production credits:

Director: Michael Blakemore

Set Designer: Peter Davison

Costume Designer: Sue Willmington

Lighting Designer: Neil Austin

Music and Sound: Paul Charlier

Choreographer: Francesca Jaynes

Afterlife finished on: 30 August 2008