Productions
The Habit of Art
a new play by Alan Bennett
The Habit of Art was broadcast live on 22 April 2010 and varying dates worldwide for repeat screenings, find your nearest venue.
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5 STARS 'Another absolute cracker, often wonderfully and sometimes filthily funny, but also deeply and unexpectedly moving.' Daily Telegraph
5 STARS 'Bennett the maestro returns with a multi-layered masterpiece.' Independent
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.
You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.
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.’
The Habit of Art contains strong language and sexual references.
World Premiere
Cast credits:
Frances de la Tour
Richard Griffiths
John Heffernan
Alex Jennings
Elliot Levey
Adrian Scarborough
Stephen Wight
Production credits:
Director - Nicholas Hytner
Designer - Bob Crowley
Lighting Designer - Mark Henderson
Music - Matthew Scott
Sound Designer - Paul Groothuis
