Brief Lives (play)

Brief Lives
Written by	Patrick Garland
Date premiered	1967
Original language	English

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".