Lyric provides an new take on an old story
Following a national tour, Told by an Idiot return to the Lyric Hammersmith with Casanova. Bringing together Carol Ann Duffy, one of the UK’s most popular contemporary poets, with the rich theatrical language of Told by an Idiot, the production is a reinvention of the Western World’s most notorious lover.
Casanova follows in the tradition of Carol Ann Duffy’s female reinventions of male archetypes including in her best-selling collection The World’s Wife and her celebration of the female condition Feminine Gospels.
The year is 1755. Having fled from prison Casanova delights society, frees individual genius and inspires collective joy – and often quite by accident. As she darts through cities, sails oceans and hops over borders, hotly pursued by a ruthless detective, extraordinary events are happening across Europe; raging Spanish bulls softly succumb to tender attention; Czech audiences fall into simultaneous orgasm; Mozart discovers his inspiration for magical music and Voltaire for profound words.
Carol Ann Duffy is a poet, playwright and writer. She won the 1993 Whitbread Award for Poetry and the Forward Prize for best collection for Mean Time. Her most recent collection, Rapture, won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Her plays include Beasts and Beauties (Tim Supple and Melly Still) and Grimm Tales and More Grimm Tales (Tim Supple). She was awarded an OBE in 1995, a CBE in 2001 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.
Told by an Idiot return to the Lyric Hammersmith where they previously showed their productions of Phillip Pullman’s The Firework-Maker’s Daughter and Aladdin. Told by an Idiot was founded in 1992 by Hayley Carmichael, Paul Hunter and John Wright and has since set out to discover the epic in the most personal of stories.
October 19, 2007
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