About

The team that brought you the OSO shows everyone was raving about (What the Dickens?, Creating Carmen, Into the Melting Pot and Practically Imperfect) is back! Award-winning music and theatre company, The Telling presents a play with music by Arts Richmond Radio-Play Competition Winner, Clare Norburn and directed by BAFTA-nominated BBC director, Nicholas Renton.

1695: in his final illness, composer Henry Purcell (Niall Ashdown) suffers from feverish dream-like hallucinations in which the past, present and fantasy collide, and his songs take on a life of their own. His bedroom is transformed into a theatre and Purcell revisits childhood memories of the Great Fire of London and his early romance with his wife.

Interwoven into the drama are compositions by Purcell including bawdy theatre ballads, joyful celebrations of love, slow airs, a 'mad song', and numbers from his semi-operas, performed by Héloïse Bernard (actor-singer), Jo Lawrence (violin), Miriam Nohls (cello) and Oliver John Ruthven/Aidan Phillips (harpsichord).