Dead Poets Live return to Wilton’s for three nights of Sylvia Plath, starring Denise Gough.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932 and died in London, aged 30, in 1963. In her brief career she produced some of the most riveting poetry of the 20th century. The best-known of her poems – among them ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Daddy’, ‘The Applicant’, ‘Tulips’ – arrived in the extraordinary torrent of creativity unleashed in her final months, posthumously collected in Ariel. Sixty years on from her death, Dead Poets Live retrace the exhilarating, breath-taking, nail-biting ascent that Plath made, by various poetic turns, to the voice, the unique and definitive voice, of those final poems.
Denise Gough as Sylvia Plath
Denise Gough astonished audiences and critics in London and New York with her performance in People, Places & Things, for which she was awarded the Olivier Award for Best Actress in 2016 and the Obie Award in 2018. She returned to the National Theatre in 2017, and won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in the revival of Angels in America. Recent TV work includes Under the Banner of Heaven, Too Close, opposite Emily Watson, and the title role in Conor McPherson's mini-series, Paula and Andor.
Dead Poets Live have gained a reputation for presenting poetry in vivid and meaningful ways, using context, analysis, dramatization, interaction and some of the country’s finest actors – Glenda Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Juliet Stevenson, Rory Kinnear, George MacKay, Toby Jones – to help communicate great poems. All proceeds from their shows go to the charity Safe Passage UK.
'Left me rapt, even in awe’
★★★★ Dominic Cavendish,The Telegraph
'an occasional, but unmissable, ongoing series of plays'
Daily Telegraph
‘All done with such skill and soul’
Sam Marlowe, i
‘Haunting’
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail