About the show

Stephen Brown with
Mark Rylance

Writer

Stephen Brown is a writer, dramaturg and translator. His work as writer includes: Occupational Hazards (Hampstead / BBC Radio 4), Does My Society Look Big in This? (Bristol Old Vic; with Tom Morris), Future Me (Theatre503 / TheatreFIRST, Oakland / Public Theater, New York / UK tour), Faster (BAC / Lyric Hammersmith / 59E59, New York / UK tour; devised with Filter Theatre), The Master and Margarita (BAC Scratch; Filter Theatre, with Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler), Elephant (BAC Scratch; devised with Filter Theatre). As dramaturg: This is My Room (Rose Lipman; Clod Ensemble / Manchester Collective), On the High Road (South Bank Centre / UK tour; Clod Ensemble), Placebo (The Place / UK tour; Clod Ensemble), King Lear (Bristol Old Vic), Salvage (Corn Exchange, Newbury / Laban Centre; Lost Dog). As translator: German Jerusalem, On the Rope, The Language of Birds, My Cyprus, The Princes’ Islands, Rilke’s Venice (all Haus Publishing).

Mark Rylance has imagined a play about Dr Semmelweis ever since reading Celine’s surrealist novel on the good doctor, over ten years ago. Tom Morris has made it a reality. With Stephen Brown and the help of all the actors, dancers, musicians and other creatives, the play lives.

Giles Havergal and The Glasgow Citizens Theatre gave Rylance his first professional job in 1980. In the eighties and nineties, Rylance worked with many theatre companies; The RSC, where he played Hamlet, Romeo and a number of other roles. He founded his own cooperative theatre company, Phoebus Cart, and toured sacred sites such as The Rollright Stones. Other theatres include The National Theatre; The Bush; The Tricycle; TFANA (New York), A.R.T. (Boston), The Guthrie (Minneapolis).

The work of Mike Alfreds, and his company Shared Experience was particularly inspiring and transformative.

In 1996, at age 36, Rylance became the first artistic director of Sam Wanamaker’s project to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Throughout his career, he has acted in more than 50 productions by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He is a trustee of The Shakespearean Authorship Trust and friend of The Francis Bacon Research Trust.

After leaving the Globe in 2006, Sonia Friedman became his angel. With her company and associates she has supported Rylance in seven productions, Boeing Boeing, La Bete, Jerusalem, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Farinelli and the King and Nice Fish. She is also a key producer of Dr Semmelweis of which Rylance is a co-author. Rylance has written two other plays, “I Am Shakespeare” and Nice Fish which he co-wrote with the poet Louis Jenkins.

Film work includes three films with Steven Spielberg,  Bridge of Spies, The BFG , and Ready Player One. Other films include, The Outfit, Don’t Look Up, The Phantom of the Open, Bones and All, Waiting for the Barbarians, Dunkirk, The Institute Benjamenta.

His television appearances include three series with Peter Kosminsky; The Government Inspector, The Undeclared War and Wolf Hall.

Rylance is an honourary bencher of the Middle Temple Hall in London. He is also a founding patron of the London-based charity Peace Direct, which supports local peace-builders in areas of conflict. Lately his work has focused on Intermission Youth Theatre and The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. He will always be a patron of Survival, the International movement for Tribal Peoples.

In 2017 he was knighted for services to the Theatre.

Tom Morris

Director

Work as a director includes Juliet and her Romeo, The Meaning of Zong (with Giles Terera), Cyrano, King Lear, Touching the Void, The Grinning Man, Swallows & Amazons and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (all for Bristol Old Vic and/or West End/International tour), Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Vienna Statsoper), Breaking the Waves (Scottish Opera/ Opera Ventures, EIF, Opera Comique, Adelaide Festival), The Death of Klinghoffer (ENO & Metropolitan Opera), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (NT), War Horse (NT, Lincoln Center and world tour (winning numerous awards including Tony for Best  Director, with co-director Marianne Elliott)), Disembodied, Newsnight: The Opera, Home, Passions, Unsung, Othello Music, Trio and All That Fall (all for BAC). Writing includes A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker (Bristol Old Vic), World Cup Final 1966, Jason & the Argonauts and Ben Hur (all with Carl Heap for BAC), The Wooden Frock, Nights at the Circus and A Matter of Life and Death (all with Emma Rice for Kneehigh) and the libretto for Orpheus in Hell for ENO.

He was Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic from 2009 to 2022, where he re-established the theatre’s programme after closure, conceived and directed two landmark festivals (Bristol Proms, festival of world class music and integrated digital technology in collaboration with Watershed Bristol and Universal Music, and Bristol Jam: Britain’s first festival of improvised performance). He also oversaw a major restoration and refurbishment of Britain’s oldest continuously working theatre – creating direct visibility from the street for the very first time. He was Artistic Director of BAC from 1995 to 2004 where he established the scratch developmental programme, restructured the organisation, set up and curated A Sharp Intake of Music, Playing in the Dark, the British Festival of Visual Theatre and the Sam Shepard Festival, and BAC Opera, where he produced Jerry Springer the Opera. Morris has been Associate Director at the National Theatre since 2004, was founding Chair of the JMK Trust, is the current Chair of Complicité, has honorary doctorates from UWE and Bristol University, and an OBE for services to Theatre.

Ti Green

Set and Costume Designer

Recent work includes: A Dead Body in Taos (Fuel, Wiltons); Dr. Semmelweis (Bristol Old Vic); Touching the Void (Duke of Yorks, Bristol Old Vic); Cyrano de Bergerac (Bristol Old Vic);  Bartholomew Fair (The Globe); Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (Sevenages, Shanghai Culture Square and tour of China); What Shadows (Birmingham Rep/Edinburgh Lyceum/The Park London); The Emperor (Young Vic/ HOME/TFANA New York); The Government Inspector (Birmingham Rep and national tour); The Funfair and Romeo and Juliet (HOME, MTA winner for Best Design); Playing for Time (Sheffield Crucible); Bright Phoenix (Liverpool Everyman); A Christmas Carol (Birmingham Rep); Orlando (Manchester Royal Exchange); Henry VI parts I, II and III(The Globe); Time and the Conways (Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh/ Dundee Rep, CATS nomination for Best Design); Unleashed (Barbican) and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Liverpool Playhouse).

Designs for the National Theatre: Revenger’s Tragedy, The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder, The UN Inspector, Coram Boy (National Theatre/Imperial Theatre New York, Tony nominations for Best Costume and Set Design). For the RSC:Richard III, Little Eagles, Coriolanus, Dido Queen of Carthage and Julius Caesar.

Richard Howell

Lighting Designer

Tartuffe, Coriolanus (RSC); The House of Shades, The Writer (Almeida); Aristocrats, Privacy (Donmar); I See You (Royal Court); All My Sons, Jekyll and Hyde (Old Vic, London); Pinter 5 & 6, Glengarry Glen Goss, Bad Jews, Killer Joe, The Homecoming, East is East  (West End); Closer (Lyric Hammersmith); Black Love, NW Trilogy (Kiln); Habeas Corpus,The Watsons (Menier); Village Idiot (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Breaking The Code, A Doll’s House, Little Shop Of Horrors, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (Manchester Royal Exchange); Labyrinth (Hampstead Theatre); The Country Wife (Chichester, Minerva); The Wild Party (The Other Palace); Faustus, The Glass Menagerie (Headlong, UK Tour);  Rock, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Wizard Of OZ, Playing For Time (Sheffield Crucible); Dr Semmelweis, The Grinning Man, The Crucible, The Life And Times Of Fanny Hill (Bristol Old Vic); The Madness Of George III (Nottingham Playhouse); Project Polunin (Sadlers Wells); Cabaret (Gothenburg Opera); Breaking The Waves, Flight (Scottish Opera); Il Trittico, Madame Butterfly, La Fanciulla (Opera Holland Park); Madame Butterfly (Danish National Opera).

Antonia Franceschi

Choreographer

Ms. Franceschi is a Time Out Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. She most recently choreographed Idaspe for Pittsburgh’s Quantum Theater and Chatham Baroque, Bayhem Theater directed by Claire van Kampen, and premieres an original work for Joffrey Ballet School this May.

Antonia produced four seasons of The New York Ballet Stars, which performed at The Queen Elizabeth and Royal Festival Halls, Sintra and Harrogate Festivals. Her autobiographical play, Up From The Waste directed by Nancy Meckler was performed at The Soho Theatre and POP8 and another original work in which she collaborating with Mark Baldwin, Zoe Martlew, Terry Braun, and Ballet Black was performed at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre.

Her company, “AFD JustDance” toured to sold out audiences at the Valletta Opera House, Winchester Theatre, and New York’s 92 St Y.  She has choreographed extensively for UK and US companies, and choreographed Othello directed by van Kampen for The Globe Theatre.

Antonia is an alumnus of NYCB where she performed works created on her by Balanchine, Robbins, Martins and in London by Baldwin, McGregor, Clarke and Phillips, among others.

Adrian Sutton

Music

Adrian is a composer and producer whose scores cross orchestral, chamber and electronic genres. They have featured in a number of successful theatre productions, including Angels in America (London and Broadway, for which he received a Tony nomination), War Horse, Coram Boy and the six-times Tony-nominated The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Gielgud Theatre West End, Barrymore Theatre Broadway, two UK tours, a US tour and a current international tour).

In 2013 he received a joint Olivier Award for Curious Incident‘s Sound Design, and also produced and released Curious Incidentals, the soundtrack album from the play.

Coram Boy, his first theatrical commission, opened at the National Theatre in 2005 and on Broadway in 2007; War Horse was his second theatre score, opening in London in 2007, on Broadway in 2011, and then multiple productions worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Berlin, the Netherlands, China, two further tours of the UK and a return to the Lyttelton at the National Theatre for an extended run in November 2018 to January 2019. For both Coram Boy and War Horse he received Olivier nominations.

His War Horse Suite, a 25-minute symphonic orchestral work derived from the score for the show, was premiered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) in June 2010 and, along with a new commission Some See Us from the BBC Proms, featured as the centrepiece of a War Horse Prom in the 2014 Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall, played by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abell.

His score for War Horse: The Story in Concert was premiered in October 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall, featuring Michael Morpurgo and Joanna Lumley reading the original story on-stage, accompanied by the RPO and London Voices.  Adrian then produced the recording of this work with the RPO under David Angus at Abbey Road Studios for release in multiple formats on the BMG label in November 2017.

His children’s concert opera The Griffin and the Grail was premiered by the RPO, choirs, soloist and narrator Olivia Colman at Cadogan Hall in December 2013.

Other work for theatre includes Husbands & Sons, Rules for Living, Nation and The Revenger’s Tragedy at the National. His work for TV and film includes Chris Morris’ Jam, Blue Jam and the BAFTA-winning short film My Wrongs. Orchestral works include A Fist Full of Fives, performed on BBC Radio 3 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and a Sinfonietta. In 2013 the violinist Fenella Humphreys commissioned Adrian for Arpeggiare Variations, one of six new works as part of her Bach2TheFuture series for unaccompanied violin by British composers, released on the Champs Hill label. This disc won the BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award in 2018.

Adrian is also a violinist, and performs in orchestras and chamber groups including Blaze Ensemble, for which he wrote the nonet Montana Peaks.