Old Masters

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Play Opened 1 July 2004, Closed 18 December 2004

Comedy Theatre Panton Street, London

The Old Masters is a new play by Simon Gray directed by Harold Pinter.

1937, a perfect summer´s day. In the magnificent gardens of his opulent Villa overlooking Florence, Bernard Berenson, the renowned Art critic, connoisseur, writer, and collector, is taking his ease discussing art and world affairs with his wife, Mary, and with Nicky, his mistress.

Meanwhile, unknown to Berenson, in a hotel in Florence, multimillionaire Joseph Duveen, the world´s most pre-eminent art dealer, is preparing to visit him late that night. He has with him a priceless Renaissance painting for Berenson to examine - though he knows that this may shatter their 30 year-old - and highly secret - business arrangement.

Midnight in a library in Mussolini´s Italy. Two Jewish intellectuals with the storm gathering around them. Men who virtually invented the international art market - and an enigmatic masterpiece at the heart of the matter: how much does the true value of a work of art depend on its attribution? What happens when that attribution is open to doubt?

The Old Masters lays open the fascinating world of the market in fine art, exploring issues of true value, of provenance, and of forgery and fraud artistic and personal, via the real life relationship between Duveen and Berenson.

The cast features Edward Fox and Peter Bowles.

"Tremendously acted" The London Evening Standard

"Complex, cryptic, aworm with dilemmas" The Daily Mail

"Fox and Bowles at the very top of their game... two wily old masters in their prime" The Daily Telegraph

"Pure delight" The Guardian