Play by Patrick Garland based on the writings of John Aubrey. An adaptation of the life and times of John Aubrey, the 17th Century Wiltshire gentleman and inveterate gossip - full of bawdy and outrageous reminiscences.
Original London Production 1967 with Roy Dotrice
Original West End London Production 1969 with Roy Dotrice
London Revival 1974 with Roy Dotrice
1st West End Revival 1998 with Michael Williams
Originally presented as a 30-minute television drama, starring Roy Dotrice, on BBC 1 on Saturday 22 August 1965, as the first of a six-part weekly series produced by Patrick Garland under the title Famous Gossips (the other programmes featured other actors as Parson Yorick, Harriette Wilson, Charles Apperley, Augustus Hare, and Oscar Wilde).
It was then expanded and adapted for the stage, with the Premiere taking place at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967. A transfer to New York's John Golden Theatre on Broadway in December that year managed a run of just 16 performances, losing around $100,000 according to reports in the trade newspaper 'Variety' at the time. A return to London two months later, to the West End's Criterion Theatre, proved much more successful - with Roy Dotrice six-month run breaking the record for the longest, uninterrupted, run of a one-man show. The show, starring Roy Dotrice, was filmed for television, with the 85 minute drama being broadcast on BBC 2 on Monday 6 May 1968.
Roy Dotrice returned to London with the show five years later for another six month run, bringing the number of performances that Roy Dotrice had played the role in London to 422 in total. A second transfer to New York, to Broadway's Booth Theatre in October 1974 proved more successful than the first, this time running for just over 50 performances. Following New York the show toured the US and the world over the following five years. By the end Roy Dotrice, who had performed the role some 1,782 times, had entered the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest number of solo performances in the same role.
Original London Production 1967 with Roy Dotrice
Opened 16 January 1967, Closed 11 February 1967 at the Hampstead Theatre Club
The cast featured Roy Dotrice as 'John Aubrey'.
Directed by Patrick Garland with designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman.
Performed 7-times-a-week (no midweek matinees) for a total of 28 performances.
Original West End London Production 1969 with Roy Dotrice
Opened 25 February 1969, Closed 6 September 1969 at the Criterion Theatre
The cast featured Roy Dotrice as 'John Aubrey'.
Directed by Patrick Garland with designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman.
Performed 7-times-a-week (no midweek matinees) for a total of 206 performances.
London Revival 1974 with Roy Dotrice
Opened 15 January 1974, Closed 20 July 1974 at the Mayfair Theatre
The cast featured Roy Dotrice as 'John Aubrey'.
Directed by Patrick Garland with designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman.
Performed 7-times-a-week (no midweek matinees) for a total of 188 performances.
The Mayfair Theatre is located inside the Radisson May Fair Hotel in Stratton Steet, Mayfair, and is now a private screening room.
1st West End Revival 1998 with Michael Williams
Previewed 18 March 1998, Opened 23 March 1998, Closed 23 May 1998 at the Duchess Theatre
The cast featured Michael Williams as 'John Aubrey'.
Directed by Patrick Garland with designs by Tim Goodchild, lighting by Robin Carter, and sound by Tom Lishman.
"Although the show is full of humour and linguistic vigour, it is hauntingly sad. There is something driven about Aubrey, desperate to put his papers in order and publish before his death, appalled to think of how much knowledge is lost with the death of learned men. In Williams's beautiful performance, too, there is an extraordinary sense of physical frailty and imminent mortality, of a flickering light on the very brink of extinction. This man, who has devoted his life to learning, complains that he can scarcely read a letter anymore and declares, 'Oh, the misery of old age. Surely the day of one's death must be counted among one's happiest.' So when Aubrey dies, you ought to feel pleased for him. In fact, you experience a tug of selfish sorrow that his flow of words has stopped, long before they grew wearisome." The Daily Telegraph
"Delivering what amounts to a meandering shaggy dog story, Michael Williams has himself been got up as a shaggy old dog for this beguiling impersonation of the neglected eccentric 17th-century man of letters, John Aubrey... The main attraction is Michael Williams's immaculately squalid performance. Ranging from grouchiness to amnesia and thence to visionary elation, Williams peppers Aubrey's memories with saucy asides and tiptoes nimbly round the sentimental pitfalls which attend costumed nostalgia... Garland's relaxed, but thickly atmospheric direction allows Williams to improvise without losing sight of the monologue's sinuous form and melancholic purpose. The result is that, although Aubrey's Brief Lives was never published in his lifetime, this alluring rendition proves that every dog can still have his day - even if it is 300 years late." The London Evening Standard
"Patrick Garland famously arranged this solo show for Roy Dotrice 30 years ago, adapting John Aubrey's Brief Lives - the first potted biographies in English for an unforgettable evening of random memories with a dying fall. Risking all comparisons, Michael Williams makes the role his own, and is by turns very funny and strangely moving... Williams is a brilliant timer of a line, and gains many laughs by delayed reactions. The screaming baby next door wakens him at the start of Act Two: "Oh yes, Sir Walter Raleigh!" he exclaims as if continuing an old sentence. So, a master craftsman at work, with good bellowing lungs when he wants them. Garland's script is a clever tapestry, and Williams weaves there a poignant testament to the vanity of human wishes and the frailty of all existence." The Daily Mail
Brief Lives in London at the Duchess Theatre previewed from 18 March 1998, opened on 23 March 1998, and closed on 23 May 1998