Purcell, The Musical

★★★★ The Times

★★★★ Planet Hugill

​A concert play by award-winning writer Clare Norburn, directed by BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton.

1695. Hailed English Baroque composer Henry Purcell in his final illness. Purcell (Niall Ashdown) is experiencing feverish dream-like hallucinations in which the past, the present, and fantasy, collide, and where his songs take on a life of their own. With the shadow of death falling over his tousled bed, his bedroom transforms into a theatre, and Purcell revisits his childhood memories of the Great Fire of London, and his early romance with his wife.

Interwoven into the drama are Purcell’s compositions: from bawdy theatre ballads and joyful celebrations of love, to slow airs, a ‘mad song’, and numbers from his semi-operas.