Brideshead Revisited

My theme is memory, that winged host? that soared about me one grey morning of wartime. Billeted to Brideshead during the Second World War, Captain Charles Ryder is overwhelmed by memories of his Oxford days and holidays spent in the fine stately home under the privileged spell of the dazzling Marchmains. As past and present blur, Charles recalls his enchantment with the beguiling Sebastian, his beautiful sister Julia and the doomed Catholic family, and considers how they would change his life for ever. Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, reimagined for the stage by Bryony Lavery, was co-produced by English Touring Theatre and York Theatre Royal. The show premiered at York Theatre Royal in April 2016 and then toured the UK.

Bryony Lavery's plays include Her Aching Heart (Pink Paper Play of the Year 1992) and A Wedding Story (2000). Her play Frozen, commissioned by Birmingham Repertory Theatre, won the TMA Best Play Award, the Eileen Anderson Central Television Award, and was then produced on Broadway where it was nominated for 4 Tony awards. She also wrote Last Easter, produced in The Door, and created adaptations of Uncle Vanya and A Christmas Carol as an associate artist for The REP. Stockholm, with Frantic Assembly, won the Wolff-Whiting award for Best Play of 2008. Recent work includes Beautiful Burnout for the National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly, which received a Fringe First at Edinburgh; The Believers with Frantic Assembly at the Theatre Royal Plymouth and the Tricycle; Kursk with Sound and Fury at the Young Vic and Sydney Opera House; Cesario for the National Theatre; Thursday at the Adelaide Festival; Queen Coal at the Studio, Sheffield; and an adaptation of Tales of the City/ More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin for BBC Radio 4. Forthcoming work includes stage adaptations of 101 Dalmatians for Chichester Festival Theatre; Brideshead Revisited for York Theatre Royal; and Picnic at Hanging Rock for ETT/Brink. Bryony Lavery is an honorary Doctor of Arts at De Montfort University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.