| Brief Lives | |
| Premiere: | 1967 |
| Orig Lang: | English |
Brief Lives is a British play about John Aubrey, a 17th-century Englishman who met and kept accounts of many of the famous men of his day, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Christopher Wren.[1] It premiered in 1967 and became one of the most successful one person shows in history. Roy Dotrice played Aubrey in many productions.[2]
The play came out of an episode about Aubrey in Famous Gossips (1965), the BBC television series Garland made with Alan Bennett.[3]
The play was profiled in the William Goldman book .
The play originally opened at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967. It then ran at the John Golden Theater in New York City, and had a 400 performance run at the Criterion Theatre in London. Following a 1974 run at New York's Booth Theatre, the play was toured globally. At the end of the tour in 1979, Dotrice had completed over 1700 performances.[4]
Outside of Broadway and the West End, the play was produced at Canada's Stratford Festival in 1980 with Douglas Rain as Aubrey.[5] [6]