''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
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan (Hobbes book), Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered t ...
and
Christopher Wren. It premiered in 1967 and became one of the most successful one person shows in history.
Roy Dotrice played Aubrey in many productions.
The play came out of an episode about Aubrey in ''Famous Gossips'' (1965), the BBC television series Garland made with
Alan Bennett.
The play was profiled in the
William Goldman book ''
The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway''.
Productions
The play originally opened at the
Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967. It then ran at the
John Golden Theater in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, and had a 400 performance run at the
Criterion Theatre in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
. 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.
Outside of Broadway and the West End, the play was produced at Canada's
Stratford Festival in 1980 with
Douglas Rain as Aubrey.
References
{{reflist
1967 plays