Glass loves The Habit of Art

The Habit of Art

a new play by Alan Bennett

For those of you who missed this wonderful smash-hit production by Nicholas Hytner featuring Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings (both above) and the magnetic Frances de la Tour in its first and second runs - don't despair.Performances from 14 July feature a new cast, which includes Desmond Barrit as W H Auden and Malcolm Sinclair as Benjamin Britten.

Here is what everyone else has to say: 

5 STARS 
'Another absolute cracker, often wonderfully and sometimes filthily funny, but also deeply and unexpectedly moving.' 
Daily Telegraph

5 STARS 
'Bennett the maestro returns with a multi-layered masterpiece.' 
Independent

5 STARS
'Nicholas Hytner's flawless productionh carries you along in a wave of pleasure.'
Mail on Sunday

5 STARS
Daily Express, Sunday Telegraph

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.

You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.

Alan Bennett’s new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

‘In the end,’ said Auden, ‘art is small beer. The really serious things in life are earning one’s living and loving one’s neighbour.’