A Listening Heaven
Encyclopedia
A Listening Heaven is a play for six actors written by the English dramatist Torben Betts
.
It is a domestic tragedy (written in the mid 1990s) centring on the suicide of a young eco-warrior and the inability of his rather conservative, emotionally repressed family to cope with his death.
The play was initially championed by Alan Ayckbourn
who then invited Betts to become writer-in-residence at his theatre in Scarborough (the Stephen Joseph Theatre
) in 1999. It was produced there that summer to some acclaim. It received its second production at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, where it was nominated as Best New Play for the TMA Awards, 2001. Morag Hood
, in her final stage performance, was nominated for Best Actress.
The play has since been translated into French, German and Finnish and produced throughout Europe.
Torben Betts
Torben Betts is an award-winning English playwright and screenwriter.A consistently controversial dramatist, who has written heavily naturalistic plays as well as epic, poetic works, he has been hailed as a successor to writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Bond and Howard Barker...
.
It is a domestic tragedy (written in the mid 1990s) centring on the suicide of a young eco-warrior and the inability of his rather conservative, emotionally repressed family to cope with his death.
The play was initially championed by Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
who then invited Betts to become writer-in-residence at his theatre in Scarborough (the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
) in 1999. It was produced there that summer to some acclaim. It received its second production at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, where it was nominated as Best New Play for the TMA Awards, 2001. Morag Hood
Morag Hood
Morag Hood was a Scottish actress described by many commentators as "a celebrated beauty," who featured in numerous British programmes, stage productions, and audio presentations from the 1960s up to the late 1990s....
, in her final stage performance, was nominated for Best Actress.
The play has since been translated into French, German and Finnish and produced throughout Europe.
Press comment
- A great new play...totally gripping...searing...one scene of quite shattering impact proves he is a real dramatist...has an O'Neill-like emotional force...I came out of the Lyceum exhilarated by Betts' heightened realism. (MICHAEL BILLINGTON, THE GUARDIAN)
- ...refreshingly bleak...a tour de force of gallows humour that runs the whole gamut of emotional warfare... (THE TIMES)
- ...this fine tragi-comedy...like the best work of Edward Albee...a startlingly rich evening's theatre...beautifully articulated... (THE SCOTSMAN)
- ...a fierce indictment of a smug, emotionally illiterate middle class that doesn't understand the destruction it wreaks on its young...has a shocking power... the production is first-rate... (JOHN PETER, THE SUNDAY TIMES)
External links
- A Listening Heaven — Official website