Legendary stage and screen actor BRIAN COX (HBO’s multi-award-winning Succession) stars as Johann Sebastian Bach in Oliver Cotton’s new play, originally presented at the Theatre Royal Bath.
Spring 1747, Potsdam, Prussia. Johann Sebastian Bach reluctantly visits the court of Frederick II, Europe’s most ambitious and dangerous leader. The two men could hardly be more different. Bach is deeply religious, Frederick is an atheist. Bach loathes war, Frederick revels in it. Bach studies scripture, Frederick reads military history. Frederick remains in awe of Bach’s genius however and has mischievously prepared a musical conundrum that he hopes will baffle the composer and amuse his court. The explosive events of the following days could not have been predicted by either man.
Brian Cox’s glittering career has spanned more than sixty years, garnering numerous awards, working with the most esteemed theatre companies and renowned Hollywood and TV directors. Twice Olivier Award winner for Best Actor, his portrayal in the HBO hit series Succession has won him a Golden Globe award and Emmy nominations.
He is joined in the cast by Nicole Ansari-Cox who studied at the prestigious Actors’ Studio in New York and has starred regularly on stage and screen in the UK and the US. Her major credits include Deadwood, The Biographer and Blumenthal on screen, and starring in Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll at the Royal Court and on Broadway.
Former artistic director of the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, Trevor Nunn’s multi-award winning repertoire ranges from Les Misérables to The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
__Assisted Performances__
Captioned Performance - Wednesday 16th April 7.30pm
Audio Described Performance - Wednesday 9th April 7.30pm
The play might want to be a large invective against war but stays safely sat on the fence as nothing more than a vehicle for historical review. Cotton asks his audience to peer beyond this meeting of minds and search for deeper meaning, but doesn’t add the juicy subtext or linguistic rhythm necessary to make this the theatrical colossus he expects it to be. As it is, it’s an old-fashioned production with an ambiguous raison d’être aimed at the grey pound.
Why is it so hard to write a decent play about Bach? Maybe, in part, because there are no words that can express anything as eloquently as his music did – about life and death, pain and transcendence, wretchedness or rapture at the simplest aspects of existence. So much of what he represented was distilled into that music – and what we are left with biographically is the workaholism, the curmudgeonliness, the rows with figures of authority.
| 2025 | West End |
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