Guest Blog: David Glass On The UK Tour of BLEAK HOUSE

Bleak House began life in 2015 as an invitation to direct a devised piece for the graduating class at the Arts University in Bournemouth. Britain was still in the midst of an austerity policy that was creating poverty and the reappearance of Victorian illnesses that had been thought to have been eradicated.

The #MeToo movement was about to explode across the world, and the machinery of democracy was being tinkered with by the Russians that would have devastating effects on the American election. Bleak House seemed a perfect fit.

I see theatre as both universal and specific, and as we are going through extraordinary changes all across the world, the fundamental themes of love, death and greed are again expressing themselves in intense and powerful narratives. I've been privileged to have taught over 100,000 people in 74 countries, from street children to stars, and working across different cultures has revealed new and exciting ways of telling stories.

I imagine the story of Bleak House as a vivid, modern melodrama with the young orphan woman, Esther Summerson, struggling to survive and find a home and identity against a corrupt system of law, destroying or enslaving all those beneath it.

I had read Dickens' finest works during A-level literature. In the same year, back in 1975, I saw Mike Alfreds' two-evening Shared Experience version and was mesmerised.

I went to see my mentor, friend and collaborator Mike Alfreds to ask if he had a script of his much-lauded production, which had inspired Trevor Nunn to do his epic Nicholas Nickleby and the RSC to think Les Misérables might be possible. In typical fashion, Mike said there was no script and that it had existed in the bodies of his company from 1975 and the audience's imagination, neither of which I had access or time to get!

After a wonderful talk, I decided to start at the beginning and commit to a modern, visceral melodrama with a physically robustious chorus and a painfully desperate heart - creating something that was going to be bittersweet and satirical by turns.

Now, four years later, we are onto the third iteration - and in my opinion the best version - of this extraordinarily relevant and passionate modern melodrama. The company has been committed from four years ago with some wonderful new/old hands. I can promise you a night of laughter, tears, anger and love. See you there!

Bleak House by the David Glass Ensemble is touring the UK from 12 September-19 October

Photos courtesy Robert Golden

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