BIOGRAPHY
Neil Bartlett
Neil Bartlett (Oliver Twist, Dido, Queen of Carthage) is one of Britain's most acclaimed and innovative theater artists. A director, performer, translator, and writer, he first came to prominence in the late 1980s as a founding member of Gloria, an independent music-theater production company, which co-produced performances with the National Theatre (including Racine's Berenice with Lindsay Duncan), Theatre de Complicite, the Royal Court, and New York Theatre Workshop (including the new opera Sarrasine in 1990). From 1994 to 2004 Bartlett was the artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith and established its reputation as one of London's most adventurous and best-loved theaters. At the Lyric he directed many outstanding productions of little-known classic plays, many of which he translated or adapted himself, ranging from the English-language premiere of Jean Genet's Splendid's to Kleist's Prince of Homburg and Marivaux's La Dispute (both award-winning co-productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company), and most recently his acclaimed adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist, in the mode of a nineteenth-century melodrama. Many of his translations and adaptations of classic dramas have been performed throughout the world, at theaters such as the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. They include The Misanthrope and School for Wives by Molière, The Picture of Dorian Gray and In Extremis adapted from texts by Oscar Wilde, Lady into Fox (Garnett), and The Game of Love and Chance and The Island of Slaves (Marivaux). Mr. Bartlett is also acclaimed as a playwright and novelist. His plays include A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep and Night After Night, and his novels include Who Was that Man?, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall, and Mr. Clive and Mr. Page (published in the U.S. as The House on Brooke Street), which was shortlisted for the 1996 Whitbread Prize.