ARTicles vol. 3 i.2b: Welcome: Dido, Queen of Carthage

Dear Friends, Dido, Queen of Carthagebrings both Christopher Marlowe and Neil Bartlett to the A.R.T. for the first time. Though separated by more than five centuries, Bartlett and Marlowe have much in common: both are iconoclasts who delight in pitching elegant bombs at the establishment; both share a vision of a theatre fueled by the highest expressions of beauty, passion, desire, and despair. Neil has made a specialty of discovering and reviving neglected masterpieces from across the canon. His productions at the Lyric Hammersmith – the London theatre that he ran for ten years – included the first English-language production of Jean Genet’s “lost” play Spendids(in his own translation), The Letterby Somerset Maugham, and Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre. We therefore weren’t surprised when he proposed Dido, Queen of Carthagefor the A.R.T., though those of us who had even heard of the play remembered it only from undergraduate literature classes, a brief digression on the path to Marlowe’s better known works, Dr. Faustusand Tamburlaine the Great. When we read the first lines of Didowe understood Neil’s choice. Marlowe’s subject is the human heart in extremis, and he paints it with unflinching honesty and compassion. If you compare Marlowe’s verse to Shakespeare’s it can seem straightforward, at least on the page. Read aloud, though, the sound of the words, and the tactile pleasure of speaking them, is overwhelming. No other writer in English has come close to the sensuality that Marlowe wrings from spoken language -as Neil points out, these characters don’t speak, they sing. Marlowe’s plays are operas. Didoreunites Neil with his long-term collaborator, the designer Rae Smith, for whom this is also an A.R.T. debut. Neil and Rae create theatre of great immediacy; there’s no doubt that this performance is unfolding right now, right here, in this very room. Watching their productions, you can be gripped with an unsettling sense that the actors are talking directly to you, describing the most private aspects of your own existence. It’s a privilege to have Neil and Rae with us. We hope they return often. Best wishes, Gideon Lester Associate Artistic Director