NIGHTINGALE

OVERVIEW

“Lynn Redgrave commands the stage with consummate skill…”   --Bob Verini, Variety

  “GO. Masterfully creates a tragic-comical story by reconstructing, from family tales and her imagination, the life of this Edwardian matriarch whom she calls Mildred…”
  --Lovell Estell III, LA Weekly.

 

This tender engaging story and performance was hailed by London's Independent on Sunday: “The play is full of touching, poignant and quite funny moments. Redgrave has a real talent for communicating the despair that comes from a life unlived… This bitter-sweet birdsong deserves to be heard by all.”

   

An extraordinary member of the legendary Redgrave acting dynasty invites you into the intimate Mark Taper Forum to hear a tale of love.  Inspired by remembrances of her maternal grandmother, Nightingale weaves these tantalizing fragments into a full, tender, and engaging evening of theatre.  

   

As a playwright, Ms. Redgrave also is the author of Shakespeare for My Father. She is proud to be part of a family of actors, embracing as it does more than five generations: her grandparents, her parents Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, sister Vanessa, brother Corin, and nieces Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave.

   

“Redgrave brings us into a very special world, compounded equally of the English stage and the English aristocracy. She does so with unexcelled technique and stage presence... dignity, humor and an easy grace…”
      --Laurence Vittes, The Hollywood Reporter
                       

   

“A few years ago I went to the place in England where my maternal grandmother is buried and discovered to my dismay that the headstone had been washed clean by acid rain. It made me wonder what mark do we leave? Who will remember us?

My mother passed down to me tantalizing fragments of stories about my grandmother. They’re like Chinese whispers, these stories that come down. We don’t really know how true any of them are.

I’ve changed her name and invented a woman, Mildred Asher, whose true voice, like the song of the nightingale, can only be heard in the dark.

I’ve invented a life, in a work of speculative fiction, that in some way hangs on to the thread of immortality that I think we’re all looking for.”

—Lynn Redgrave

“Redgrave has created the kind of simple, honest storytelling that’s too rare in theater. Through her deft, intelligent writing and strong performance, she creates a woman who is sympathetic and even likeable at times.” --Jeff Favre, Daily Breeze

  Learn more about the resolute and remarkable Ms. Redgrave on her website.

 

                   

CREDITS

PUBLICATIONS

• Nightingale: Discovery Guide
  ( pdf | 0.9Mb )

PRESS RELEASES