Afterlife - National Theatre, Lyttelton

SYNOPSIS

a new play by Michael Frayn

A man who has everything. Money, friends, a happy home. And then – pfft! It’s all vanished.

Max Reinhardt, one of the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had a lifelong ambition – to dissolve the boundary between theatre and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg festival he directed a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures that money can buy.

Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death into Austria – whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself. Michael Frayn’s Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have foreseen.

Roger Allam, last seen at the National Theatre in Michael Frayn's Democracy, plays Reinhardt.

World Premiere

Cast credits:
: cast includes
Max Reinhardt : Roger Allam
Ensemble : David Baron
The Prince Archbishop : David Burke
Helene Thimig : Abigail Cruttenden
Rudolf 'Katie' Kommer : Peter Forbes
Franz : Glyn Grain
Gusti Adler : Selina Griffiths
Ensemble : Colin Haigh
Ensemble : Sarah Head
Everyman/Ensemble : Nicholas Lumley
Ensemble : Elizabeth Marsh
Ensemble : Charlotte Melia
Ensemble : Hugh Osborne
Ensemble : Peter Prentice
Friedrich Muller : David Schofield
Ensemble : Claire Winsper
Ensemble : Rupert Young

Production credits:
Director: Michael Blakemore
Set Designer: Peter Davison
Costume Designer: Sue Willmington
Lighting Designer: Neil Austin
Music and Sound: Paul Charlier