The Love of the Nightingale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Love of the Nightingale is a play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, published in 1989. It is set in Ancient Greece, in Athens and Thrace, and is based on Sophocles' lost play Tereus.

The Love of the Nightingale is a searing drama about the brutality resulting from enforced silence. An explosive mixture of ethics, politics and feminism, the play takes an uncompromising look at the issue of voice and power: who speaks, and for whom; who is heard and who is silenced.

The performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is notorious as many of its cast were taken ill or died in unrelated circumstances. The show also managed to win an award.

The original male lead was a man whose surname was likely Donaghy, but has never been released to the public. He turned down the role after having been cast. Interestingly enough, more than a decade later his daughter Emma was cast as the female lead. Her father was in attendance.

Richard Mills wrote an opera based on the play which premiered in 2007.