Dead Poets Live
Hallowe’en
The most terrifying poems ever written
With a cast featuring Adrian Dunbar, Tara Fitzgerald, Toby Jones and Sophie Thompson.
For adults and courageous children.
Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, e e cummings, Browning, Keats, Auden and many, many more at their most disturbing. This evening of readings moved from the jet-black 17th Century revenge fantasies to Scottish murder ballads to the Gothic extremes of the Romantics to death-haunted French Symbolists and the psychological nightmares of the 20th century. Some funny poems. But mainly murder, torture, witchcraft, possession, abductions, madness, despair and horror.








Performers

Tara Fitzgerald has played Ophelia, Blanche DuBois, The Woman in White and Lady Macbeth. She won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1995 as Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet. She went on to star in Brassed Off, I Capture the Castle, and, released last year, Una. She appeared in the West End production of The Misanthrope with Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley, and in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Donmar Warehouse. Recently, she has appeared Waking the Dead and played the role of Selyse Baratheon in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

A star of stage and screen, a Golden Globe and Bafta nominee, Toby Jones made his breakthrough as Truman Capote in the biopic Infamous. Since then, his films have included The Mist, W., Frost/Nixon, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Dad’s Army. Television credits include Capital, Sherlock and Titanic.

Sophie Thompson‘s Olivier nominated work on the stage includes Guys and Dolls, Clybourne Park, Company and also Into the Woods which she won the Olivier for Best Actress in a Musical. On film she has appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Gosford Park, Emma, Persuasion and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her television work includes The Detectorists, A Room with a View, A Harlots Progress and Eastenders (for which she won Inside Soap Best Bitch Award). In 2014 Sophie won Celebrity MasterChef and is also the author of two children’s stories Zoo Boy and Zoo Boy and The Jewel Thieves as well as a cook book My Family Kitchen which are all published by Faber & Faber.

Since 2012 Adrian Dunbar has been known to audiences as Superintendent Ted Hastings in the BBC One thriller Line of Duty. He has also appeared in such notable films as My Left Foot, The Crying Game, and The General. He co-wrote and starred in the 1991 film, Hear My Song, nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the BAFTA awards. His theatre credits, as director as well performer, include: King Lear, Pope’s Wedding, Saved and Up To The Sun And Down To The Centre (Royal Court); The Shaughraun and Exiles (Abbey Theatre); Real Dreams and The Danton Affair (RSC).
Proceeds from the evening went to the refugee charity Safe Passage.
‘Safe Passage works to ensure every person fleeing persecution can access a safe and legal route to a place where they can live a full and dignified life. We’re extremely grateful for the support of Dead Poets Live, every inch of which will go to supporting the most vulnerable unaccompanied minors to reach safety.’
Banner images and photographs of the event © Tara Rowse
Edgar Allan Poe, by Friedrich Bruckmann, 1876, after Samuel W. Hartshorn (13 November 1848) © National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Browning, 1889, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant) © National Portrait Gallery, London
Louis MacNeice, 1945, by Elliott & Fry © National Portrait Gallery, London
W. H. Auden, 1937, by Howard Coster © National Portrait Gallery, London
W. B. Yeats, 1911, by George Charles Beresford © National Portrait Gallery, London
John Donne, after Isaac Oliver, oil on canvas, based on a work of 1616 © National Portrait Gallery, London
D. H. Lawrence, c. 1915, by Elliott & Fry © National Portrait Gallery, London