Dead Poets Live
Sylvia Plath
London
Two-time Olivier Award winner Denise Gough returns to The Coronet, where Dead Poets Live‘s exploration of the poetry of Sylvia Plath premiered in 2018.
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932 and died in London in 1963, aged 30. In her brief career she produced some of the greatest and most exhilarating poetry of the 20th century. The best-known of her poems – among them ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Daddy’, ‘The Applicant’, ‘Tulips’ – arrived in the extraordinary torrent of creativity unleashed in her final months, posthumously collected in Ariel.
Dead Poets Live retrace the breath-taking, nail-biting ascent Plath made, by various poetic turns, to the unique and definitive voice of those final poems.
‘A stellar performance’, Times Literary Supplement
Performers
Denise Gough astonished audiences and critics in London and New York with her performance in People, Places & Things, for which she was awarded the Olivier Award for Best Actress in 2016 and the Obie Award in 2018. She returned to the National Theatre in 2017, and won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in the revival of Angels in America. Recent TV work includes Under the Banner of Heaven, Too Close, opposite Emily Watson, the title role in Conor McPherson’s mini-series, Paula, and the role of Dedra Meero in the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor. Recent films include Colette, Monday and Steel Country.
Denise reprises the role having played the part – sensationally – in 2018, and earlier in 2023, first at Wilton’s Music Hall, then at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and then, finally, in Heptonstall, in the church where Plath is buried.
Photography © Tara Rowse