About A House on Middagh Street
A House on Middagh Street, a one-hour musical play, was commissioned by the Britten-Pears Foundation for performance at the Aldeburgh Pump House during the 2018 Aldeburgh Festival. It was Sarah’s writer/director debut. The play will be revived in August at Dartington Festival 2019.
A House on Middagh Street is an immersive performance is set in the house in Brooklyn where Benjamin Britten, WH Auden, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee lived during the Second World War in an extraordinary creative maelstrom, where novels (including Gypsy’s pulp classic, The G-String Murders), operas and poems were written, but the washing up never got done.
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Credits 2018
Premiered at the Pumphouse Aldeburgh, Aldeburgh Festival 2018
Written & directed by Sarah Gabriel
Commissioned and produced by the Britten-Pears Foundation
Benjamin Britten // Thomas Ghaleb
WH Auden // Jonah York
Carson McCullers // Tilly-Mae Millbrook
Gypsy Rose Lee // Emma Waterford
Lucia la Louche // Lucy Walker
Emigrette // Sarah Gabriel
Music by Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and Benjamin Britten
With guest ‘appearances’ by Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Igor and Vera Stravinsky, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill and others
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Photos:
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten in Brooklyn
The cast of A House on Middagh Street 2018: