It's 1899 and all of Europe is agape at the arrival of the new century! The world crackles with possibilities - and its people dance to the irresistible rhythms of money, sex, love and freedom. Swinging above them all is a showbiz sensation; a fierce, vulgar, pant-droppingly sexy trapeze artist called Fevvers. The story charts her unlikely love affair with Walser, a world-weary journalist on a mission to expose her as a fake.
Nights at the Circus opened at the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2006. Emma Rice, acclaimed Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre (Tristan & Yseult, The Bacchae) directs Angela Carter's great mythic novel. With rising star Natalia Tena as Fevvers (About a Boy, Mrs Henderson Presents and Shared Experience's Bronte & Gone to Earth) and Gisli Orn Gardarsson as Walser (Young Vic's Romeo & Juliet and Woyzeck).
A glorious piece of work... The narrative has a splendid ripe momentum, and each descriptive touch contributes a pang of vividness.
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TLS
Intensely amusing and also provocatively serious. This is a big, superlatively imagined novel.
--
Observer
Author
About Angela Carter
Angela Carter was born in 1940 of a Scottish father and Yorkshire mother. She read English at Bristol University, and after escaping an early marriage went to live in Japan for a number of years. She wrote nine novels, which blend fantasy, science fiction and gothic, and is often referred to as a writer of magic realism. She died in 1992.