The Playwrights Database
MICHAEL MCCAFFERY
Nationality: Englishemail: Click here to contact Website: n/a
Literary Agent: n/a
Born on Tyneside, Michael McCaffery read English at Magdalene College Cambridge. On graduating , he began work as a director, with the Old Vic Company in London .In 1980 he joined the directing staff at the National Theatre and, in 1981, Peter Hall invited him to work at Glyndebourne where he was associate director on several productions, including Orfeo ed Euridice with Dame Janet Baker. In 1983 he joined Hall's team at Bayreuth for Wagner's Ring, conducted by Sir George Solti, later assuming full responsibility for the production and directing it in its acclaimed final season 1985/1986. In 1986, he became Artistic Director of the Dublin Grand Opera Society , beginning a major period of artistic growth and expansion for the company which was to become Opera Ireland. In 1990 he returned to free-lance directing and has since directed productions throughout the world. Long associations with several companies include Israeli Opera Tel Aviv and Garsington Opera (directing five productions for each of them) ,Opera Comique de Paris (where he has three productions in the repertoire) and Opernhaus Halle, where he has recently directed a new production of Smetana's Bartered Bride. Recent engagements have included the Yeomen of the Guard at the Linbury, Covent Garden.,Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci in Montreal, Orfeo ed Euridice for L'Opera National du Rhin Strasbourg , Martha at the Volksoper Vienna and the award winning Imeneo in the Halle Handel Festival. His work has been seen at major festivals, including Edinburgh, Glyndebourne, Wexford, La Coruna, Schwetzingen and Hong Kong. In 2005/2006 he directed a highly-praised Merry Widow for Carl Rosa , Falstaff and Rossini's Cinderella for Stanley Hall Opera and Don Giovanni for the National Theatre in Tokyo. Michael McCaffery's Theatre credits include Macbeth, Henry IV PArts 1+2, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost , the Merchant of Venice and Two Noble Kinsmen(Shakespeare), Arms and the Man and Pygmalion (Bernard Shaw), Little Women, Total Eclipse, Moliere's Don Juan and George Dandin, Brecht's Puntila and Threepenny Opera, Marivaux's Game of Love and Chance and Horvath's Tales from the Vienna Woods, the Divorcement of Figaro and Kasimir and Karoline. His adaptation and direction of Wuthering Heights will be revived in the autumn when he will also direct a new Gilbert and Sullivan show Innocent Merriment ! He has been Visiting Lecturer in Performance Studies at Manchester University and has taught at most of London's major academies and conservatoires, including RADA, GSMD and the Royal College of Music. Michael McCaffery has also worked on extensively on radio where his work includes numerous Arts and Theatre features, a five-part biography of Gilbert and Sullivan for Lyric FM Radio and his adaptation of John B.Keane's the Matchmaker for BBC Radio 4, which was nominated for a Sony Award. His book, Directing a Play,is published by Phaidon.
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below is a list of Michael McCaffery's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Debt To Pleasure, The Divorcement Of Figaro, The Kasimir And Karoline Mysteries 2000 Proper Pantermine - Turns In the Life Of Marie Lloyd Wuthering HeightsDebt To Pleasure, The
Synopsis:
Following the debacle of his play Sodom, John Wilmott returns to his country estate to find a deserted house, stripped of furniture and comforts. Only his pet monkey Bella remains as companion and listening post. As winter sets in, Rochester waits for the return of his wife, Elisabeth and , aware that things must be put in order, he attempts a reckoning on the debt to pleasure amassed over some twenty years. Wilmott revisits the major scenes of his life, seeing at times a glorious revolution and at others an exegesis of squalor. the house decays and rots about him as he rages, craving just one more day in which to play.
Notes:
Original Music by Peter Davidson
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Cambridge Music Theatre
1st Published:
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Music:
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Genre:
play with music, 65 min
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: 1 Musician 1 Monkey
Further Reference:
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Top of PageDivorcement Of Figaro, The
Synopsis:
Horvath takes Beaumarchais' and Mozart's characters from the Marriage of Figaro and throws them down in a post Treaty of Versailles Middle Europe in which boundaries shift constantly and values --personal and political--are in melt down. Only Susanna retains the sense of individual purpose which inspired the original play and she comes to understand that her instinct for self-preservation then was the beginning of something altogether more radical---something that even now---is just beginning to find its real _expression.
Notes:
Original Playwright - Odon von Horvath
1st Produced:
Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin 2001
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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Genre:
Translation
Parts:
Male: 16 Female: 5 Other: doubling
Further Reference:
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Top of PageKasimir And Karoline
Synopsis:
A phantasmagorical fairground setting echoes the sense of unbelonging and displacement facing Horvath's disaffected youth as the Weimar Republic careers from uncertainty to chaos and the inevitability of national socialism casts ever longer shadows over Munich's Oktoberfest . Seven young people---all children of the First World War---strive to have a good time and to make some sort of sense of their existence in a world where dreams have become nightmares and parents their predators rather than their protectors. the "good time" is embraced as the only talisman against despair. After all " it's getting better all the time".
Notes:
Original Playwright - Odon von Horvath
1st Produced:
RADA Vanburgh Theatre, London 1990
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Music:
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Genre:
Translation
Parts:
Male: 11 Female: - Other: doubling
Further Reference:
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Top of PageMysteries 2000
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
Organisations:
the Machine
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
Adaptation
Parts:
Male: 10 Female: 10 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageProper Pantermine - Turns In the Life Of Marie Lloyd
Synopsis:
Backstage and onstage at the Gateshead Empire, 1922 . Veteran music hall star and controversialist Marie Lloyd looks back over her life as she prepares to go onstage for one of her very last performances. At fifty two, she's broken, desolate and forced to tour. Born in the slums of Hoxton, she worked to become the Queen of the Music Halls. Talent played a major part but so did a lot of other things. Her wild lifestyle and capacity to self-destruct are set against a talent for comedy and sentiment which have seldom been surpassed. She moves between dressing room and stage until the divisions between reality and fantasy have more or less collapsed.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Organisations:
Mummers/Cambridge University Theatre Company
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
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Genre:
55min One Act
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageWuthering Heights
Synopsis:
the adaptation is wholly based on dialogue from Bronte's novel with the characters of Nellie Dean and Mr Lockwood very much to the fore. the novel's roots in Gothic romance are exploited to the full and Ellen's role moved on from omniscient narrator to that of an active and far from innocent participant.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Organisations:
City Theatre Dublin
1st Published:
- -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Adaptation
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
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