Luther - Programme, 1961
Title
Luther - Programme, 1961
Date
26 June 1961
Description
Full programme for 1961 world premiere of Luther by John Osborne, starring Albert Finney in title role and directed by Tony Richardson
What's the story?
Luther is a 1961 play by John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger in 1956 and instigator of ‘the angry young men’.
Luther depicts the life of Martin Luther, one of the foremost instigators of the Protestant Reformation. This production was performed by the English Stage Company and received its world premiere at the Theatre Royal Nottingham.
With a foremost director in Tony Richardson, who had developed a partnership with John Osbourne, directing the original Royal Court productions of Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer starring Laurence Olivier in 1957 having the world premiere of Osbourne’s latest work at the Theatre Royal Nottingham was an extremely prestigious event.
Albert Finney was a rising star and familiar with Nottingham. In 1960 he had just starred in the film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which he plays a young machinist in Nottingham’s Raleigh factory.
Other actors in this stage production include Julian Glover and Bill Owen.
In reviewing the show for The Observer, critic Kenneth Tynan wrote:
"We are left with a powerful impression of a man who invented the idea of the individual conscience, responsible to no earthly authority, and was racked by his own invention. … The language is urgent and sinewy, packed with images that derive from bone, blood and marrow; the prose, especially in Luther's sermons, throbs with a rhetorical zeal not often heard in English historical drama since the seventeenth century, mingling gutter candour with cadences that might have come from the pulpit oratory of Donne.”
Luther depicts the life of Martin Luther, one of the foremost instigators of the Protestant Reformation. This production was performed by the English Stage Company and received its world premiere at the Theatre Royal Nottingham.
With a foremost director in Tony Richardson, who had developed a partnership with John Osbourne, directing the original Royal Court productions of Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer starring Laurence Olivier in 1957 having the world premiere of Osbourne’s latest work at the Theatre Royal Nottingham was an extremely prestigious event.
Albert Finney was a rising star and familiar with Nottingham. In 1960 he had just starred in the film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which he plays a young machinist in Nottingham’s Raleigh factory.
Other actors in this stage production include Julian Glover and Bill Owen.
In reviewing the show for The Observer, critic Kenneth Tynan wrote:
"We are left with a powerful impression of a man who invented the idea of the individual conscience, responsible to no earthly authority, and was racked by his own invention. … The language is urgent and sinewy, packed with images that derive from bone, blood and marrow; the prose, especially in Luther's sermons, throbs with a rhetorical zeal not often heard in English historical drama since the seventeenth century, mingling gutter candour with cadences that might have come from the pulpit oratory of Donne.”
Type
Programme
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Contributor
Researcher: David Longford
