VINCENT VAN GOGH was to many the typical artist, often impoverished, a genius, mentally unstable, anguished and finally shooting himself to death. His paintings are now some of the most expensive in the world.
It comes as a surprise to learn, then, that the same Dutchman once lived a life of quiet domesticity in a London suburb.
In 1873, aged 20, Vincent settled in digs at 37, Hackford Road, Brixton, working as an art dealer’s assistant.
While some details of his life there are known, there is a large gap, and it was a gap filled by playwright Nicholas Wright in his 2002 drama Vincent in Brixton.
It was staged at the National Theatre where it received the sort of critical plaudits most writers can only dream of. Surprisingly, it has been revived little since.
There was a production at Manchester’s Library Theatre but now there is another which arrives at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre next week.
While it is a piece of visiting theatre, its director Peter Rowe is remembered by Everyman veterans. He directed at the theatre in the late 1980s, and in the 1990s became artistic director when the theatre reopened after financial problems forced closure.
For the last six years he has been artistic director at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich which, like his Everyman days, produces its own plays and takes in quite a lot of visiting theatre, “everything from plays to comedians and dance,” he says.
The regular home-produced theatre is a mixture of classics, contemporary drama and “a lot of actor/musician things”. Rowe, who once ran the Bubble Theatre, became known in Liverpool for his musical shows and in particular his rock and roll pantomimes.
That musical pantomime tradition not only continues at the Everyman but Rowe still writes and directs the annual rock and roll pantomime at Mold’s Clwyd Theatr Cymru, filling the place each year.
