The title credits were getting a bit long so I abbreviated, in full they should read: Adapted by Russell Barr, Ian Redford and Max Stafford-Clark from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The play is presented as a sort of living memoir delivered to an implied small and intimate audience by Dr Johnson, both as long monologues and conversations with Boswell. The conversation seems to keep coming back to the theatre, particularly discussing prominent contemporary actors (and at that, mostly Garrick).
As a portrait of the man, it is an interesting read though I suspect as with so many plays rather a lot is lost in not hearing and seeing it acted out. I did find myself hearing Dr Johnson's voice as he was portrayed in Blackadder, and I suspect either both sets of writers were working from the same source material or the writers of this play had been somewhat influenced by the episode in which he appears. Either way, he seems to have been a classic example of the eccentric, addictive-personalitied, self-assured and manic creative type, who seems to take a lot of pleasure in disliking and disagreeing with things.
There's a lot of quick changing, if cast according to the suggested layout, for the man who for most of the play is Boswell. Some of these are instant shifts on-stage from a female character back to Boswell, which put me rather in mind of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, only I don't get the impression this was intended to be a farce, so I'm not sure how that would work - again, interesting to see, should the opportunity arise.
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