Presented by Dead Poets Live
2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of Thom Gunn’s death. The Man with Night Sweats, to many readers Gunn’s finest and most moving collection, addresses the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and includes some of the most devastating elegies in English poetry. But The Man with Night Sweats is also, very specifically and lovingly, a vivid portrait of city life in San Francisco, the gay community of that time, and the friends and lovers who made up Gunn’s family, and who were taken by the disease.
The show will trace Gunn’s development from the rigorous discipline of his beginnings, through the LSD-loosened free verse of the 60s and early 70s to the humane and personal achievement of The Man with Night Sweats.
Thom Gunn will be played by Rupert Everett.
Rupert Everett is a BAFTA and Golden Globe-nominated actor, a director and an author, responsible for the screenplay of The Happy Prince as well as three immortal memoirs, including Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. His leading roles on screen have included the multi award-winning film My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, Dance With A Stranger, The Happy Prince, Adult Material, My Policeman, Funny Woman and, most recently, Napoleon. His stage roles have included Blithe Spirit and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway, Pygmalion and The Judas Kiss in the West End, Uncle Vanya in the Theatre Royal Bath, Amadeus at Chichester and, most recently, also at the Theatre Royal, A Voyage Round My Father.
