The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet

By: Brian Bedford

Narrated by: Brian Bedford

Brian Bedford's hugely successful one-man show is both an actor's celebration of Shakespeare and an act of Shakespearean scholarship. Bedford explores the emotion and psychology behind Shakespeare the man as well as Shakespeare the playwright. In amusing, enlightening, and persuasive style - and with the use of quotes from several of Shakespeare's sonnets, narrative poems, and plays - Bedford uncovers the tragic, the comic, and the passionate guise of perhaps our greatest and most revered playwright.

In this recording Bedford includes selections from The Tempest, As You Like It, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Henry VI, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, and Richard II.

A CBC Broadcast Centre solo performance featuring Brian Bedford.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, in March of 1995.

©2017 Brian Bedford (P)1995 Canadian Broadcasting Company

Critic reviews

“A study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct, this play is itself a satisfyingly primitive entertainment with an intellectual veneer.” (Ben Brantley, The New York Times)