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Sisters Dolly and Esther grow up in ultra-conservative Harrogate in the 1960s. Fifty years later, following the death of their mother, Dolly comes to stay with Esther - now a successful novelist and living in Little Venice with her younger, inscrutable lodger, Jude.
The three go to Norway to meet the rock-star grandfather Jude has only ever heard about. Instead, he meets Anila who changes his world. To make a new future, these four people will have to be honest, heal old wounds - and two sisters learn to laugh together again.
The Lodger by Robert Holman is an enlightening, cathartic and acerbic play about identity, maturity and reconciliation. It premiered at The Coronet Theatre, London, in September 2021.
About the author
Robert Holman (1952–2021) was a British playwright whose work has been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre, as well as in the West End and elsewhere. He is celebrated for the passionate humanity and quiet intensity of his plays, especially for his triptych of short plays, Making Noise Quietly, which was first seen at the Bush Theatre, London, in 1986, and has since been revived and adapted as a film (2019).
His plays include: Mud (Royal Court Theatre, 1974); German Skerries (Bush Theatre, 1977, and revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, 2016); Rooting (Traverse Theatre, 1979); Other Worlds (Royal Court Theatre, 1980); Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984); The Overgrown Path (Royal Court Theatre, 1985); Making Noise Quietly (Bush Theatre, 1987, and revived at the Donmar Warehouse, 2012); Across Oka (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1988); Rafts and Dreams (Royal Court Theatre, 1990); Bad Weather (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1998); Holes in the Skin (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2003); Jonah and Otto (Royal Exchange Theatre, 2008, and revived at the Park Theatre, 2014); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, co-written with David Eldridge and Simon Stephens (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 2010); A Breakfast of Eels (Print Room at the Coronet, 2015); and The Lodger (Coronet Theatre, London, 2021).
He also wrote a novel, The Amish Landscape, published in 1992.
Summary
An enlightening, cathartic and acerbic new play about identity, maturity and reconciliation.
