The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes

Wednesday, 12 November 2008 - Saturday, 6 December 2008

Wilton's Music Hall, Graces Alley, Whitechapel, E1 8JB

How Much: £20.00 (Highest Price) , £5.00 (Lowest Price)

Sorry to use the personal pronoun, but Thomas Hobbes is my favourite philosopher. It's not just his thoughts on self preservation, society and right living, which are brilliant, coherent, and only have God tacked onto them as a political necessity. It's also the fact that despite being a deep thinker he was a fundamentally happy man who enjoyed eating, drinking and hard cash, and died fat, rich and old.

This brilliant new history play, written by Adriano Shaplin and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, documents a period in Hobbes' life when he was in deep trouble. His patron the king freshly beheaded by Oliver Cromwell, our man is seriously out of favour. The republican regime is harsh (and boring) and there's talk in the streets of revolution. But will it bring back Charles II and restore bragging rights to our young egghead? Troubled times indeed. Against this background, and while trying to curry favour with exiled kings and passionately religious roundheads all at once, our hero prepares to join intellectual battle with a bunch of dangerously radical young scientists.

The setting, in the majestic Wilton's Music Hall, is very suitable for a play set in the period when Europe began to grow rich, very fast, on good science.