Written by Mark Jenkins
Directed by Josh Richards
with
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
This is an exceptional and exciting piece of theatre, a deliciously literate chronicle of the lives and loves of Orson Welles, the boy genius who started at the top and worked his way down, having become the greatest film director of the 20th Century.
Bearing an uncanny likeness to Welles, McKay revisits the glories of Welles’ youth: the black Voodoo Macbeth in Harlem and the fabled Mercury Theatre, the live newscast adaptation of The War of the Worlds which had New Yorkers fleeing the city in terrified droves, and of course the timeless, brooding classic, Citizen Kane—the greatest movie ever made.
ROSEBUD is not a biography, rather a carefully constructed play which explodes the Faustian myth that has clouded Welles’ reputation for so long. A magnetic tour de force performance by Christian McKay is coupled with the elegant, erudite script of Mark Jenkins and the subtle precision of Josh Richards direction.
“Christian McKay plays this celluloid colossus to perfection… anticipating the many facets of Welles’ personality that then sparkle through the show… The stories are so fantastical and various that Rosebud would mesmerise someone unacquainted with his work as much as a film buff. The arc of his career, from overachieving wunderkind to an overweight clown who endorsed frozen peas in television commercials, has the simplicity of classical tragedy and makes for compelling theatre.”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
ROSEBUD
is published by
Infested Waters
and is available at