Jonah and Otto (NHB Modern Plays)
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Robert Holman's Jonah and Otto is a humane, funny and ultimately haunting play that explores masculinity, identity and what it means to be English.
Over the course of a single day, two men share their solitude and unfold their secrets. They disagree with each other about women, about lust and about guilt. They question the power of magic, of redemption and the price of freedom, each seeing himself more clearly through the eyes of the other.
Jonah and Otto premiered in 2008 at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. This edition was published alongside its London premiere at the Park Theatre in 2014.
'extraordinary... Robert Holman's achingly beautiful new play takes you into other worlds, but it is rooted firmly in this one... a recklessly courageous play about two men struggling to find the courage to live, love and to be the best possible version of themselves' - Guardian
'a quiet power... Robert Holman's plays rumble and reverberate in the mind long afterwards' - The Times
'astonishing... Brimming with emotional wonder, Jonah and Otto is an intricately layered creation that hums hypnotically' - Independent
Robert Holman
Robert Holman was born in 1952. He was awarded an Arts Council Writers' Bursary in 1974, and since then has spent periods as resident dramatist with the National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon- Avon. His plays include The Natural Cause (Cockpit Theatre, 1974); Mud (Royal Court Theatre, 1974); Outside the Whale (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1976); German Skerries (Bush Theatre, 1977, for which he won the George Devine Award); Other Worlds (Royal Court Theatre, 1983); Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984); The Overgrown Path (Royal Court Theatre, 1985); Making Noise Quietly (Bush Theatre, 1986); Across Oka (Royal Shakespeare, 1988); Rafts and Dreams (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1990); Bad Weather (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1998); Holes in the Skin (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2003); and Jonah and Otto (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2008). He has also written a novel, The Amish Landscape (1992). In 2010 he collaborated with David Eldridge and Simon Stephens on A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, which premiered at the Lyric, Hammersmith.
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