A Hove writer who set out to see every Shakespeare play in one year completed his quest by flying halfway across the world – just hours before his deadline.
Dan Wilson set himself the task of seeing all the 37 plays in the traditional canon on his 37th birthday last year – which took him all over Europe and saw him turn impresario for Henry VIII as it wasn’t being staged anywhere else in the world.
And on October 21, his 38th birthday, he finally saw the last, elusive play, Pericles, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland – although it took a flight to the States to do it.
Mr Wilson said: “The play was brilliant. I had no idea about this festival in Oregon until I realized it was the only production of Pericles in the world and I had to see it.
“The cast here have been both hospitable and ludicrously excited. They all hugged me in a weird state of events. The director called in from Minnesota too.
“I popped out for a steak dinner and the waitress said: ‘Hey, you’re that guy from England who came here just to see Pericles.’ She’d seen it on Facebook. We did some selfies.”
Dan’s production of Henry VIII, a rehearsed reading by a cast from DAFT, Droll and Folly Theatre, directed by Nicholas Quirke, took place before a packed house at the Nightingale Room above Grand Central.
