Vincent Van Gogh died in 1890, John Lennon in 1980, both of gunshot wounds to the chest. That, according to a new play by Nick Wilkes, is not all they had in common.
Five years before his death, the Dutch painter’s career was at its nadir, and after the death of his father, he felt abandoned, his work and appearance met with ridicule. Poor and ill, he tried to lose himself in the rough life of the port of Antwerp.
At a similar stage in his life, Lennon, estranged from his second wife Yoko Ono and in a relationship with his secretary, was living a miserable and violent nocturnal life of substance abuse in Los Angeles.
Wilkes’s drama, When Vincent Met John, imagines a meeting between the two outcasts.
“They were both very strong-willed and outspoken; passionate, unpredictable, temperamental and volatile artists passionate about their art. They say opposites attract, but when two such charged individuals are brought together then it’s fated that sparks will fly,” writes Wilkes.
The co-production between the Everyman, Cheltenham, Worcester Theatres and Malvernbard, opens at the Everyman on Wednesday 24 July with later performances in Worcester, Edinburgh, London, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Aylesbury and Bath.