Jude
‘It wasn’t just her freakish ability with language. She saw through to behind the words. It was like she had a direct line to – I was going to say to “the gods”…’
About to be fired from her cleaning job for stealing a volume of Euripides, Jude turns her employer's outrage to shock by translating the ancient Greek on the spot. The employer, a Classics teacher, knows great talent when she sees it and the encounter kick-starts Jude's lifelong ambition to study at Oxford University.
Possessing an astonishing gift for languages, Jude will stop at nothing to achieve her dream – but she remains oblivious to the hidden barriers that her background has placed in her path…
Loosely inspired by Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, Howard Brenton's play Jude is a modern-day tale of unexpected genius and of our struggle to accommodate extraordinary talent. The play premiered at Hampstead Theatre, London, in 2019, directed by Edward Hall.
Howard Brenton's original plays include The Shadow Factory, The Blinding Light, Lawrence After Arabia, #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, Drawing the Line, 55 Days, Doctor Scroggy’s War, Eternal Love and Anne Boleyn. His many adaptations include Strindberg’s Creditors, Miss Julie and Dances of Death, Goethe’s Faust: Parts I & II and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.