Paul Hunter is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Told By An Idiot, the theatre company bringing Napoleon Disrobed to the stage this season. The play is an adaptation of Simon Ley’s novella of the same name, and imagines a future in which Napoleon didn’t die but lived on in secret. We caught up with Paul as the company was in rehearsals, to find out how it was going.
How is everything going in preparation for Napoleon Disrobed?
What was it about Napoleon and Simon Ley’s novella that inspired you to make a show?
Simon Leys novella ‘The Death of Napoleon’ is a deliciously sardonic fable. It is a wonderful mix of the comic and poignant, the ludicrous and the philosophical. What inspired us to adapt the book for the stage were these delightful juxtapositions, and a sense that we really weren’t sure how we would realise it in a theatrical form.
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