Chichester's Coram Boy - “no apology about being so vast and so epic”

It was at the CFT that Anna trained as a director under Jonathan Church’s artistic directorship.

Coram Boy (May 24- June 15) offers a richly-colourful tale of 18th-century England. At Gloucester Cathedral, Alexander Ashbrook, heir to an aristocratic estate, has his heart set on becoming a composer; but his stern father refuses to listen and despite his love for the beautiful Melissa, flight seems his only option. Far darker conflicts are at play for Meshak, son of the brutal Otis Gardiner who preys on young unmarried mothers...

“I remember it being at the National in the early 2000s,” Anna says, “but I didn't see it which is quite useful. It's a production that lives on in people's recollections as an astonishing production. I was aware of it but it was about a year ago that (CFT artistic director) Justin (Audibert) got in touch with me and sent me the script to read. There is something about the adaptation that is so wonderfully literary. It feels like it is happening in real time. It feels quite filmic, and there is no apology about being so vast and so epic. Helen sets it all down and then it is over to you as the theatre-makers to make it happen. You read it and you think it is huge – the number of characters and also thematically. And it also requires the music of Handel. It also requires some scenes that are quite challenging and quite confronting. You've got all sorts of ideas in there like love and villainy, the idea of politics and the idea of this new foundling hospital. What the play contains is these astonishing vast contrasts which the play then pulls together, but the point of programming it is that these are all ideas that are not just particular to the mid-18th century. They are ideas that really matter now. You've got the idea of extreme wealth set side by side with extreme poverty and the acceptance of the two coexisting with attempts to bridge the gap failing. You've got the relationship of philanthropy and giving and the limits of that as a culture but also personally. You've also got the role of children in our society and how we raise them and who they become and you've also got this sense of generational trauma, how people carry historic trauma within their DNA.

“And you've got the moral balance of the scales. You've got extreme cruelty and almost this savage sense of existence but the counterpoint to that is wonderful acts of bravery and compassion with the two coexisting.”

Anna was a trainee director at Chichester under Jonathan Church in 2008 and 2009, assisting directors including Richard Eyre and Rupert Goold: “It was a really interesting time to be there. Chichester was having a really good moment and that was my training. Jonathan was really interested in trying to expose directors to the workings of the theatre building. He found so many regional theatres were suffering because of mismanagement. He felt that it was really important that the training should include all the producer elements and so he gave me and two other directors a little playground, Theatre on the Fly. It was wonderful, just fantastic to do.”