The Lodger (NHB Modern Plays)

Sisters Dolly and Esther grow up in ultra-conservative Harrogate in the 1960s. Fifty years later, following the death of their mother, Dolly comes to stay with Esther - now a successful novelist and living in Little Venice with her younger, inscrutable lodger, Jude. The three go to Norway to meet the rock-star grandfather Jude has only ever heard about. Instead, he meets Anila who changes his world. To make a new future, these four people will have to be honest, heal old wounds - and two sisters learn to laugh together again. The Lodger by Robert Holman is an enlightening, cathartic and acerbic play about identity, maturity and reconciliation. It premiered at The Coronet Theatre, London, in September 2021. 'Great riches... A story of sisters and midlife reckonings, [Robert Holman's play] puts two older women centre stage and comes with a seismic sibling betrayal... stuffed full of wise statements about life, love and death' - Guardian 'Robert Holman [is] the most instinctive and humane of British playwrights' - Evening Standard

Robert Holman is a renowned and celebrated playwright in British Theatre. His plays include: Mud (Royal Court Theatre, 1974); German Skerries (Bush Theatre, 1977, and revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, 2016); Rooting (Traverse Theatre, 1979); Other Worlds (Royal Court Theatre, 1980); Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984); The Overgrown Path (Royal Court Theatre, 1985); Making Noise Quietly (Bush Theatre, 1987, and revived at the Donmar Warehouse, 2012); Across Oka (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1988); Rafts and Dreams (Royal Court Theatre, 1990); Bad Weather (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1998); Holes in the Skin (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2003); Jonah and Otto (Royal Exchange Theatre, 2008, and revived at the Park Theatre, 2014); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, co-written with David Eldridge and Simon Stephens (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 2010); A Breakfast of Eels (Print Room at the Coronet, 2015); and The Lodger (Coronet Theatre, London, 2021). He has also written a novel, The Amish Landscape.