Anthony Burgess expert helps stage landmark production of A Clockwork Orange

The first theatre adaptation of A Clockwork Orange accompanied by the author’s own musical score is being staged with the help of the University’s Anthony Burgess expert.

Andrew Biswell, Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, has worked closely on the production of A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music, which runs at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre until July 12.

It is the first UK stage version of A Clockwork Orange to make use of the song lyrics and music composed by Burgess in 1986. The music has been newly edited from two manuscripts in the Burgess Foundation’s archive.

Professor Biswell said: “Since last year I have been working with the director, Nick Bagnall, to develop his new production of the play. We discussed the notebooks and other early drafts of the play and its music, which have survived in the archive of the Burgess Foundation.

“As the production took shape, it was a pleasure to introduce the actors to this material, and to show them the collection of books and objects formerly owned by Anthony Burgess and members of his family.”

The production was featured on BBC Two’s Front Row Late last week, which also featured an interview with Prof Biswell.

Burgess completed the musical adaptation 25 years after the original publication of the cult novel. He died in 1993 without ever hearing his theatre music performed.

“As the production took shape, it was a pleasure to introduce the actors to this material, and to show them the collection of books and objects formerly owned by Anthony Burgess and members of his family.”

Prof Biswell said: “Burgess published the novel A Clockwork Orange in 1962. Then he wrote a film script in 1969 that was never used. Later on, he wrote a stage adaptation with different versions of the music. After that, he wrote prologues and epilogues, and essays and introductions.

“What this says to me is that the story was imaginatively alive for Burgess, right to the end of his life.”

Working with colleague Dr Paul Wake from the University’s English Department, Prof Biswell is preparing a major new edition of Anthony Burgess’s collected works. The first two volumes appeared in 2017, and will be followed this autumn by Puma, a previously unpublished science fiction novel.