About

“David Thacker directs what should be an original treat.”
The Guardian – Best Theatre for 2011

The Octagon presents the World Premiere of David Lodge’s Secret Thoughts; a dazzling and witty exploration of love and deception, and the connection between the brain and the heart.

Married University professor Ralph Messenger [Rob Edwards] has a reputation as a ground-breaking cognitive scientist and a notorious philanderer. When he meets the recently bereaved novelist Helen Reed [Kate Coogan], sparks fly and battle commences. It’s science against art and morality against indulgence. But as their passionate and argumentative relationship develops into sexual attraction, their intellectual foreplay looks like it could become a full blown affair of the body and mind.

David Lodge is one of the UK’s foremost writers whose astonishing career has spanned more than fifty years. He has won countless awards, including Royal Television Society's Award for Best Drama (Nice Work) and the Whitbread Book of the Year (How Far Can You Go?). David Lodge is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Chairman of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989.  He was awarded the CBE for his services to literature in 1998 and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on two occasions.  Secret Thoughts is adapted from his acclaimed novel Thinks…You can listen to him talking about the 'art of turning prose into stage drama' in BBC iPlayer.

We were lucky enough to also get some video footage of him talking about the play too.

You can see more footage here.

Age guidance: 15. This production contains strong language and adult themes.