19:00, Thu 7th – Fri 8th March 2013 at King's Bunker
Lent Week 7

Edward Damson, famous English playwright, has died violently at his remote Aegean home. His son, an American academic whom he has never acknowledged, has had a lifelong obsession with a father he never knew and he begs permission from his stepmother, Helen, to write Edward’s biography. She agrees reluctantly on condition that Philip tells the whole, painful story. Helen re-enacts her bizarre turbulent eighteen years with wildly passionate, explosive and self-absorbed Edward. Inspired by the Greek classics, Edward was driven by the need to depict violence and the purity of revenge; directly opposing Helen’s plea for reason and restraint. Interspersed by intriguing and dramatic extracts from his own plays, 'The Gift of the Gorgon' tells the story of Edward’s rise to fame, decline into ridicule and estrangement from Helen; all mirrored in the Greek myth of Athena and Perseus, who slays the Gorgon, only to become a gorgon himself.