Gideon: A Play with Music premieres at Bradford Cathedral during UK City of Culture year

This intimate and resonant new show tells the true story of a young composer whose tenacity burned brightly even as the world around him collapsed.

Mostly taking place at the cusp of the Second World War, this production follows the life of a magnetic musician and his family as they face an impossible choice. As war engulfs Europe, Gideon’s expansive world contracts—from the concert halls of Prague to the confined walls of Terezín, a garrison town turned into a propaganda tool. Within its walls, where music is both solace and deception, its prisoners struggle with an urgent question: is art an act of resistance, a place of refuge, or part of the lie that helps to oppress them?

Lead creative producers Richard Fay and Daniel Mawson have re-envisioned David Fligg’s biography of Gideon Klein, “Don’t Forget About Me” and 2016 theatrical “Gideon Klein: Portrait of a Composer”. With a heartfelt original new script written by Mawson and a dynamic ensemble of 8 actors and musicians, the show aims to shed light on a dark and curious past that is often forgotten. In a world polarised by politics, faith, and identity, where truth itself can be contested, Gideon, speaks to 2025 with an unsettling urgency.

Gideon immerses the audience in the rhythms of history, where melodies rise in defiance and fade into silence. Some create to resist, others to endure, while for some, music becomes a fragile thread between remembering and forgetting. Underscored by a live chamber ensemble reconstructing Klein’s compositions with the music that inspired him and his contemporaries, the play captures the fragility of freedom as history moves faster than those living through it. The show reveals intimate snapshots of everyday life under an increasingly brutal regime…the kind of fleeting joys and quiet devastations that remind us why we fight to survive.

Gideon runs from the 3 -5 April at Bradford Cathedral as part of Bradford 2025 City Of Culture. It tours 8-12 April to Chester, Wilmslow, Laxton, and Manchester. It is supported with public funding by Arts Council England.

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