Nightingale

Stage and screen actress Lynn Redgrave performs her lyrical new work Nightingale, which was inspired by her maternal grandmother, Beatrice Kempson, who died in the 1960s. While visiting her grave in England a few years ago, Redgrave found with much dismay that the headstone had been erased by acid rain. Redgrave wondered who would remember her chilly, not very lovable grandmother, one of the lesser-known members of her famous family. Nightingale’s story focuses on tantalizing fragments of stories passed down from her mother. The narrative completes a portrait of a woman caught in a loveless marriage during the rigid Edwardian time in which she lived.