Churchill

“I am ready to meet my Creator, but whether my Creator is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter,” said Winston Churchill (1874–1965), one of Britain’s most prominent and imposing statesmen and politicians, with his characteristic self-irony and sarcasm. He not only drank whisky and smoked Cuban cigars, but also advocated the idea of a European Union in his own time, coined the term “Iron Curtain,” and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his speeches and memoirs that inspired nations. A self-made man*—from a stuttering boy to a decisive strategist, while never denying his own human weaknesses. The play Churchill (2015), a mosaic of memories by American actor and playwright Ronald Keaton, invites us into Winston Churchill’s inner world. Giving himself over to his passion for painting, Churchill creates his own subjective biography, where events engraved in the annals of history sit alongside intimate moments precious only to him. “Ronald Keaton’s play is an emotional story about a historical figure and the role of the individual in an era of global geopolitical upheaval. Parallels with events today allow us to view it through the lens of history. It is an open conversation about the end of a politician’s life, old age, and what he accomplished in politics,” says director Reinis Suhanovs.