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Sea Wall / A Life

By: Simon Stephens, Nick Payne
Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Sturridge
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Publisher's summary

Meet Alex, a photographer on a holiday with his family in the south of France. Meet Abe, a music producer with a baby on the way. Two men - both fathers, husbands, and sons - take us on a journey you will never forget. The finest actors of their generation, Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Sunday in the Park with George) and Tony Award nominee Tom Sturridge (1984), had audiences roaring to their feet during the sold-out Broadway engagement. Now Sea Wall / A Life, a dramatic exploration of transformative love and devastating loss, comes to Audible.

©2020 Simon Stephens and Nick Payne (P)2020 AO Media, LLC.
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Our favorite moments from Sea Wall / A Life

"She had us...wrapped around her finger."
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"Like we're the only ones who know the entire world is about to change."
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Planning for the inevitable arrival
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  • Sea Wall / A Life
  • "She had us...wrapped around her finger."
  • Sea Wall / A Life
  • "Like we're the only ones who know the entire world is about to change."
  • Sea Wall / A Life
  • Planning for the inevitable arrival

About the Performer

An Academy Award-nominated actor, Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the finest actors working in film and on stage and has established himself as a producer of note through his company Nine Stories. Working with some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers in both independent and studio films, Gyllenhaal starred in Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Far From Home; Ang Lee's classic Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Oscar nomination and won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor; Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler; Bong Joon Ho’s Okja; David Ayer’s End of Watch; Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw; Dennis Villeneuve’s Prisoners and Enemy; Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko; David Fincher's Zodiac; Sam Mendes' Jarhead; Nicole Holofcener's Lovely and Amazing; Ed Zwick's Love and Other Drugs, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination; and Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, for which he earned a BAFTA nomination.

His stage work includes Sea Wall / A Life; Sunday in the Park with George; Constellations (Drama Desk Award); Little Shop of Horrors; If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet; and This is Our Youth (Evening Standard Award). He reprises his role in Sunday In the Park with George in the West End at London’s Savoy Theatre. Gyllenhaal through Nine Stories has produced Paul Dano’s Wildlife; David Gordon Green’s Stronger; and executive produced the documentary Hondros. Nine Stories is in post-production on Antonio Campos’ The Devil All The Time for Netflix, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Good Joe Bell, and Tate Taylor’s Breaking News in Yuba County. Upcoming, Nine Stories will start production on Gilded Rage, based on the Vanity Fair article with the same title by Benjamin Wallace. For the stage, Nine Stories produced Sunday in the Park with George, Sea Wall / A Life, We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, Slave Play, and the upcoming musicals Sunday in the Park with George for the West End and Caroline, or Change.

About the Performer

Tom Sturridge was born on December 21, 1985 in London, England. He is a Tony-nominated actor, who is best known for his roles in Far from the Madding Crowd, On the Road, Pirate Radio, and Being Julia. Sturridge grew up surrounded by the entertainment industry as his father is director Charles Sturridge and his mother is actress Phoebe Nicholls. He made his professional acting debut as a child in 1996, playing Tom Gulliver in NBC's Gulliver's Travels, directed by his father and co-starring his mother. His big break came in 2009, after being cast as Carl, one of the leading roles in Richard Curtis's comedy The Boat That Rocked (released under the title of Pirate Radio in the States) opposite the likes of Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sturridge made his London stage debut in September 2009, playing William in Simon Stephens's Punk Rock at the Lyric Hammersmith, which led to him winning the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Newcomer. In 2013, Tom debuted in the critically acclaimed Orphans, opposite Alec Baldwin and Ben Foster. He was nominated for Best Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role at The Tony Awards for his performance.

In 2015, he played God in the Young Vic Theatre's stage adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial and went on to star as Bobby (opposite John Goodman and Damian Lewis) in David Mamet's American Buffalo at the Wyndham's Theatre in the West End. He also starred as Sergeant Francis Troy in 2015's Far from the Madding Crowd. Following his turn as Henry VI in the BBC/PBS television series The Hollow Crown in 2016, as 2nd Lt. Hibbert in Journey's End and as Lord Byron in Mary Shelley in 2017, Sturridge returned to the Great White Way to star as Winston Smith in the Broadway premiere of George Orwell's 1984 stage adaptation, playing the Hudson Theatre from May 18 through October 8, 2017, starring opposite Olivia Wilde and Reed Birney. In 2018, he played Jake in Sweetbitter on the Starz network and in 2019, he starred in Velvet Buzzsaw in a cast led by Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo. He would collaborate with Gyllenhaal again around the time of the film's release, making his Off-Broadway debut for the Public Theater in Sea Wall/A Life. Tom was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play at The Lucille Lortel Awards for his performance.

About the Creator

Simon Stephens’s plays include Fortune, Light Falls, Maria, Fatherland, Rage, Heisenberg, Nuclear War, Song from Far Away, Birdland, Carmen Disruption, Blindsided, Morning, Three Kingdoms, Wastwater, Punk Rock, The Trial of Ubu, Marine Parade, Sea Wall, Harper Regan, Pornography, Motortown, On the Shore of the Wide World, One Minute, Country Music, Christmas, Port, Herons and Bluebird. He has written English language versions of Jon Fosse’s I Am the Wind, Odon Von Horvath’s Kasimir and Karoline (titled The Funfair), Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. He has presented three series of the Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast. His book A Working Diary is published by Methuen. Simon Stephens has been an Associate at the Royal Court, London and Steep, Chicago and a board member of Paines Plough. He is currently an Associate Artist at the Lyric, Hammersmith, a Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University, and an Associate Professor at the Danish National School of the Performing Arts, Copenhagen.

Photo Credit: Kevin Cummins

About the Creator

Nick Payne (Playwright). Theatre: If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet (Bush Theatre and Roundabout Theatre Company), Wanderlust (Royal Court Theatre), Sophocles’ Electra (Gate Theatre), One Day When We Were Young (Paines Plough/Sheffield Theatres and Shoreditch Town Hall), Lay Down Your Cross (Hampstead Theatre), Constellations (Broadway, Royal Court Theatre, Duke of York’s and U.K. tour), The Same Deep Water as Me (Donmar Warehouse), Blurred Lines (The Shed, National Theatre), Incognito (Nabokov/Live Theatre, Newcastle and Manhattan Theatre Club), The Art of Dying (Royal Court Theatre), Elegy (Donmar Warehouse). Film: The Sense of an Ending (BBC Films/Origin Pictures). TV: Wanderlust (BBC One/Netflix).

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What listeners say about Sea Wall / A Life

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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant!

I am so emotional that it's hard to find the right words. It's just beautiful.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Sadness, fatherhood, questioning

I enjoyed it although it was very sad and I didn't know if there was a message or moral.

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Enthralling

Enthralling stuff. The ups & lows in how the stories are told & revealed catches you & keeps you captive till it ends. It all comes to a head at the very right time it should, when it lets you go on & onwards, to contemplate on it all of life & death. Brilliant, all round.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Trigger

Warning
Child death.
Why must we read about this? I wish I never accidentally read about another child’s death. It is too difficult for me.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling

This was very powerful and compelling. The narration was excellent in both stories.
Thank you!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Give it a listen!

This is an emotional ride. It will make you cry. It will make you think. And it will make you call all those you love, and tell them, in this moment, I love you.

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very good

it started boring, and a little confusing but it was very deep, sad and very well performed

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Not my cup of Tea

Although I’m grateful to audible for giving out free books every month I could not make it through this VERY short book. After listening to some of the best readers of all time these ones reading this book was making me want to stick chopsticks through my eardrums.

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Give a 5 to the 2nd story

Like 2nd story much better than 1st. The 1st story was hard to understand and not just the accent. Sometimes the words just didn’t make sense. The story was good but not the telling

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Wow!

This is the best Audible Original I’ve ever downloaded. Moving content and poetic texts flawlessly performed. I am immediately relistening to it.

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