Author Michael Rosen bringing one-man show ‘Getting Through It’ to Cambridge

Former children’s laureate, broadcaster, author and scriptwriter, Michael Rosen, is bringing his new one-man show to Cambridge next month.

Getting Through It is a personal double bill of monologue and poetry that delves deep into the themes of trauma, grief and mortality.

In the first part, The Death of Eddie, Michael recounts the death of his son, Eddie, from meningitis at the age of 18.

The show looks at the grief of losing his son at a young age, and the often strange and contradictory mix of emotions felt during the mourning process.

This story, memorably captured in Michael’s children’s book The Sad Book, is told here in vivid and unsparing detail.

In the second part, Many Kinds of Love, Michael recalls how he contracted Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

Spending 48 days in intensive care and being placed into an induced coma, he had a 50 per cent chance of dying.

This piece not only looks inwards at the effects of Covid on Michael’s body and mind but looks outwards to how his life was saved by NHS workers.

Both experiences are among those addressed in Michael’s critically-acclaimed 2023 book Getting Better – Life Lessons on Going Under, Getting Over It, and Getting Through It.

Deeply personal yet universally relatable, Getting Through It speaks to anyone who has loved and lost, anyone who has struggled and survived and anyone who knows what it is to be human.

Michael says: “I have found that the best way for me to handle the ‘big stuff’ that I’ve been through is to write about it in ‘bits’, fragments.

“Then, when I string these fragments together, they tell a story of what happened and how I feel about it. It’s like a mosaic.

“As the title says, it is indeed about ‘getting through it’, but I very much hope that in telling the story, it helps anyone watching find that though we might bend, we can find ways to not break.

“One of the ways, as you might expect with me, has been to discover that there is, incredibly, an absurd and comic side to this.”

Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s best-loved writers and performance poets. He has written more than 200 books and is professor of children’s literature at Goldsmith’s University.

He has also presented the Radio 4 show Word of Mouth since 1998 and regularly appears at literary festivals across the UK.

He visits schools and teacher training departments to perform and to give advice on teaching children’s literature.

Michael won the won the 2023 Pen Pinter Prize for his outstanding contributions to literature, with judge Amber Massie Bloomfield commenting: “Michael Rosen has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour and hope.”

His latest tour, Getting Through It, begins on 16 March at Norwich Playhouse and will come to Cambridge Corn Exchange on Monday, 7 April.

Tickets, priced £28-£33 (including booking fee), are available from cornex.co.uk. For more on Michael, visit michaelrosen.co.uk.