Explore every episode of the podcast The Animals Podcast

With an appearance by Don Bachardy.Don Bachardy, from the home he shared with Christopher Isherwood in Santa Monica, talks about the 1979 Broadway production of A Meeting by the River, about his relationship with Chris, and about Vedanta.

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Playful sparring between the brothers deepens to rivalry and self-doubt. Patrick’s secret love life is exposed. Spiritual darkness closes around Oliver, and he calls upon the memory of his guru to show him a way forward. Dominic West, Kyle Soller, Penelope Wilton and Annabel Mullion star in this audio adaptation of Isherwood and Bachardy’s A Meeting by the River.

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Two brothers confront each other in a monastery beside the Ganges. One plans to renounce the world, the other tries to stop him. Adapted by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy from Isherwood’s last novel, A Meeting by the River is a daring, ruthless, and joyfully comic meditation on the nature of love and the question of whether god exists. Dominic West, Kyle Soller, Penelope Wilton and Annabel Mullion star in this audio production.

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A play by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.

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Chris adapts a George Bernard Shaw story for the LA stage to much acclaim; Don is commissioned to paint the Queen’s cousin, the Earl of Harewood, and sells a portrait of W.H. Auden to the National Portrait Gallery in London. A Meeting by the River is staged in Los Angeles to a warm reception and heads to Broadway.

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Chris thinks increasingly about his past as he continues writing a memoir about his mother and father, Kathleen and Frank. He and Don both work towards a production of A Meeting by the River, hoping Page will direct it at the Royal Court Theatre. There is an explosion between Don and Page.

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With an appearance by David Hockney. In Los Angeles, Hockney begins a portrait of Chris and Don. Don is still absent in London, and Hockney is unable to progress with his likeness. Don returns home only as Hockney himself departs, carrying the partly finished painting and newly snapped photos of Don from which to work. The Animals collaborate on a stage adaptation of A Meeting by the River. Don takes their script to London when Anthony Page invites him to draw the cast of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

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David Hockney, recently settled in LA, offers his London flat to the Animals; Don is able to take a short break in England. Anthony Page hires Don to draw cast portraits for his production of John Osborne’s Time Present, and, later, Hotel in Amsterdam. Don begins an affair with Page and delays his return to Santa Monica.

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Don draws portraits of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet company. Chris completes his ninth and final novel, A Meeting by the River, set in India, and he begins a memoir about his family. Researching the family memoir in England, he meets a young theatre director, Anthony Page, who proposes they make a new adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays.

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Chris and Don's relationship breaks down. After ten years with Don in Santa Monica, Chris moves to San Francisco, where he works on his novel A Single Man, inspired by the fear of living alone. The Animals reconcile at home, and Chris travels to India with his Hindu guru, while Don, separately, also travels abroad.

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Don’s first gallery exhibition wins praise, but his new artistic identity proves destabilizing for the Animals. He conceals a love affair from Chris, even though they have agreed to have outside relationships. Tension mounts between the lovers when Don returns home after two years.

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After studying Christopher Isherwood for more than twenty years, Katherine Bucknell receives a package from Don Bachardy—stuffed with unpublished love letters. She ushers us back half a century into the private world of The Animals, Chris and Don, as they live, work, and travel, seldom apart, for seven years. When Don leaves their Santa Monica home to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, the separation is excruciating.

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The true love story of a writer and a painter, openly gay in 1950s Hollywood. The Animals invite you into their secret world.

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