There is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming couplets, with echoes of Pope and the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical verse.

In the business world, the idea of positive thinking is absolutely entrenched.

Also, everyone thinks they know Candide - you hear people described as 'Panglossian'. So if Candide appears on a poster, it feels familiar.

Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a way into something important happening in modern-day culture.

Theatre within theatre, when characters sees themselves on stage, always raises philosophical questions of choice and free will.

Candide is one of those books I read when I was young and that I come back to regularly.

Voltaire's novel [Candid] offers us parallel universes, the possibility of entering into alternative worlds existing side by side, and this is something quite modern. Nested narratives and parallel universes are popular at the moment in many different art forms.