thu 18/04/2024

Theatre Interviews

10 Questions for actress Tracy-Ann Oberman: 'it's made me pretty fearless'

David Benedict

What do you call a woman who murdered Dirty Den, is the darling of TV comedy producers, writes radio plays about the golden age of Hollywood, hosted and judged Channel 4’s Jewish Mum of the Year, was until just a few weeks ago tap dancing through eight shows a week in Stepping Out in the Wes

Read more...

10 Questions for George Stiles and Anthony Drewe: 'we are optimistic people'

Jasper Rees

George Stiles and Anthony Drewe – Stiles and Drewe, as the songwriting partnership is universally known – are responsible for one of theatre’s most memorable acceptance speeches. Their show Honk!, staged at the National Theatre after an initial run in Scarborough, won the Olivier for best musical in 2000.

Read more...

h.Club 100 Awards: Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester

theartsdesk

The Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester is an irresistible example of the can-do spirit. Less than two years ago the ground floor of a disused mill was being advertised on Gumtree as a storage space.

Read more...

10 Questions for sound designer Adam Cork

Jasper Rees

No one ever went to the theatre for the sound design. Indeed, only the nerdiest theatregoers could name a single practitioner of the art. But imagine attending a production by Katie Mitchell or Robert Icke or Ivo van Hove – or any less overtly authorial theatremakers – with the sound design stripped out. The visual story would be immeasurably impoverished.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Jez Butterworth

Jasper Rees

Jez Butterworth is back. Even before the critics have uttered a single word of praise The Ferryman, directed by Sam Mendes and set in rural Derry in 1981 at the height of the IRA hunger strikes, sold out its run at the Royal Court in hours. It transfers to the West End in June.

Read more...

Brighton Festival 2017: 12 Free Events

Thomas H Green

The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer, alongside Festival CEO Andrew Comben who’s been the event's overall manager since 2008 (also overseeing the Brighton Dome venues all year round). This year the Festival’s theme is “Everyday Epic”.

Read more...

Anna Maxwell Martin: 'I like playing baddies' - interview

Heather Neill

She was Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National, she has shared the stage with Eileen Atkins (in Honour and The Female of the Species), played Isabella in Measure for Measure, Regan in King Lear and Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Writer David Storey, pt 1

Jasper Rees

David Storey, who has died at the age of 83, was the last of the Angry Young Men who, in fiction and drama, made a hero of the working-class Northerner.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Writer David Storey, pt 2

Jasper Rees

In Radcliffe, an early novel by David Storey, one character murders another with a telling blow from a hammer. The author was later advised that Kenneth Halliwell was reading Radcliffe on the night in 1967 before he killed his lover Joe Orton, also with a hammer. But however many Orton plays Storey indirectly lost, he pulped many more of his own.

Read more...

10 Questions for Director Ellen McDougall

Heather Neill

In a few days' time, Ellen McDougall will become artistic director of the dynamic little Gate Theatre in Notting Hill where she is already an associate artist.

Read more...

Pages

Advertising feature

★★★★★

A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.
The Observer, Kate Kellaway

 

Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.

 

★★★★★

This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.
The Times, Ann Treneman

 

Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.

 

Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.


latest in today

Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...

Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...

The Book of Clarence review - larky jaunt through biblical e...

The Book of Clarence comes lumbered with the charge of being the new Life of Brian, an irreverent spoof of the life...

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world

Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also...

Bell, Perahia, ASMF Chamber Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review -...

All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated their intention to reign...

An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Hampstead Theatre review - o...

One can often be made to feel old in the theatre. A hot take in a snappy 90 minutes (with video!) on the latest Gen Z obsession (...

First Persons: composers Colin Alexander and Héloïse Werner...

For tonight’s performance at Milton Court, the nuanced and delicate tones of strings, voices, harmonium and chamber organ will merge...

Album: Paraorchestra with Brett Anderson and Charles Hazlewo...

Death Songbook is, says Charles Hazlewood, founder, artistic director and conductor of Paraorchestra, an album of “music which is about...

Anthracite, Netflix review - murderous mysteries in the Fren...

Ludicrous plotting and a tangled skein of coincidences hold no terrors for the makers of this frequently baffling...