Theatre Features

Brian Friel, the private playwright of Ballybeg

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 25 July 2018

Brian Friel, who died in 2015 at the age of 86, was a shy man who shunned interviews, keeping his powder dry for the work and shrouding his personal life in mystique. Not that he never opened his mouth at all. When Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) was winning Tony Awards in New York, he got into trouble for saying that a good stage manager is preferable to a director who disobeys the script.

Charlotte Jones: ‘Plays come from your scar tissue’

Charlotte Jones Tuesday, 10 July 2018

I think it’s always a dangerous sport to try and consciously unravel where your ideas come from. Lest you break the spell and inadvertently silence yourself…

Sir Matthew Bourne remembers Scott Ambler 1960-2018 – 'A prince among men'

Matthew Bourne Thursday, 22 March 2018

Nobody deserves the title of New Adventures “legend” more than Scott Ambler; nobody is remembered more affectionately – the generosity of spirit, the many kindnesses, the fierce loyalty, the tears of pride in company notes sessions, the endearing eccentricities and, of course, the highly embellished and hilarious stories are all legendary to those that knew and worked with him.

Antony Sher: Year of the Mad King - extract

Antony Sher Tuesday, 13 March 2018

In 1982 Antony Sher played the Fool to Michael Gambon’s King in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear. Shortly after, he came back to Stratford to play Richard III, for which he won the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor.

theartsdesk in Minsk: feasting with Belarus Free Theatre

Jasper Rees Monday, 26 February 2018

Budzma! (Cheers!) At a long, food-laden table in a noisy room of Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a toast is proposed. We clink glasses and drain moonshine. This happens once, twice, five, 10 times. Between the toasts comes a wave of passionate speeches from some of our fellow diners. Loosely linked, they call up a period of history, controversial and still rarely discussed, when the German invaders were welcomed here as liberators who would deliver Belarus from the Soviet yoke.

'The greatest play ever written': translating The Cherry Orchard

Rory Mullarkey Saturday, 24 February 2018

“The Cherry Orchard is the greatest play ever written,” I declared, confidently, aged 16, to my mother, having just read The Cherry Orchard for the first time.

'These star-crossed lovers are so young': adapting Brighton Rock

Bryony Lavery Friday, 16 February 2018

I never have the idea of adapting anything at all myself. The suggestions always come from directors or theatre companies.

'She has escaped from my Asylum!': The Woman in White returns

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 28 November 2017

The Woman in White insists on being told and retold. Wilkie Collins’s much loved thriller is perhaps the most widely and frequently adapted of all the great Victorian novels. In Marian Halcombe it has a resourceful heroine whose appeal doesn't rest remotely in her looks, and in Count Fosco with his...

David Edgar: 'Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well'

David Edgar Monday, 27 November 2017

Since mid-August, I’ve been doing something I swore I’d never do again. I’ve been rehearsing a new adaptation of a novel by Charles Dickens. Sometime in the autumn of 1979, I received a phone call from Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Soldier On: a theatrical treatment of PTSD

Jonathan Lewis Saturday, 11 November 2017

I was invalided out of the army in 1986. I’d been an army scholar through school and had a bursary at university. I went on to drama school then became an actor, and subsequently a writer and director. But I’ve always been passionately interested in how the military, and the people in it, are portrayed to the wider world.

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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.

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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.

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