Theatre Features
theartsdesk in Minsk: feasting with Belarus Free TheatreMonday, 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. Read more... |
'The greatest play ever written': translating The Cherry OrchardSaturday, 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. Read more... |
'These star-crossed lovers are so young': adapting Brighton RockFriday, 16 February 2018
I never have the idea of adapting anything at all myself. The suggestions always come from directors or theatre companies. Read more... |
'She has escaped from my Asylum!': The Woman in White returnsTuesday, 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... Read more... |
David Edgar: 'Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well'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. Read more... |
Soldier On: a theatrical treatment of PTSDSaturday, 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. Read more... |
'This is how it happened': Tom MacRae on writing Everybody's Talking About JamieSunday, 05 November 2017
I’d always wanted to write a musical, but I didn’t start actually trying until four years ago. Now four years on, my first show, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, is about to hit the West End – that’s four years to go from no show, no idea and no experience to opening at the Apollo Theatre. It’s utterly crazy, I still can’t believe it – and this is how it happened... Read more... |
Fierce: the Birmingham festival which reaches out to Europe and beyondWednesday, 18 October 2017
Since its inception in 1997 Fierce, Birmingham’s International Festival of Live Art & Performance, has championed the work of performance makers not often seen in Britain. The pantheon of body artists under Mark Ball’s era as director included the likes of Franko B, Ron Athey and Kira O’Reilly. Read more... |
'I come from there': how the Royal Court brought home plays from Ukraine, Chile and SyriaWednesday, 11 October 2017
The autumn season of plays at the Royal Court leads with international work. B by Guillermo Calderón (from Chile), Bad Roads by Natal'ya Vorozhbit (from Ukraine) and Goats by Liwaa Yazji (from Syria) have a long history with our international department. Read more... |
'First read-throughs have magic': Simon Stephens on Heisenberg: The Uncertainty PrincipleSunday, 01 October 2017
All theatre workers have a day that they dread. For actors there is a particular terror about a first preview that can fuel those performances with adrenaline. For playwrights - well, for me at least - it is the first time a play is ever read out loud by a company of actors. This never fails to shred me. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘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*
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