Theatre Interviews
'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022Friday, 23 September 2022
Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Three years later its successor, Bring Up the Bodies, became the first sequel ever to win the prize in its 44-year history. Read more...
|
'I loved being a dresser': Sir Ronald Harwood, Oscar-winning writer, dies at 85Wednesday, 09 September 2020
Ronald Harwood, who has died at the age of 85, was best known for his play about tending to the needs of the larger-than-life actor-manager Donald Wolfit. Read more... |
'By the end I’d lost me': Joe Simpson, mountaineer and writer - interviewSaturday, 16 November 2019
In Peru in 1985, Joe Simpson - then 25 - and his 21-year-old climbing partner Simon Yates were descending the remote Siula Grande, which was hard to get up but even harder to get down, when Simpson broke his leg. They both assumed it was a death sentence, but Yates gave him a couple of paracetamol, dug himself into a bucket seat in the snow and lowered the stricken Simpson down the mountain slope, paying out 300ft of rope, then climbing down and doing it again, and again, for hours. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Lia Williams on the challenges of theatreSunday, 14 July 2019
Lia Williams is not an actor who looks for easy options. Twice she has played two characters in the same production, switching between them for different performances. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: playwright William NicholsonSaturday, 27 April 2019
It is 30 years since Shadowlands, William Nicholson's much-loved play about CS Lewis's unexpected love affair with Joy Gresham, an American poet, was first seen on stage. Read more... |
10 Questions for actress and playwright Nicôle LeckyWednesday, 24 April 2019
Nicôle Lecky’s one woman show Superhoe has added fire to the reputation of an already fast-rising actress and writer. Read more... |
10 Questions for Candice Edmunds of Theatre Company Vox MotusThursday, 14 March 2019
“When we graduated we were seeing lot of theatre as a literary form,” explains Candice Edmunds of the theatre company Vox Motus, “But we were really excited by it as a visual form and everything we make, from our earliest scratch pieces up to Flight, has really been an experimentation into how much we can substitute dialogue and the written word for theatrical visuals.” Read more... |
Robert Hastie: 'a seam of love runs through the play' - interviewMonday, 12 November 2018
Robert Hastie is a little late for our meeting. Directing Shakespeare's darkest tragedy in London while also running Sheffield Theatres must sometimes cause a logjam of simultaneous demands, but whatever the morning's problem in the north of England, he remains smiling, relaxed, thoughtful and gracious during a break from rehearsals. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Theatre Producer Elyse DodgsonFriday, 26 October 2018
The Royal Court Theatre has long been a leader in new British drama writing. Thanks to Elyse Dodgson, who has died aged 73, it has built up an international programme like few others in the arts, anywhere. At the theatre, Elyse headed up readings, workshops (in London and abroad), exchanges and writers’ residencies that might have suggested a team of 15 or so but her department was modest in size. Read more... |
Ian Rickson: 'I'm an introvert, I want to stop talking about myself' - interviewTuesday, 22 May 2018
Ian Rickson’s route into theatre was not conventional. Growing up in south London, he discovered plays largely through reading them as a student at Essex University. During those years he stood on a picketline in the miners’ strike, and proudly hurled the contents of an eggbox at Cecil Parkinson. He is a lifelong supporter of Charlton Athletic. 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
Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - findin...
Liminal: a word that conjures thresholds and between states. Caught between three languages – the adjective is a borrowing from the Latin...
Jews. In Their Own Words, Royal Court review - calling out a...
What is the Royal Court theatre for? Is it a...
'Serving the community means representing the narrative...
Just as I was moving from the US to the UK to begin working as the Artistic Director of the...
Album: Slipknot - The End, So Far
Make no mistake about it, Slipknot are massive. 23 years after their recording debut, they’ve had 8.5 billion streams, their sixth album,...
Yiyun Li: The Book of Goose - fame, reality and two teenage...
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li’s fifth novel, is the...
This England, Sky Atlantic review - how Boris's No 10 g...
From underneath the messy ash-white thatch of hair, a strange mooing suddenly issues: Sir Kenneth Branagh is wrestling with Boris Johnson’s odd...
Kim Noble, Soho Theatre review - final part of trilogy about...
A dead pigeon. A dead squirrel. A dead fox. Lots of maggots – very much alive. I might be describing your worst nightmare (throw in a rat or two...
In Front of Your Face review - a day in the life
Twenty-four hours in the life of a Korean woman, Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung), are caught in scenes which feel like real time in Hong Sangsoo’s latest....
Album: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
It’s a minor tragedy that Yeah Yeah Yeahs arrived just in time to be bundled in with a spurious “new rock revolution,” because they were so much...
Purcell's Playhouse, Bevan, Barokksolistene, Eike, Purc...
“What about the communication with the audience?” asked violinist and impresario Bjarte Eike in his First Person piece for theartsdesk...