Theatre Interviews
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Roy WilliamsSaturday, 24 October 2009
Roy Williams is one of the most prolific, and most lauded, British playwrights. Born in Fulham, south-west London, in 1968, he had by his mid-30s already won a shelf-full of awards, to which he added an OBE in 2008. His debut, The No Boys Cricket Club, won the Writers’ Guild New Writer of the Year award in 1996. Two years later Starstruck won three major awards. In the early 2000s Lift Off and Clubland were also successes. In 2004 Williams won the first... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright David HareSaturday, 10 October 2009
David Hare (b. 1947) has had three distinct phases to his career as a playwright. In the 1970s he was a satirist of the agitprop movement whose plays (Slag, Knuckle) smacked of youthful belligerence. Read more... |
Q&A Special: Joe Orton's SisterThursday, 01 October 2009
Play titles can acquire a life of their own. Playwright Joe Orton, who met a violent end in August 1967, didn’t have the chance to write the play that was to be called Prick Up Your Ears, but the title has lived on. And on. It was used by critic John Lahr for his 1978 biography of Orton, and by Stephen Frears for his 1987 film, which starred Gary Oldman. Now a new black comedy, written by Simon Bent and currently at the Comedy Theatre in the West End, uses the same title, with its... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Richard BeanSunday, 20 September 2009
Richard Bean's monster mainstage play, England People Very Nice, was about immigration to London's East End - and was easily the most controversial play of 2009. He is a son of Hull (b. 1956). He is one of the most prolific and talented playwrights to... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Lyricist Tim RiceFriday, 11 September 2009
Sir Tim Rice (b. 1944) will always be inextricably known as Andrew Lloyd Webber's original - and best - lyricist. They met in 1965 and promptly wrote a musical - The Likes of Us - which has never been professionally staged. Of the three which have been, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat turned 41 this year. After Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, lyricist and composer parted company when Lloyd Webber started working with T S Eliot. 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
Conclave
Director Edward Berger won an...
Most of us have been there: an impasse in a marriage, a bereavement in a dysfunctional family. Leonard Bernstein certainly had when he composed...
I turn 36 this year, while living in London and rehearsing my new play The Fear of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse. The cast places a cake on...
Unlike the controversial Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which challenges many of the same attitudes towards sexual harassment, self-delusion...
Of all the inventive and enterprising things Manchester Collective do, it’s most often been the playing of a string ensemble led from first desk...
Before Alice Lowe wrote her first short film scripts, she was, despite success in television and theater, “terrified” of making a full-length...
Merchant bankers then eh? It’s not a slang term of abuse for nothing, as the middlemen collecting the crumbs off the cake (in...
Of all the ingenues in all the world of golden TV sitcom, Felicity Kendal was the most innocent, the most wicked, the most deceptive, with an...
Immanuel Wilkins’s third Blue Note Album – Blues Blood – has a big concept behind it. According...
Air travel is bad for us. Yes, yes, I know we need planes to take us long distances, but look at the downside: not only the carbon footprint, but...