To have one iconic part you’re associated with forever can be a joy, or a drag. Stockard Channing has two. Continue reading “Stockard Channing: ‘I like to think there could be a return to civilised discourse, intelligent diplomacy…’”
Category: Theatre
John Tiffany on bringing Road back to the Royal Court and how he made West End magic with Harry Potter
He’s the man who made the magic of Harry Potter come alive on stage: John Tiffany pulled off the near impossible trick of crafting a blockbuster show that pleased both obsessive fans and snooty critics alike. Continue reading “John Tiffany on bringing Road back to the Royal Court and how he made West End magic with Harry Potter”
Review: Ink, The Almeida
To 1969, when a beleaguered, high-minded newspaper is sold to an Australian sheep-farmer with ambitions to turn it into a popular tabloid. The rag is The Sun, the proprietor Rupert Murdoch – and the playwright retelling this story, This House writer James Graham. Continue reading “Review: Ink, The Almeida”
Review: Remnants, The Print Room
Dubbed an “electro-folk drama” by theatre-maker Patrick Eakin Young, director of the company Erratica, Remnants is a work that resists categorisation – a potent tapestry of song, electronic music, dance and recorded interviews. Continue reading “Review: Remnants, The Print Room”
Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Apollo Theatre
Tennessee Williams’ once rejected the idea of the “straight realistic play with its genuine Frigidaire and authentic ice cubes”. Here, director Benedict Andrews plonks a whole great sack of them at the front of the stage, next to four bottles of whisky. Continue reading “Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Apollo Theatre”
Imelda Staunton on the National’s new blockbuster musical Follies
It may not open till next month, but the first release of tickets for Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at the National Theatre are already entirely sold out. However thousands more are on sale today from 8.30am, at the same time as a first-look photograph of the cast is unveiled.
The level of love for the musical has surprised its star, Imelda Staunton – but then, it hasn’t had a full staging in London since 1987. The story of the Weismann Follies’ vaudeville showgirls, who return to the theatre they performed in 30 years previously, features standards such as ‘Losing My Mind and ‘I’m Still Here’, and garners serious devotion among Sondheim fans.
Continue reading “Imelda Staunton on the National’s new blockbuster musical Follies”
Review: A Tale of Two Cities, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
It was set in olden times; it was set in modern times. That’s the main conceit of Matthew Dunster‘s new stage adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities — but sadly, it fails to really become a potent tale for anyone’s time. Continue reading “Review: A Tale of Two Cities, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre”
Blanche McIntyre: ‘Staging violence against women responsibly keeps me up at night’
Titus Andronicus has got a reputation. It’s Shakespeare’s schlock horror moment, a gore fest that for centuries was considered too crass to be staged, and now prompts gleeful headlines about how many audience members have fainted at its dismemberments. Continue reading “Blanche McIntyre: ‘Staging violence against women responsibly keeps me up at night’”
How Rotterdam has led the way for transgender stories on stage
It was 2008 when Jon Brittain first started working on his play Rotterdam, about a lesbian couple where one half transitions to being a man. He had several friends who were transitioning gender, and was suddenly struck by how few trans stories ever got told. Continue reading “How Rotterdam has led the way for transgender stories on stage”
The woman who could ‘draw’ music
Few people know Daphne Oram, but she helped shape the sounds, and songs, we listen to today. A pioneer of electronic music, she wrote Still Point – thought to be the world’s first composition which manipulates electronic sounds in real time – in 1949. In 1957, she set up the famous BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The same year, she began working on her Oramics machine, which turned graphical gestures into music: the user could ‘draw’ the sounds they wished to hear.