fri 19/04/2024

Theatre Buzz

Kathryn Hunter withdraws from RSC productions

David Nice Kathryn Hunter: The visionary actress leaves it to her understudies to play Cleopatra

Even at the time it seemed a little strange: the visionary Kathryn Hunter as an oddball Cleopatra in a production that hardly seemed up to the mark either of her performing standards or of her own fabulous Shakespeare staging, a Pericles which was one of the two best things I've ever seen at the Globe.

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Pete Postlethwaite, 1946-2011

Jasper Rees 'It's a face, that's for sure': Pete Postlethwaite on his natural features

Pete Postlethwaite, who has died from cancer at the age of 64, was an extremely amicable man whom Hollywood had down as a lugubrious baddie. It happened in Aliens 3, in The Usual Suspects, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

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Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommends

theartsdesk

Yesterday was yesterday. Today there's the rest of the week. What are the options? You could go to the shops and exchange all your presents, or you could pursue something more in the cultural line. To which end, theartsdesk is delighted to propose some suggestions. Our writers strongly recommend that you do one or more of the following while opportunity knocks.

 

ENGLAND

 

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Bush Theatre to move from pub to library

Ismene Brown Shepherd's Bush old library: the Bush Theatre's new home, already the base of a scripts library

London’s world-famous experimental pub-theatre has secured its future with a move into Shepherd’s Bush old library. Church and council permission were given yesterday for conversion of the library (owned by the Church of England) to be ready for curtain-up in 2011 when the lease on the Bush’s space in O’Neill’s pub, Shepherd’s Bush Green, expires.

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Subject: Re: Arts Cuts (Reply All)

theartsdesk

It began with a review of 100 Years of German Song. Roused by a comment to a reader (see Igor's comment below), Fisun was moved to email Igor in support of his trenchant views on arts funding.

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The Room: Harold Pinter's 80th birthday celebrated

Jasper Rees

On 10 October, 2010 Harold Pinter would have turned 80. To celebrate, a group of actors gathered in a room to read The Room, his first play, to an invited audience. Among those present was his widow Antonia Fraser.

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Ralph Koltai, from theatre designer to sculptor

Jasper Rees

Koltai’s stage designs have been seen in countless operas and theatre productions around the world, and yielded many awards. Of Hungarian extraction, he was born in Berlin in 1924 and granted entry to the UK in 1939. He served with British Intelligence at the Nuremberg Trials before going on to train at the Central School of Art and Design, where he later became head of theatre design. He was created a CBE in 1983. At 86, he remains associate designer for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

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A New York transformation for Edinburgh's Metamorphoses

theartsdesk

The Blitz wartime version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that David Nice was raving about is New York-bound now, after winning one of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s most generous awards, the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award. This, set up in 2004 in perpetuity, gives the winning production an all-expenses paid trip...

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Stoppard returns to TV

Adam Sweeting

After a 20-year absence from British TV, Sir Tom Stoppard returns to the small screen next year with his five-part adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's novel, Parade's End, on BBC Two. When the BBC approached Stoppard (pictured) with the idea two years ago, he had never read the book, but says that it "has been my preoccupation since then. The title covers a quartet of books set among the upper class in Edwardian England, mostly from 1911 to the end of the Great War."

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Site-specific theatre goes commercial

Jasper Rees

Last weekend we posted a round-up of the vast array of site-specific work happening in the theatre over the summer. Most of them are shows which are so boldly experimental that they haven't much realistic hope of a commercial future. Plays for an audience of one are not the producer's friend. But it turns out that it's not just the mighty Punchdrunk who can shift...

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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.


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