thu 28/03/2024

Theatre Features

'What’s he doing - this kid - where’s he going?'

Leo Butler

I notice a teenage boy hanging around the bus stops near where I live in south-east London. I’m reminded of myself when I was 17, after I’d left school with hardly any qualifications, looking for something to do, suddenly lost without the day-to-day structure of lessons, breaks and home-time.  

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10 Questions for Artist Marc Rees

Thomas H Green

Marc Rees (b 1966) is an interdisciplinary artist-performer from Wales whose works are renowned for imaginitively mixing media, as well as for their underlying sense of fun. Over the years he has been based in Berlin, Amsterdam and Canada, and now runs the collaborative arts company RIPE (Rees International Project Enterprizes).

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Bon voyage, Jean Anouilh!

Anthony Weigh

In the icy early hours of 1 February 1918 a bizarre figure was seen wandering aimlessly along the platform of a railway station in Lyon. A solider. Lost. When asked his name he answered, “Anthelme Mangin”. Other than that he had no memory of who he was, of where he had been, of where he was going, or of what had happened to him prior to arriving on that station platform on that frigid February night.

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The police stopped 'To be or not to be' and asked to see our permits

Matthew Romain

Za’atari set a precedent. Our performance in the Syrian refugee camp in Jordan became a template for how to perform Hamlet in every nation in the world – in a world that rendered travel to Syria, Yemen, Libya and Central African Republic out of the question. And it paved the way for our most ad hoc and unconventional performance yet.

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Seven sides of Alan Rickman

theartsdesk

When sorrows come they come not in single spies. It is a bad week to be 69. Hard on the heels of David Bowie's death from cancer comes Alan Rickman's. He was an actor who radiated a sinful allure that first gave theatregoers the hot flushes back in 1985 when he played the Vicomte de Valmont in Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereues.

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Best of 2015: Theatre

Matt Wolf

Say what you will about London theatre during 2015, and by my reckoning it was a pretty fine year, there certainly was a lot of it. I can't recall a year that brought with it a comparable volume of openings, not least during September and December, this year's pre-Christmas slate of major press nights roughly double the same time period in 2014. And as proof that people were actually attending the stuff on offer, empirical evidence as ever was the best guide.

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Around the World in 80 Days: why now?

Laura Eason

I adapted Around the World in Eighty Days very specifically for my own theatre company, Lookingglass Theatre of Chicago, where I am one of 24 multi-skilled ensemble members who are writers, directors, actors, and/or designers. Although Lookingglass’ work varies, we most often do adaptations of classic stories, frequently epic in scale, told in a highly theatrical, strongly visual and/or physical way.

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Measure for Measure to music

Ellie Nunn

West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate, even The Lion King – all have shown us how Shakespeare’s stories can translate into musical form. It’s not hard to see why: the plots provide strong frameworks for adaptation, with central problems to be resolved, protagonists for us to root for, villains to charm us, lovers to pity – they're all there.

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When Hamlet came to a Syrian refugee camp

Matthew Romain

It would have been impossible to go to Syria. Our plan to perform Hamlet in every nation in the world faced its biggest obstacle to date and the Globe producers were left pondering a Plan B. We considered performing in a Syrian embassy - technically Syrian soil - but playing to an audience of delegates would have missed the point a little. More important than the patch of ground we played on was the people to whom we were playing.

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First Person: Writing about the transgender experience

Jon Brittain

My play Rotterdam opens this week at Theatre503 (I’m getting the plug in early). It’s about two women who are in a relationship and how that relationship changes when one reveals that he has always identified as male. Their names are Alice and Adrian, and I first had the idea for them five years ago.

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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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