mon 01/09/2025

Theatre Features

'The din is loud these days': playwright Cordelia Lynn on her imminent premiere at the Donmar Warehouse

Cordelia Lynn

As I write this, we've just had our final day in the rehearsal room and are going into tech onstage next week with my new play, which is also reopening the Donmar not only to live performance but follows major renovations at their home address.

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First Person: theatre director Christopher Haydon on how the Rose Theatre, Kingston, can bloom anew

Christopher Haydon

Programming a theatre during a pandemic has been like trying to nail jelly to a set of constantly moving goalposts. Government indecision meant that reopening dates shifted repeatedly while the configuration of our auditorium kept changing as we tried to adapt to ever-evolving regulations around social distancing. Even our audience – once so familiar to us – became an unknown quantity.

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First Person: Director Maria Aberg on drawing fresh inspiration for the future

Maria Aberg

When theatres in the UK closed last March, I found myself in a vacuum. Having been a freelance theatre director for over 15 years, I was used to busy – juggling a hectic schedule of directing shows with the reality of being a mum to two toddlers. Inspiration was something I might find in between opening nights, meetings and nursery runs – if I was lucky.

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First Person: playwright Tanika Gupta on being back in the rehearsal room once more

Tanika Gupta

On the first day of rehearsals for Out West at the Lyric Hammersmith in May, myself and fellow playwrights Roy Williams and Simon Stephens stood, masked up and lateral flow tested for Covid, and listened as the Lyric Hammersmith's artistic director Rachel O’Riordan welcomed us at the traditional...

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Helen McCrory: 'If there's one interesting thing about acting it's trying to lose your ego'

Jasper Rees

Each generation is given an actress who can do everything – be intimate with the camera but also coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces. There was Judi Dench, and then there was Imelda Staunton, both loved by all.

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First Person: Clare Norburn on how she came to write her ambitious Zoom-era drama, 'Love in the Lockdown'

Clare Norburn

Love in the Lockdown started out as my “Lockdown 1.0 project” - although, of course, we didn’t call it Lockdown 1.0 back then. We didn’t know other lockdowns would follow and that nearly one year on, here we would be, locked down again with theatres and concert halls still closed. 

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Theatre Unlocked 4: Shows in concert and a contemporary classic comes to TV

Matt Wolf

After months spent sifting amongst the virtual, I'm pleased to report that live performance looks to be on the (socially distanced) rebound.

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Theatre Unlocked 3: Signs of activity after a long siesta

Matt Wolf

After a weeklong hiatus due to an absence of noteworthy material, this column is back heralding the return, as well, of something resembling live theatre.

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Theatre Unlocked 2: A starry premiere and musical revival alongside Greek tragedy where it began

Matt Wolf

Theatres will begin gently unlocking their doors as we head into August.

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Theatre Unlocked 1: George Floyd remembered, a classic transformed, and a call to action re climate change

Matt Wolf

We're easing out of lockdown, haircuts are being had, and the theatre continually shape-shifts to accommodate these changing times. All credit to the 14 writers who have conjoined forces in urgency and haste to create 846, a collection of audio plays responding to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

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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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