Theatre Interviews
Q&A Special: Actor Nigel LindsayMonday, 13 June 2011
His only previous visit to musical theatre was as Nathan Detroit in the Donmar’s West End production of Guys and Dolls. And now Lindsay sits in the sumptuous dressing room – it feels more like a small flat – at Drury Lane once occupied, he is proud to note, by the likes of Rex Harrison. The first role in which he caught the eye was as Mugsy, the eternally optimistic victim in Patrick Marber’s poker play Dealer’s Choice. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Christopher EcclestonSaturday, 30 April 2011
Christopher Eccleston’s performances have a raw-boned, visceral quality which makes him a sometimes unsettling - but always compelling - actor to watch. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Theatre Producer Elyse DodgsonSaturday, 26 March 2011
The Royal Court Theatre is a leader in new British drama writing. It also has an international programme like few others in the arts, anywhere. At the theatre, Elyse Dodgson heads up readings, workshops (in London and abroad), exchanges and writers’ residencies which might suggest a team of 15 or so. In fact there are just two others in the department. Her largely unsung influence on how London audiences and critics get to know what’s going on in theatre around the world has, for over two... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Artist/Dramatist John ByrneSaturday, 19 March 2011
"I’m very hard to categorise,” says John Byrne (b 1940), tugging at his magnificent moustache. A restless, defiant, shape-shifting polymath who was an exponent of multimedia long before computers ruled the world, Byrne's singular career is perhaps doomed to gentle underappreciation simply because he can do so much so well. “If you’re hard to categorise they don’t like that." He peers into his coffee as though looking for something. "Whoever 'they' are.” Read more... |
Q&A: Playwright Nick Dear on Adapting FrankensteinThursday, 10 February 2011
It is one of the most hotly anticipated new productions at the National Theatre in years, for which all but day seats have long since been sold out. Danny Boyle has been lured back to the stage to direct a version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Robert LepageSaturday, 29 January 2011
Robert Lepage is not just one of the most fêted and sought-after theatre directors in the world; he is also one of the most prolific. His international breakthrough came with The Dragon Trilogy in 1985, and since then the French-Canadian’s work has been seen across the globe. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Toby JonesSaturday, 15 January 2011
Toby Jones’s cameo in Notting Hill – he was cast as an over-eager fan of Julia Roberts - was deposited on the cutting-room floor. Most actors would have chalked it up as one of life’s bum raps. Jones, who while on set for his short scene was also failing to rent a flat in Notting Hill, fashioned a drama out of a double crisis. To perform Missing Reel he obtained permission to show the suppressed material. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Toby JonesWednesday, 12 January 2011
Toby Jones’s cameo in Notting Hill – he was cast as an over-eager fan of Julia Roberts - was deposited on the cutting-room floor. Most actors would have chalked it up as one of life’s bum raps. Jones, who while on set for his short scene was also failing to rent a flat in Notting Hill, fashioned a drama out of a double crisis. To perform Missing Reel he obtained permission to show the suppressed material. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actress Eileen AtkinsFriday, 24 December 2010
Eileen Atkins (b 1934) acquired long-overdue fame with her performance in the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Her desiccated spinster was the indisputed star turn until death did us part. It’s taken a while. Aside from half a century’s commitment to the classics and new plays, unlike the other more celebrated DBEs she has had a parallel career as a writer. There have been two plays about Virginia Woolf, as well as a screenplay of Mrs Dalloway. Read more... |
Q&A Special: Actor Derek JacobiTuesday, 07 December 2010
Derek Jacobi (b 1938) grew up in Leytonstone. His father was a tobacconist, his mother worked in a department store. Although he entered the profession in the great age of social mobility in the early 1960s, no one could have predicted that he would go on to play so many English kings - Edward II, a couple of Henry VIIIs and Shakespeare’s two Richards - as well as a Spanish one in Don Carlos. This month he prepares to play another king of Albion: Lear, against which all classical... Read more... |
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