The actor died on Saturday night in Waimānalo, Hawaii of complications after a stroke, his publicist says
Richard Chamberlain, the hero of the 1960s television series Dr Kildare who found a second career as an award-winning “king of the miniseries,” has died. He was 90.
Chamberlain died on Saturday night in Waimānalo, Hawaii of complications after a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.
Continue reading...Priyanka Shetty combines personal and political in #Charlottesville, a play that explores the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally
She had moved from India to live the American dream. Priyanka Shetty came to study acting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a liberal place of clipped lawns and classical architecture rated in one survey as the happiest city in America.
But what she found was isolation and discomfort because of her race and, as the era of Donald Trump dawned, a nation on the cusp of hostility towards immigrants like her. Then came a white supremacist march through Charlottesville and an explosion of racist violence that left one woman dead.
Continue reading...Dmitry Krymov, who fled Moscow after the Ukraine invasion, plans Dickens hybrid with UK and Russian actors
The acclaimed Russian stage director Dmitry Krymov the winner of many of Moscow’s top theatre prizes before his exile due to public criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken angrily of the impact of the war ahead of his first work with British actors. The Moscow-born director, 70, plans to use Dickens’s two stories Great Expectations and Hard Times to create a new performance.
Arriving in London this weekend for a short stay, Krymov, who is regarded by many western theatre pundits as among the best directors in the world, told the Observer he wants to link British and Russian performers and audiences, despite the divisions caused by President Vladimir Putin.
Continue reading...In a statement, 35 signatories from dance, theatre and music industries express concern about ‘fragile ecosystem’
More than 30 performing arts leaders in the UK, including the bosses of the National Theatre, Opera North and the Royal Albert Hall, have joined the chorus of creative industry concern about the government’s plans to let artificial intelligence companies use artists’ work without permission.
In a statement they said performing arts organisations depend on a “fragile ecosystem” of freelancers who rely on copyright to sustain their livelihoods. They also urged the government to support the “moral and economic rights” of the creative community in music, dance, drama and opera.
Continue reading...Furlough’s Paradise, a ‘lyrical’ journey about grief, scoops award for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights
The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to the US writer ak payne for their poignant and funny two-hander Furlough’s Paradise.
The play has been described by payne as a “lyrical journey about grief, home and survival”. It follows two cousins, one of whom is on a three-day release from prison, as the pair attend a funeral in their childhood town.
Continue reading...A giant of political drama, Fugard captured the injustices of apartheid in works such as Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island
The South African playwright and director Athol Fugard, whose works included the play Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and the novel Tsotsi, has died at the age of 92. The actor John Kani paid tribute on X on Sunday, saying “I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend”. The mayor’s office in Cape Town said: “Athol Fugard was not just a luminary in the world of theatre; he was a teller of profound stories of hope and resilience about South Africa.”
A major political dissident playwright of the 20th century, Fugard wrote more than 30 dramas including Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (in 1972) and “Master Harold” … and the Boys (1982). Both of those drew upon the time in the 1950s when he could only find employment as a clerk in one of the courts where black South Africans were charged (and inevitably convicted) of breaches of the “pass laws”, designed to control the movements of a racially segregated population under the apartheid system. There, he witnessed hourly the dehumanisation of those who had chosen the “wrong” streets or people.
Continue reading...Director says Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill, which provoked fury at its first production in 2009, is a ‘family story’ at heart
The premiere of Caryl Churchill’s short play Seven Jewish Children at the Royal Court theatre 16 years ago proved to be one of British theatre’s most controversial opening nights.
Audiences were immediately divided by the British playwright’s deliberately stripped-back treatment of Jewish generational fear and Israel’s history of conflict.
Continue reading...Justin Audibert’s production with the Hamilton star is part of season including Top Hat, Natalie Dormer’s Anna Karenina and new play Safe Space
Since opening in 1962 under its first artistic director, Laurence Olivier, Chichester Festival theatre has hosted some of the world’s greatest Shakespearean actors. But surprisingly it has never produced its own version of Hamlet. “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” says Justin Audibert, who in 2023 succeeded Daniel Evans as the theatre’s artistic director. “We’ve done three Antony and Cleopatras!”
Audibert is now preparing to direct Hamlet himself, with the tragic prince played by Giles Terera, who won an Olivier award when he starred as Aaron Burr in the London premiere of Hamilton. The play will open in September in Chichester’s smaller Minerva theatre. “We are imagining that Old Hamlet [the prince’s father] has let the kingdom decline,” says Audibert, whose production will explore the “leadership vacuum” that comes from an older generation “clinging on to power for a really long time”. Hamlet’s father “has definitely got some Biden vibes” says Audibert, and the director has also been reflecting on the succession of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad from his father, Hafez. Terera, who starred as Othello at the National Theatre in 2022, will play a Hamlet who is similar in age to his stepfather, Claudius.
Continue reading...The writer of Shopping and Fucking will direct cycle of bawdy comedies inspired by scenarios from a 17th-century Italian collection
A premiere by Mark Ravenhill has been an event ever since the British playwright’s explosive debut 30 years ago with Shopping and Fucking. But Ravenhill is now set to unveil a staggering 10 new full-length plays over two days, performed by a cast of 80 actors and directed by Ravenhill.
An epic cycle of bawdy modern comedies, the plays borrow from scenarios collected in a 1611 publication by the Italian commedia dell’arte actor and manager Flaminio Scala. Ravenhill said he had been attracted to the “generosity of spirit and comic energy” of the scenarios. “They are sexually frank, with the women given as much agency as the men. They are socially acute, depicting the newly rich mixing with the urban poor and new migrants from the countryside. They are grounded in money, sex and the body.” Collectively, the storylines depict a world “in which we are all fools and we all need to find a way to get along”. His aim, Ravenhill said, was not to make a historical reconstruction but “to write plays that allow contemporary audiences to laugh and to celebrate our shared humanity”.
Continue reading...Lowden first appeared in David Ireland’s two-hander in Edinburgh last year. For its West End run, he is paired with his ‘hero’ Freeman
Slow Horses star Jack Lowden is to reprise his role in The Fifth Step, a play about addiction, faith and masculinity, in a new West End production co-starring Martin Freeman.
Lowden first appeared in the drama, written by David Ireland, at the Edinburgh international festival last year and drew acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic, Luka, who joins the 12-step programme. The two-hander starred Sean Gilder as Luka’s older mentor, a part that will be played by Freeman in the production at @sohoplace in London, running from 10 May until 26 July. Finn den Hertog will again direct.
Continue reading...New drama, When Maggie Met Larry, reveals exactly how the world’s most famous actor coached the fledgling Iron Lady
In 1972, a nervous Margaret Thatcher went to Laurence Olivier’s London home for a lesson on presentational skills. The most famous actor of the 20th century told the then education secretary to put a book on her head and walk around to improve her deportment. He also advised her to take long confident strides, and to use her eyes to seduce and flirt.
The future prime minister went on to visit Olivier’s house for a further five lessons, details of which are revealed in a new Radio 4 play, When Maggie Met Larry. Starring Derek Jacobi, who joined Olivier’s fledgling National Theatre when only 24, and Frances Barber as Thatcher, the drama tells of the previously unknown advice on style and voice offered to the Tory politician.
Continue reading...Actor helped shape British postwar theatre through her performances at the Royal Court, National Theatre and in the West End
• Michael Billington: Plowright was a dynamic force
• Joan Plowright: a life in pictures
The actor Joan Plowright, who was celebrated for her long career in theatre and film, has died at the age of 95, her family have announced.
Plowright won acclaim for performances during the early years of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court and the National Theatre when it was based at the Old Vic and led by her second husband, Laurence Olivier.
Continue reading...Leading theatre figures warn ‘drastic’ reduction in funding will cause bankruptcy and harm city’s tourism appeal
Plans to slash Berlin’s culture budget by tens of millions of Euros have led to a huge backlash, with leading venues saying they have been forced to cut performances and others warning they will be pushed into bankruptcy.
About 450 institutes that are reliant at least in part on state subsidies, from theatres and opera houses to nightclubs and galleries, have formed an alliance in an attempt to force a rethink over the €130m (£108.6m) cuts. At around 12 to 13% of the current annual budget, they have been described even by those proposing them as “brutal”.
Continue reading...An influencer on the run crashes a community of naturalists, in one of five new Australian plays premiering at the theatre in 2025
Boomer naturists will face off with a gen Z influencer in an all-nude comedy at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company next year, one of five new Australian plays premiering in its 2025 season.
Naturism, by Sydney playwright Ang Collins, is a comedy about a gen Z eco-influencer (played by Camila Ponte Alvarez) on the run who crashes a remote, off-grid bush eco-paradise created by a group of nudist baby boomers. The entire cast will perform nude for most of the play’s duration.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Scholar names Henry Porter as likely co-author of 1604 play after linguistic clues in his surviving work
Scholars have long suggested that Christopher Marlowe had a collaborator for the comic scenes of his classic play Doctor Faustus, although his name alone is on the 1604 published edition. Now a largely forgotten dramatist, Henry Porter, has emerged as the likely co-author, based on comparative linguistic evidence that has been unearthed from his surviving play.
Doctor Faustus is a tragic story of vanity and greed, in which a scholar sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and power. The tragedy is mirrored by scenes of comic horseplay that are now thought to have been written by Porter, who was described by a contemporary as “the best for comedy amongst us”.
Continue reading...Oscar-winning actor will perform the lead role in Anne Carson’s adaptation of Sophocles’ play in London and Brighton next year
Oscar winner Brie Larson is to appear on stage in Brighton and London, making her West End debut, in Elektra.
Larson will play the anguished lead character in the revenge tragedy, adapted by poet Anne Carson and directed by Daniel Fish. It is the first major London staging of Sophocles’ play since Kristin Scott Thomas took the role in Frank McGuinness’s adaptation at the Old Vic in 2014.
Continue reading...West Yorkshire city to host magic, music, film and theatre performances celebrating local talent, plus Turner prize
A city centre magic show, the Brontës as you’ve never seen them before, and a bassline house symphony are all part of Bradford’s City of Culture lineup, which its organisers call a celebration of everything that makes the West Yorkshire city great.
Shanaz Gulzar, the creative director of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, said the whole of the country was invited to come next year to a place she billed as young, diverse, creative and “the heart of the UK”.
Continue reading...New exhibition, named after ‘theatrical encyclopedia’ Gabrielle Enthoven, showcases British stage history from the Restoration to Fleabag
She was an avid collector of playbills, programmes and props who kickstarted the largest theatrical archive of the nation, now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Without Gabrielle Enthoven, we would not have theatre studies as a discipline today, according to Simon Sladen, the museum’s senior curator of modern and contemporary theatre and performance.
Yet many will never have heard of Enthoven. That is about to change as the V&A has named a new exhibition in her honour, celebrating a century of the national archive, which is now protected by law.
Continue reading...‘Electrifying’ Judy Davis will star in adaptation of The Spare Room, with Colin Friels as King Lear later in the season
An adaptation of Helen Garner’s award-winning novel The Spare Room will debut at Sydney’s Belvoir St theatre in 2025, starring Judy Davis as a fictionalised version of the author in her first on stage role in almost 15 years.
The announcement caps a banner year for Garner’s work on stage, with an operatic adaptation of The Spare Room in development with the Melbourne company Monstrous Theatre, as well as a remount of the 2008 opera The Children’s Bach.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ken Ludwig gives Shakespeare Birthplace Trust largest private donation in its 177-year history
The charity that cares for historic Shakespeare sites in Stratford-upon-Avon has received an unprecedented donation of £1m from the Olivier award-winning US playwright Ken Ludwig.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) can now pay for crucial conservation work on Hall’s Croft, the home of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her physician husband, John Hall, who is believed to have advised his father-in-law on medical matters.
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