Category Archives: Theatre

Rafe Spall: ‘Madonna came up and started grinding me. A circle formed’

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For all the standing ovations, Hollywood roles and parties with stars, nothing beats the rough and tumble of real life for actor Rafe Spall

The play was going well. It was going very well, a Broadway production of Pinter’s Betrayal, starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz as a married couple and Rafe Spall as her lover – the last thing Mike Nichols directed before he died. It was a hit; so much so that one night Madonna invited the cast round for dinner. “So I went to dinner,” says Spall.

He is telling the story with relish, leaning into his laptop camera as if we’re slightly pissed on a Sunday and our families have drifted off to watch telly. “And Madonna was dressed as Madonna, a gold grill and fingerless gloves. I was feeling quite confident, because I’ve just done the show and I was like, I’m going to pretend to Madonna that I’m not scared of her.” After dinner the tables were pushed to the side to make a dancefloor, “and Lourdes is on the iPad playing tunes. So I started dancing and Madonna came up and started, well… grinding me. Very close. I suppose ‘dutty wining’ would be the phrase? My wife was there… [actor Elize du Toit, they’ve been married since 2010, three kids, recently moved from London to Stroud] And she looked at me like, ‘The fuck?’ My torso was pouring with sweat. And in my mind I was saying, don’t back down. So I looked her in the eye and said to myself, ‘Yeah, this is me.’” Soon after, a dance circle formed. “With Madonna on a literal throne. And all of the dancers from her tour were in a circle around her. And she said, ‘Rafe, get in the circle!’ So I was like, ‘Don’t back down, this is you.’ So I got in the middle of the circle of Madonna and the best dancers in the world. And I danced in there for three minutes.”

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Whispers to thunderstorms: the world of sound designer Max Pappenheim

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After embarking accidentally on his career, Pappenheim has created innovative soundscapes for theatre, opera and radio

Max Pappenheim’s journey into sound design comprises a series of happy accidents. Music – and especially organ music – was his first love. He spent a year as a cathedral organist and it was only his predilection for experimentation and finding “the weirdest corners of the repertoire” that stopped him from pursuing a professional career in liturgical music.

Instead, he went to Cambridge University, read classics and began teaching at a school in the Midlands. There, he was asked to direct a musical, Sweeney Todd, and it was then the ground began to shift beneath his feet.

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Unfair Verona: plans to limit tourists at Juliet’s balcony are blocked

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Decade-long feud continues over popular selfie spot linked to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Plans to curtail the number of tourists who flock to Verona for a selfie beneath the balcony where Romeo is said to have wooed Juliet have been blocked amid a feud over the site that has lasted more than a decade.

Tourists can enter the tiny courtyard – free-of-charge – simply to take a photo of the balcony or to rub their hand on the right breast of a bronze statue of Juliet as part of a ritual that is said to bring luck in love.

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‘An explosive energy’: Sam Mendes pays tribute to Helen McCrory

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Whether acting in Chekhov on stage or a Bond film, the star – who has died aged 52 – was incredibly exciting to watch, remembers the Skyfall director

Most actors are liked by those they work with. A few are loved. With Helen it was unquestionably the latter. People would light up at the mention of her name. I was one of those people.

When I was directing Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night as my final productions as artistic director of the Donmar in 2002, I asked Helen to play the role of Sonya in Uncle Vanya. Word came back that she would love to have a chat about it. She strode into my office, sat on the sofa and immediately told me I had it all wrong. She told me she should be playing Yelena – the other young female role – and then proceeded to spend the next hour telling me exactly why. She left the room with the part. This has never happened to me before or since. All I can say by way of explanation is that it just felt inevitable. She was clearly already half way to giving a superb performance, I simply had to get out of the way and let her complete the job. Which, of course, she did – with utter brilliance.

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Helen McCrory remembered: ‘She had a brightness about her. She was a star’

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Richard Eyre, the National Theatre director who cast the actor in some of her earliest roles, pays tribute to her after her death

Part of the tragedy of Helen McCrory dying at such a young age, leaving a husband and two young children, is that professionally she had everything to look forward to. She had established herself as a very considerable actor in the theatre and on film and television.

She had a brightness about her, a luminosity: she was, in short, a star. She lit up a stage or a screen – you knew you were in the presence of a force of character and talent.

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Friday Night Dinner star Paul Ritter dies of brain tumour at 54

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Ritter, who also appeared in films including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, died at home alongside his wife and two sons

The actor Paul Ritter has died of a brain tumour at the age of 54, his agent has told the Guardian. Ritter who starred as the family patriarch Martin in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner alongside Tamsin Greig, Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal died on Monday.

In a statement, his agent said that the actor, who also appeared in numerous films including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Quantum of Solace, died at home with his family by his side.

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‘A light at the end of the tunnel’: Australian theatres launch 2021 seasons as the rest of the world stays dark

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Sydney Theatre Company is the latest to launch this year’s season, as Broadway and the West End look to Australia as the pandemic pioneer

“Australia has become a test case for the rest of the performing arts world,” the Washington Post proclaimed last month, as theatres across the country prepared to move to full capacity, while throughout most of Europe and the US they remain dark.

So yeah, no pressure there, says Sydney Theatre Company’s artistic director Kip Williams, two days out from launching the company’s complete 2021 season – the largest season the STC has seen since 2017.

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Lockdown one year on: Hiran Abeysekera on how Covid nixed his West End debut

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The Sri Lankan actor, who had wowed audiences in Sheffield in Life of Pi, was poised for West End fame when theatres shut up shop. He reflects on a career interrupted

“I was scared that I might not be able to do Pi again,” says Hiran Abeysekera, who was preparing to transfer his rapturously received 2019 performance in Life of Pi to the West End when the pandemic hit. “We were joking that when theatres finally reopened, I’d have grey hair and a walking stick. People would go: ‘Hiran, do you still want to do Pi?’ And I’d be like: ‘I can’t do it any more, man, I’m too old!’”

Abeysekera, who is a very youthful and ebullient 35, graduated from Rada in 2011. His credits include The Taming of the Shrew at the RSC and Peter Pan at Regent’s Park, and he played Puck in a spirited BBC adaptation, by Russell T Davies, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2016. But Life of Pi in the West End was an obvious breakthrough moment. Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of the Booker prize-winning novel by Yann Martel received five-star reviews when it opened at the Sheffield Crucible, and Abeysekera’s performance as Piscine “Pi” Patel – shipwrecked with various zoo animals, including a ravenous tiger – was hailed as star-making. The Guardian called it “superb”, noting that “the actor has the charm, wit and seriousness to make him a compelling narrator of his own magical-realist tale”. Our own reviewer described Abeysekera’s performance as “unbelievably credible”.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray review – the ugly face of social media

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Eternal youth and beauty exist only online in this thoroughly modern adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s fable, which counts Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley among its impressive cast

If Dorian Gray were reborn in our age, it seems entirely fitting that he would be a social media star obsessing over his image. So it makes great intuitive sense for this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel to situate its protagonist in the centre of the digital whirl of 2021.

There is now no physical painting: the deal made with Basil Hallward allows Dorian eternal youth and beauty online, but age marks him in the real world, his face becoming etched with the ugliness of his accumulating misdeeds (snorting coke, catfishing and late night hookups). The pandemic is incorporated into the drama and enhances the storyline as Dorian wears his mask to cover his ageing face.

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Yellow review – a gripping epic about fascism in Belgium

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Part two in NTGent’s Sorrows of Belgium trilogy is a visually arresting account of the rise of the Rex party and the horror of the second world war

Director Luk Perceval’s Sorrows of Belgium trilogy charts three dark chapters in the nation’s history, starting with colonial oppressions in the Congo in Black (produced by NTGent in 2019) and ending with the Brussels terrorist attacks of 2016 in Red (yet to be staged). The second instalment, Yellow, dramatises the rise of the fascist party Rex, which led to collaboration with Nazi occupiers.

What is immediately arresting in NTGent’s live-stream, with English subtitles, is the cinematic quality of the production. It is exquisitely filmed by Daniel Demoustier in the theatre, though not always on the stage. Shot almost entirely in black and white with some intermittent hues of yellow, it seems variously like a dance and a series of sorrowful tableaux of human suffering and collective delusion. Camera angles draw us into the roused faces of Belgian fascists, circling them dizzily as they spit out their rhetoric, and then drawing away to show them as a choreographed ensemble. Annette Kurz’s set design seems more like a moving painting, with the actors often performing on or around a table that serves as a miniature stage.

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Indian theatre festival forced to close after Hindu vigilantes object to satirical plays

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Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays ‘disrespectful to the Indian flag’

Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening violence over satirical plays they accused of being “anti-national”.

The annual theatre festival organised by the Indian People’s Theatre Association in the small town of Chhatarpur became the object of abuse and violent threats by Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group linked with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

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Patter of tiny feet: dancers on leaping into motherhood

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Juggling babies and a job is always difficult – what are the particular pressures for performers and how is the industry taking steps to improve?

Followers of Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson cheer ardently for her Juliet, Manon and Sugar Plum Fairy, but are in raptures about her latest role, as mum to baby Peggy, born in December and already the toast of Instagram. Cuthbertson is one of a flurry of dancers at the Royal who are about to give or have recently given birth, in a serendipitously timed lockdown baby boom.

It’s a long way from the early days of the company, when founder Ninette de Valois set the tone. “‘You’re pregnant darling, goodbye!’ That’s how it was,” says Jeanetta Laurence, a dancer in its touring company in the 1960s and 70s. Even now, she says: “It’s hard to think of another industry where having a baby is so intrusive to the work. I’m in awe and wonder at how they manage it.”

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‘You can smell the sweat and hair gel’: the best nightclub scenes from culture

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Writers and artists including Róisín Murphy, Tiffany Calver and Sigala on the art that transports them to the dancefloor during lockdown

There have been many notable nightclubs in film history. The Blue Angel in the Marlene Dietrich movie; the Copacabana in Goodfellas, accessible to privileged wiseguys via the kitchen; the Slow Club in Blue Velvet, with the emotionally damaged star turn Isabella Rossellini singing the song of the same name.

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‘A critic said my stomach was a warning to us all!’ Simon Callow meets Derek Jacobi

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The theatre legends look back at working with Laurence Olivier and Peter O’Toole, the pain of biting reviews, the joy of a good run – and the agonies of being miscast

Derek Jacobi and Simon Callow first met at the Old Vic in London. Jacobi was treading the boards with Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole and other greats in the fledgling National Theatre company; the younger Callow was working at the box office. Prolific as ever through this lockdown year, both are juggling an assortment of stage and screen projects from home. They took time off to talk about Shakespeare, scathing reviews and how rifling through their family’s wardrobes led them into an acting career.

Derek Jacobi: Have we ever worked together, Simon? I can’t remember!

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Stars including Sir Ian McKellen urge changes to visa rules for artists

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Julie Walters among signatories to letter saying post-Brexit changes a ‘towering hurdle’ to working in Europe

New visa rules for British artists, actors and theatre workers who want to work in Europe after Brexit are a “towering hurdle” that must be urgently addressed, according to an open letter signed by stars including Sir Ian McKellen, Julie Walters and Patrick Stewart.

In the letter from the performing arts union Equity, some of the biggest names in British theatre have implored the prime minister to go back to the negotiating table to ensure visa-free work in the EU.

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Actor’s homophobia made her commercially toxic, tribunal told

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Seyi Omooba is suing Leicester theatre and talent agency after being sacked for Facebook post on homosexuality

A sacked actor who would have refused to play the role in which she had been cast as a lesbian because it was against her Christian beliefs made herself “commercially toxic” and her continued employment would have forced the show’s cancellation, a tribunal has heard.

Seyi Omooba was due to play Celie in a production of The Color Purple at the Curve theatre, Leicester, but was removed from the show in March 2019 after the emergence of a Facebook post from 2014 in which she said homosexuality was not “right”.

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Miranda Richardson’s teenage obsessions: ‘I rescued a kestrel and became fascinated by birds of prey’

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With the release of her new film Rams, the actor remembers her love of westerns and John Wayne, playing male parts at her all girls’ school and the thrill of frightening humour

I grew up in Southport, Lancashire, with a cinema about 50 yards from my house. So Saturday mornings were spent with The ABC Minors: the Saturday cinema club with the theme song set to the tune of Blaze Away by Abe Holzmann, a red ball bouncing over the lyrics so you could sing along.

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A key, a casket and the hunt for Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón’s bones

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Dogged detective work and radar scans of a church wall may help find the last resting place of the great playwright

The death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca – soldier, priest and one of the finest dramatists Spain has produced – continues to prove almost as turbulent and unpredictable as his long and improbable life.

Four centuries after Calderón died in Madrid aged 81, researchers believe they could be close to finding his remains, thanks to the deathbed testament of a priest, a key long guarded by the playwright’s family and the latest in ground-penetrating radar.

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Cast unveiled for Broadway debut of TikTok musical Ratatouille

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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess will play Remy the rat in the crowd-created musical phenomenon

The star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock, Tituss Burgess, will play the role of Remy the rat in the highly anticipated Broadway debut of Ratatouille, dubbed “the TikTok musical”.

The cast of the unlikely musical phenomenon, which tells the story of a gastronomically blessed French rat, was announced on Monday.

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Jeremy Bulloch obituary

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Stage and screen actor who played the bounty hunter Boba Fett in the Star Wars films

Jeremy Bulloch, who has died aged 75, was a busy character actor who staked a claim for cinematic immortality by playing the inscrutable Boba Fett in the Star Wars films. A masked, enigmatic bounty hunter with a jet pack and distinctive costume design, Boba Fett debuted in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), capturing and carbon-freezing Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in order to convey him to the slug-like paymaster Jabba the Hutt.

Despite relatively limited screen time and dialogue (his few lines were post-dubbed by the American actor Jason Wingreen), both Bulloch and Boba Fett became much loved contributors to the franchise and he reprised the role in Return of the Jedi (1983). In the eventual Star Wars prequels Boba Fett was played by the child actor Daniel Logan, and so Bulloch was instead hired to play the spaceship pilot Captain Colton in the third of them, Revenge of the Sith (2005).

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