Category Archives: Theatre

Rising festival 2024: theatre-maker to be drugged unconscious in ‘deeply unnerving’ show about date rape

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A Brazilian artist will have her body manipulated while passed out, in a lauded work about sexual violence that headlines Melbourne’s winter festival

A theatremaker will be drugged unconscious on stage in Melbourne this year, in a controversial and highly lauded theatre work about sexual violence that will have its Australian premiere at Rising festival.

Cadela Força Trilogy: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella is directed by and stars Brazilian artist Carolina Bianchi, who recounts her experience of being drugged and sexually assaulted, before taking a drug on stage. Once unconscious, female performers then move her body around, even at one point inserting a speculum and camera into her vagina, with a live video feed shown to the audience in a simulation of a post-rape forensic examination.

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Jeremy Hunt ‘could adopt Labour tax-raising plans’ – as it happened

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Chancellor reportedly considering energy windfall levy as well as scrapping the non-dom status

The Conservative peer and former MP Stewart Jackson has also made the point about Rishi Sunak’s comments yesterday echoing what Suella Braverman has been saying. (See 9.25am.) He suggests Sunak is a weathercock, “buffeted by events”.

Rishi Sunak is now saying what #SuellaBraverman rightly said four months ago, and for which she was sacked. Tony Benn astutely divided politicians as between signposts and weathercocks. One can think ahead, the other is buffeted by events. We know which one is which, don’t we?

We commend the prime minister on his powerful speech at the CST dinner last night, pledging more funding to protect the Jewish community, outlining a new protocol to safeguard our elected representatives and effectively police protests, and drawing a clear line between democratic dissent and mob intimidation.

The last few months have seen an extreme rise in antisemitic hate in the UK, which has had a significant effect on British Jews. The prime minister’s announcement has made it clear - those bringing chaos to our streets and academic institutions will no longer be allowed to act with impunity.

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Of death – and laughter: how to write plays in Ukraine during wartime

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A dozen playwrights and directors meet in Kyiv and find comedy can be an important part of their creative process

In a studio theatre tucked into a courtyard behind Kyiv’s main Khreshchatyk Street, six playwrights and six directors were hammering out a fraught question: how to write plays about war, during the war.

One unexpected outcome of their workshops was: through jokes.

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Move over Abba: new ‘riskier’ wave of British musicals to challenge West End’s established order

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Theatreland is taking a gamble on a wave of quirky little shows to challenge the big but tired box office beasts

A fresh kind of musical theatre show, set apart by having started life on the fringe or in a small-scale provincial production, is challenging the established order in London’s West End this season.

A wave of new, quirky productions will be taking their places alongside Phantom of the Opera-style classics and all those big, popular musicals that rework a familiar film title or milk a superstar legacy.

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Actor drives 150 miles to star in Evita after lead and understudy fall ill

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Jessica Daley rushed to the rescue after Curve theatre in Leicester put out a call for someone who knew the role

An actor travelled more than 150 miles to ensure the show went on after both the lead and understudy became ill and could not perform in a musical.

Jessica Daley travelled from her home in Middlesbrough to the Curve theatre in Leicester to sing the starring role of Eva Perón in a 7.30pm performance of Evita on Saturday.

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‘A national emergency’: UK theatres fear closure after more local funding cuts

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Windsor and Maidenhead scraps cultural budget in wake of similar moves in Suffolk, Bristol, Nottingham and Birmingham

The chill blast of damaging cuts to provincial arts venues has returned to Berkshire this weekend as the cash-strapped local authority becomes the latest to scrap its cultural budget.

Local MP and former prime minister Theresa May was among those to salute a reprieve back in February. But theatre lovers in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead now fear their venues are in jeopardy again, since no cultural funds appear in the next budget.

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‘Queen of Drury Lane’ Sarah Siddons celebrated in new play

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April De Angelis comedy, to be premiered in Hampstead, explores life of actor at a time when married women were ‘legally dead’

She was known as the Queen of Drury Lane and the first truly respected female actor in theatre, achieving an astonishing level of celebrity at the end of the 18th century.

But despite her notoriety there are no contemporary biographies about Sarah Siddons, who was labelled by her contemporaries as “tragedy personified”.

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Tributes paid to ‘wonderful’ drama teacher Anna Scher, who has died at 78

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Kathy Burke and Daniel Kaluuya among alumni of her London school, credited with making stars of often working-class students

Tributes have been paid to Anna Scher, an influential drama teacher who taught actors including Kathy Burke, Daniel Kaluuya and Adam Deacon, after the announcement of her death on Sunday, aged 78.

Scher, who had taught children in north London to act for more than 50 years, has been credited with creating numerous stars, and was known for championing people from a working-class background. The Anna Scher Theatre (AST), which started as a drama club in January 1968, has a long list of well-known alumni, including Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson, Martin Kemp, Natalie Cassidy, Patsy Palmer, Sid Owen, Jake Wood, Reggie Yates and Brooke Kinsella.

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Candace Bushnell set to bring her one-woman show to West End for first time

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The US author of Sex and the City will appear on stage in London in early 2024 before going on a UK-wide tour

Candace Bushnell, the real-life Carrie Bradshaw, is bringing her one-woman show to the West End for the first time.

The bestselling author – whose newspaper column inspired the hit TV drama Sex and the City – will also tour the UK, sharing her philosophy through stories of fashion, literature and sex.

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Boards trodden by Shakespeare found under floor of Norfolk guildhall

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Oak floorboards discovered at St George’s Guildhall, King’s Lynn, believed to be only surviving stage from Shakespeare’s time

Boards trodden by the Bard have been discovered under layers of flooring at England’s oldest medieval guildhall as it undergoes a big refurbishment.

The 600-year-old oak floorboards are believed to be the only surviving stage from William Shakespeare’s time.

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Woody Harrelson returns to London stage in ‘riotous’ Ulster American

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The Hollywood star will appear alongside Andy Serkis and Louisa Harland in David Ireland’s black comedy

Woody Harrelson is to return to the London stage in a new production of David Ireland’s controversial black comedy Ulster American this winter.

Harrelson will star as a hotshot American actor in the satire, with Lord of the Rings’ Andy Serkis playing an English theatre director and Derry Girls’ Louisa Harland taking the role of a playwright from Northern Ireland whose drama about a violent Protestant activist the trio are about to stage.

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Steve Coogan to star in Armando Iannucci’s Dr Strangelove play

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Coogan will follow in Peter Sellers’ footsteps to play multiple roles in stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical war film

Steve Coogan is to star in Armando Iannucci’s stage adaptation of the satirical war film Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

The play, set to open in London next autumn, reunites the pair who worked together more than 30 years ago on the BBC radio comedy On the Hour, in which Coogan played Alan Partridge, and on subsequent Partridge projects.

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London theatregoers escorted from Grease the Musical by police

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Rest of audience applauds after people causing ‘disturbance’ removed from Dominion theatre on Saturday

Theatregoers were escorted from a London performance of Grease the Musical by police on Saturday night, to cheers of approval from the rest of the audience.

Footage posted online shows eight police officers and staff from the Dominion theatre lining the stairway in the balcony as audience members chant “out, out, out!”.

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Georgie Grier plays to sell-out Edinburgh crowd 24 hours after tearful tweet

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Actor and writer posted yesterday after performing her show Sunsets to one audience member

An actor who went viral online after she posted a tearful tweet about performing her one-woman show to an audience of one at the Edinburgh festival fringe has played to a sell out crowd only 24 hours later.

The actor and writer Georgie Grier received messages of support from comedians including Jason Manford and Dara Ó Briain when she posted on Twitter on Thursday afternoon: “There was one person in my audience today when I performed my one-woman play, ‘Sunsets’ at #edfringe. It’s fine, isn’t it? It’s fine …?”

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Writer of Grenfell play says people must be jailed for what happened

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Gillian Slovo’s play at National Theatre uses words of survivors of 2017 fire at west London tower block

People must be jailed for what happened at Grenfell Tower, the award-winning author Gillian Slovo has said, as her play about the disaster prepares to open at the National Theatre in London.

Slovo, who gained international recognition with her novel Red Dust, set in South Africa’s post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commission, has used dialogue gleaned verbatim from interviews with 10 of the survivors for the play, which has left actors in tears after preview performances. In an interview with the Guardian she said: “Without jail time, how’s it going to stop anybody else doing this in the future?”

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Kylie Minogue to appear digitally in new Stock Aitken Waterman musical

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The I Should Be So Lucky singer will play a ‘specially created character’ in the touring show which will feature a string of pop hits by the songwriting trio

Kylie Minogue is to step back in time for a new musical featuring the songs of Stock Aitken Waterman that shot her to chart success in the late 1980s. The Australian singer, currently enjoying a summer hit with Padam Padam, will “digitally appear” throughout the tour of the show, playing what is described as “a specially created character unique to the musical”.

I Should Be So Lucky: The Stock Aitken Waterman musical is written and directed by Debbie Isitt whose series of Nativity! films also inspired a stage musical. The show uses more than 25 numbers created by the songwriting and production trio Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, including the title song from 1987 which brought Minogue her first UK No 1 hit.

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Tony awards 2023: Leopoldstadt and Kimberly Akimbo win big in historic night for non-binary actors

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Jodie Comer and Tom Stoppard led a big night for Brits, while J Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell triumphed in a ceremony affected by the writers’ strike

Leopoldstadt and Kimberly Akimbo won big at this year’s history-making Tony awards, with the writers strike affecting the format and content of the ceremony.

Tom Stoppard’s sprawling family drama Leopoldstadt was named best play, winning against Cost of Living and Fat Ham. Producer Sonia Friedman called it Stoppard’s “most personal masterwork”, and Stoppard said that throughout his career he has noticed “the theatre writer getting decreasingly devalued in the food chain”.

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Tony awards 2023: full list of winners

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This year’s big winners including Jodie Comer, Suzan Lori-Parks and J Harrison Ghee

Best musical
& Juliet
Kimberly Akimbo – WINNER!
New York, New York
Shucked
Some Like It Hot

Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topdog/Underdog
Corey Hawkins, Topdog/Underdog
Sean Hayes, Good Night, Oscar – WINNER!
Stephen McKinley Henderson, Between Riverside and Crazy
Wendell Pierce, Death of a Salesman

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Jodie Comer stops stage performance because of New York air: ‘I can’t breathe’

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Actor was helped off stage from her one-woman show Prima Facie after city’s poor air quality prompted breathing issues

Jodie Comer stopped her one-woman show Prima Facie on Broadway because of breathing difficulties owing to New York’s air crisis.

According to eyewitnesses, the award-winning star of Killing Eve, tipped to win a Tony award this weekend, was 10 minutes late for the matinee performance. After three minutes of the show, she announced that she couldn’t proceed.

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Anthony LaPaglia ‘scared and excited’ to make Australian stage debut in Death of a Salesman

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Golden Globe and Tony-winning actor will star as Willy Loman in a Melbourne production directed by Neil Armfield

It has been more than a decade since the Golden Globe-winning Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia appeared on stage – and almost quarter of a century since he triumphed on Broadway, winning a Tony award as Eddie Carbone in A View From the Bridge.

Next month the Los Angeles-based Without a Trace actor will return to Australia to begin rehearsals on another Arthur Miller classic: the 20th-century masterpiece Death of a Salesman, directed by Neil Armfield.

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