The actor will head up an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People once the hit HBO drama has ended
Jeremy Strong is going from a corporate boardroom on TV to a whistleblower on Broadway.
The actor who plays Kendall Roy in the HBO television series Succession has signed on to play a man who tries to expose water contamination in a Norwegian spa town in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People.
Continue reading...The musical will close on 4 June, after receiving mixed reviews from US critics and failing to receive a nomination at the Tony awards
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella is to close on Broadway just over 10 weeks after its official opening night. The show, which did not receive any nominations at this year’s Tony awards, has announced that “the ball must come to an end” and that it will bow out at New York’s Imperial theatre on 4 June. Ticket sales have dipped despite a low average price for a big Broadway musical ($54 for last week). It will have played 33 previews and 85 performances.
The musical is a retooled version of Cinderella, which ran for just under a year (including a Covid-related break in performances) and suffered heavy losses at London’s Gillian Lynne theatre. Lloyd Webber was criticised for the manner in which some current and future Cinderella cast members learned of its closure in 2022 via social media and for his suggestion, in a letter read out at its final night, that opening a new musical during the pandemic “might have been a costly mistake”. (He later issued a statement saying his words had been misunderstood and that he was proud of the show.)
Continue reading...The actor will take to the stage as the Scottish king in December, in the last production of the London theatre’s 30th-anniversary season
Hot on the heels of the news that Ralph Fiennes will play Macbeth in a tour of repurposed UK warehouses comes the announcement that David Tennant will also star as the Scottish king at London’s Donmar Warehouse.
It is the Scottish actor’s first Shakespearean stage role since he played Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company, on and off, from 2013 to 2016. In 2022 he was Macbeth in a two-part BBC Radio 4 broadcast. The Donmar production will be directed by Max Webster and will conclude the 30th-anniversary season for the London theatre, which was previously home to a banana-ripening warehouse.
Continue reading...Chart-topping calypso singer who supported US civil rights movement and African initiatives dies of congestive heart failure
Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist who broke down racial barriers, has died aged 96.
As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Continue reading...World mourns ‘unique wit’ of Australian star and inventor of vivid stage personas, who has died aged 89
Like bouquets of appropriately lurid gladioli, colourful tributes to the memory of Barry Humphries piled up this weekend as his many fans adjusted to a dimmer world without Dame Edna Everage.
Mourning Humphries, who was taken ill in Sydney last week with complications after hip surgery, means saying goodbye to his charismatic, hyper-real fictional personas: not only “the Australian housewife and superstar” Dame Edna, with her radiant, rinsed hairdo, trademark sparkling spectacles and bright gladioli, but also to the revolting Australian cultural attaché, Sir Les Patterson, and the irrepressibly dull Sandy Stone. Over decades, each of these stage characters has mischievously shaped the world’s view of Australians, satirising the stereotypical lack of taste that British “pommies” enjoy looking down on.
Continue reading...Ricky Gervais, Rob Brydon and Matt Lucas among those paying homage to the Dame Edna Everage star who has died aged 89
Comedy stars from around the world have paid tribute to the late Barry Humphries, hailing him a “true great”.
Humphries, best known for his character Dame Edna Everage, died in hospital in Sydney on Saturday aged 89.
Continue reading...From fights at the Bodyguard musical to wild drunken antics at comedy clubs and even heckling at the opera, performers and theatre staff say crowds are getting out of hand. What’s going on?
From drunken revellers singing over emotional ballads at jukebox musicals to an opera-goer heckling a child performer, there has been a growing number of news stories since the pandemic about people behaving badly at entertainment venues. Then came the headlines about the police being called to the Bodyguard musical to quell an actual fight.
So what, exactly, is happening to British audiences, which are stereotypically seen as polite and even repressed? Theatre critic Alice Savile tells Nosheen Iqbal about her recent wild nights out at the theatre, and how front-of-house staff are finding it hard to cope. We hear from usher Bethany North on the abuse she’s experienced.
Continue reading...The longest-running production in Germany, restaged for a new generation of theatregoers, is a curious mixture of 80s nostalgia and politics … with great tunes
The four men dressed in widow’s weeds of black bombazine had hardly stepped on to the stage when the first yelps of delight rippled through the audience at Berlin’s Grips theatre, an intimate 360-seat venue in the west of the city. By the time the quartet in drag have locked arms to kick up their heels, the mixed-age crowd is clapping in time to the oompah beat.
The Wilmersdorf Widows song is to Volker Ludwig’s musical Linie 1 (Line One) what All That Jazz is to Chicago, or Time Warp to The Rocky Horror Picture Show: the catchy showstopper that brings the house down.
Continue reading...Melvin’s roles included parts in Torchwood, The Phantom of the Opera and A Taste of Honey
Tributes have been paid to the actor, director and theatre archivist Murray Melvin, who has died aged 90.
Melvin died at St Thomas’ hospital in London on Friday, according to friends.
Continue reading...Production is at centre of collaboration with west London community affected by 2017 disaster
The National Theatre is to stage a verbatim play based on accounts by survivors and those bereaved by the Grenfell Tower fire almost six years ago as the centrepiece of a long-term collaborative project with the west London community.
The play, Grenfell: in the words of survivors, is the work of the novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo, who spent five years gaining the confidence of community members and recording their accounts of the disaster in north Kensington which killed 72 people.
Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors will be at the National Theatre from 13 July until 26 August.
Continue reading...Petit Palais show celebrates breadth of belle epoque theatre star’s creative talents with 400 exhibits
On page 158 of a heavy, leather-bound Paris police register from the 19th century, a handwritten page headed with a photograph details the activities of a young “courtesan” called Sarah Bernhardt.
The Book of Courtesans, as it was known by the then equivalent of the vice squad, was a detailed record of high-class sex workers, often actors and dancers, who were the mistresses of princes, aristocrats and the wealthy.
Continue reading...Theatres such as now-closed Oldham Coliseum vital for northern working-class people, says actor
Christopher Eccleston has said it would be impossible for him to become an actor in today’s world, in an impassioned interview after the closure of Oldham’s Coliseum theatre.
The British actor spoke about how the closure of the historic theatre would affect the acting community and people from working-class backgrounds.
Continue reading...Oscar-winning composer says son, also a successful composer, died on Saturday in hospital surrounded by family
Andrew Lloyd Webber has announced that his eldest son, Nicholas, has died from gastric cancer aged 43.
The Oscar-winning composer wrote on Twitter that his son, who was also a successful composer, died on Saturday at Basingstoke hospital in Hampshire surrounded by his family.
Continue reading...Outrage over naked images of actor published in MailOnline could prompt move to curb cameraphones
Theatre audiences in London’s West End could be made to lock up their phones to prevent illicit images of actors being taken during performances.
The suggestion comes after naked photos of James Norton on stage in A Little Life were published in MailOnline.
Continue reading...Oscar nominated actor says a woman ‘put her hand on my ass’ after asking for photograph outside theatre where he is performing
The Oscar nominated actor Paul Mescal said he confronted a female fan who groped him outside the theatre where he was performing.
He told ES Magazine that the woman “put her hand on my ass” as he posed for a photograph with her outside the Almeida theatre in north London.
Continue reading...Using local creatives and actors, director Katie Mitchell’s A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is a narrative response to the climate crisis and an experiment in sustainability
Katie Mitchell’s new theatre production will arrive at the Barbican in London in April having already toured internationally without anyone involved getting on a plane or even crossing a border. The show, entitled A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, is an experiment in how theatre can be more sustainable. It is staged by a local creative team and features a different performer in each venue it plays.
The idea took shape at Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland, where the British theatre director was due to stage a show. The French choreographer Jérôme Bel had recently announced that he would no longer fly, a decision Mitchell had herself made after working with scientist Stephen Emmott on Ten Billion, staged at the Royal Court in 2012. Mitchell and Bel began discussions with producers at Vidy-Lausanne about sustainable theatre in which, says Mitchell, “the artistic conversations were intersecting with budgeting and systems and structures as well”. The zero-travel rule is just one part of the initiative which is not a set-in-stone model but rather a way to prompt new ways of working on individual productions and within organisations.
Continue reading...Marco Goecke says he acted in heat of the moment after years of ‘annihilatory' criticism’
An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.
Marco Goecke admitted in an interview with the broadcaster NDR that his “means of attack” was “certainly not super” but said he had acted on impulse on seeing the journalist, Wiebke Hüster.
Continue reading...One of Spain’s most prolific auteurs continued to work until the end – his last film, Walls Can Talk, was released last week
Veteran Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of award-winning films such as Peppermint Frappé, ¡Ay Carmela! and Tango, has died aged 91, the day before he was due to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Goyas, Spain’s version of the Oscars.
Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the body that hands out the Goya awards, confirmed his death on social media, saying: “Saura, one of the essential film-makers in the history of Spanish cinema, has died at home today at the age of 91, surrounded by his loved ones. His final film, Walls Can Talk, came out last week and demonstrated his tireless activity and his love for his work until the very last moment.”
Continue reading...Wilson to enact single, seven-minute scene on loop with 100 men to explore gender roles
Ruth Wilson has called a new stage role in which she will perform the same scene repeatedly for 24 hours straight an “extraordinary, once in a lifetime experience”.
The Golden Globe and Olivier award winner will star in the UK premiere of the internationally acclaimed epic The Second Woman at the Young Vic this spring. Playing Virginia, Wilson will enact a single, seven-minute scene on loop, with 100 different men performing opposite her as her lover Marty, one after the other. Most of the men are non-actors who have volunteered for the role.
The Second Woman, a Young Vic & Lift co-production, produced in association with Ruth Wilson, is at the Young Vic, London, 19-20 May.
Continue reading...Giant teddy bear Bordesley is put in charge of Birmingham city council’s £3bn budget in Stan’s Cafe’s fun new production All Our Money
“It came from a place of … what is the worst idea you could possibly have for a theatre show?” says director James Yarker, as he flicks through a heavily annotated 90-page copy of Birmingham city council’s three-year financial plan.
His latest production, All Our Money, is a 50-minute exploration of the complexities of council budgets, told with the help of 6,000 gold blocks and a football mascot.
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