Theatrevoice archive, list of recordings 2006

Recordings from January 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 4

313 DEBATE: WHAT HAPPENED TO ANGER IN BRITISH THEATRE? Mike Bradwell (Bush), Anthony Clark (Hampstead) and Jonathan Lloyd (Soho) are asked: where’s all the rage? “I think writers need to lift their sights more and be more ambitious both emotionally and politically.”Recording Date: 11-Jan-2006

314 INTERVIEW: EMMA RICE The artistic director of Kneehigh theatre company talks to Rachel Halliburton about staging the Angela Carter classic, Nights at the Circus, at the Lyric, Hammersmith. “Because it’s such a huge haystack of a book, I’ve been focusing on my own needle at the centre of it.”Recording Date: 15-Jan-2006

315 INTERVIEW: HOWARD BRENTON On the eve of a major revival of Romans in Britain at Sheffield Crucible, Aleks Sierz talks to the playwright about his notorious work. “I came out of the experimental theatre of the 1960s – it was shocking to see actors with clothes on!”Recording Date: 19-Jan-2006

316 SHAKESPEARE: AS YOU LIKE IT Heather Neill interviews director Dominic Cooke about his production of this evergreen classic for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “The play is about performance being truthful – through role-play we reveal something authentic.”Recording Date: 26-Jan-2006

Recordings from February 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 6

317 WEST END REVIEW Gem of the Ocean (Tricycle Theatre), The Late Henry Moss (Almeida), The Andersen Project (Barbican), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Apollo) discussed. Mark Shenton hosts. “Here you have to look to African-American playwrights to get a taste of the black experience.”Recording Date: 03-Feb-2006

318 INTERVIEW: LAURA WADE The winner of the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Playwright Award talks to Aleks Sierz about her Breathing Corpses, Colder than Here and Other Hands. “I hadn’t quite grasped that you could know things that you hadn’t directly experienced.”Recording Date: 16-Feb-2006

319 INTERVIEW: PAM GEMS Now 80, the author of Piaf talks about her career and her latest biodrama, Mrs Pat, about the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, to Dominic Cavendish. “I walk out of plays nowadays. When you’ve been round the block, you can’t be fooled anymore.”Recording Date: 17-Feb-2006

320 INTERVIEW: TREVOR GRIFFITHS The radical playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his past work and three short plays – Thermidor, Apricots and Camel Station – now being staged at the Theatre Museum. “Nearly everything I did in the 1970s was meant to resonate with stuff that was going on at the time.”Recording Date: 21-Feb-2006

321 INTERVIEW: JESSICA BLANK The co-writer of The Exonerated, the verbatim drama about six innocent survivors of death row, talks to Philip Fisher in London. “A lot of wonderful actors are scheduled to come on. Brian Dennehy, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins…”Play: The ExoneratedTheatre: Riverside Studios Recording Date: 25-Feb-2006

322 SHAKESPEARE: HAMLET Stephen Unwin, artistic director of English Touring Theatre, talks to Heather Neill about the play and his current production, starring Ed Stoppard. “Why do we expect Shakespeare to be all things for all people at all times?”Play: HamletTheatre: New Ambassadors Recording Date: 28-Feb-2006

Recordings from March 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 3

323 WEST END REVIEW Blackbird (Albery), Embers (Duke of York’s), Southwark Fair (National) and Resurrection Blues (Old Vic) reviewed by David Benedict, Alastair Macaulay and Heather Neill. Mark Shenton hosts. “Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues is an absolute mess but there’s something appealing about it.”Recording Date: 03-Mar-2006

324 SHAKESPEARE: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA Gregory Doran, Royal Shakespeare Company’s associate director, talks to Heather Neill about his first production for the company’s Complete Works Festival. “Shakespeare does not get Enobarbus to take out his sword and kill himself – his heart breaks.”Recording Date: 10-Mar-2006

325 HAROLD PINTER SPECIAL Actors Niall Buggy and Anna Calder-Marshall join director Claire Lovett to talk about reviving A Kind of Alaska and A Slight Ache at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. Philip Fisher hosts. “He is the supreme writer for the actor… There’s a purity about his work that is absolutely phenomenal.”Recording Date: 24-Mar-2006

Recordings from April 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 4

326 DEBATE: UNFINISHED HISTORIES – WOMEN’S THEATRE (1/2) Sheryl Crown, Gillian Hanna, Jenny Harris and Susie Orbach consider the 1970s explosion and its aftermath. Susan Croft hosts. “The powers that be are more comfortable with ethnic diversity than they might be with gender.”Recording Date: 06-Apr-2006

327 DEBATE: UNFINISHED HISTORIES – WOMEN’S THEATRE (2/2) Sheryl Crown, Gillian Hanna, Jenny Harris and Susie Orbach discuss; plus Q&A. Susan Croft hosts. Excerpt. “We haven’t changed the structures – nothing will really change until you change structures.”Recording Date: 06-Apr-2006

328 WEST END REVIEW Smaller (Lyric), Burn/ Chatroom/ Citizenship (National), and The Cut (Donmar). Michael Billington, Alastair Macaulay and Heather Neill discuss. David Benedict hosts. “Enda Walsh’s Chatroom is remarkable – it proves that chatrooms can increase people’s sense of solitude.”Recording Date: 07-Apr-2006

329 INTERVIEW: SIMON STEPHENS The Olivier Award-winning playwright, whose complex ‘moral chaos of England’ drama, Motortown, is on at the Royal Court, talks to Aleks Sierz. “The starting point for me here was the question: why don’t I want to go on that great big anti-war march?”Recording Date: 28-Apr-2006

Recordings from May 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 6

330 WEST END REVIEW Hay Fever (Haymarket) and The Voysey Inheritance (National) assessed by Kate Bassett, Charles Spencer and Matt Wolf. David Benedict hosts. “Judi Dench’s Judith Bliss is a living paradox, all artifice and pretence and yet absolutely truthful.”Recording Date: 05-May-2006

331 WEST END REVIEW Phaedra (Donmar), The Royal Hunt of the Sun (National) and The Crucible (Gielgud). Kate Bassett, David Benedict, Charles Spencer and Matt Wolf talk. “The Royal Hunt of the Sun set looked like a tequila sunrise cocktail… anthropologically inauthentic.”Recording Date: 05-May-2006

332 INTERVIEW: MIKE BRADWELL The artistic director of the Bush theatre in West London looks back on 10 years at the helm of London’s small but mighty new writing venue with Philip Fisher. He also gives a thumbnail sketch of his 40-year career. “Theatre has to be a nuisance but it also has to be entertaining… I like our plays to have jokes.”Recording Date: 05-May-2006

333 SHAKESPEARE: MEASURE FOR MEASURE Heather Neill talks to Sir Peter Hall about the play, which he is directing for the first time in the UK, at the Theatre Royal, Bath. “It’s very much a director’s obsession play… it’s about something very popular and very worrying: lust.”Recording Date: 08-May-2006

334 INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPHER SHINN The playwright discusses his latest play, Dying City, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs – about America, Iraq and New York now – with Aleks Sierz. “We have the Vietnam syndrome all over again, and that’s what I wanted to dramatise psychologically.”Recording Date: 18-May-2006

335 SHAKESPEARE: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, talks to Heather Neill about the play and his first season. “We do tend to glamorise Shakespeare’s working process… at times he was just an ordinary hack.”Recording Date: 31-May-2006
Recordings from June 2006Total Number of Recordings from this month: 12

336 INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about Market Boy, his raucous tribute to Romford Market and the 1980s, a monster play that lights up the National’s biggest stage. “It’s saying something about the way your whole life becomes commodified.”Recording Date: 09-Jun-2006

337 WEST END REVIEW Market Boy (National), Enemies (Almeida) and Sunday in the Park with George (Menier) assessed by David Benedict, Rachel Halliburton and Sam Marlowe. Dominic Cavendish hosts. “You need a play that’s a show for the Olivier Theatre, and Market Boy absolutely is that.”Recording Date: 09-Jun-2006

338 SHAKESPEARE: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Director Marianne Elliot has set the comedy in 1950s Cuba for the RSC’s Complete Works Festival. She explains all to Heather Neill. “I think all the characters learn about life through love – they become better people because of love.”Recording Date: 13-Jun-2006

339 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: PETER SELLARS (1/2) The American director begins his keynote address, Art as Moral Action, at University Concert Hall, Limerick. “The Greeks knew that if you’re going to try this democracy thing, you’d better have good theatre.”Recording Date: 15-Jun-2006

340 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: PETER SELLARS (2/2) The renowned theatre, opera and film director continues his keynote lecture, Art as Moral Action. “Theatre is the way to build bridges, to engage with people as equals… and that takes work.”Recording Date: 15-Jun-2006

341 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: TOM MURPHY (1/2) The acclaimed Irish playwright begins his address about his life and work. Sound quality: moderate. “Theatre is sacred – I think it’s possible that writers today aren’t looking into themselves enough.”Recording Date: 16-Jun-2006

342 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: TOM MURPHY (2/2) The acclaimed Irish playwright continues his address about his life and work. Sound quality: moderate. “I smile sometimes when people have called me a chronicler of Irish history…”Recording Date: 16-Jun-2006

343 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: ASKING FOR TROUBLE (1/3) The public debate on Censorship and Artistic Freedom, with Neal Foster, Stewart Lee, Peter Sellars and Janet Steel. Conall Morrison chairs. “’Health and safety’ has now become a bureaucrat’s dream and a creative person’s nightmare.”Recording Date: 16-Jun-2006

344 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: ASKING FOR TROUBLE (2/3) Neal Foster, Stewart Lee, Peter Sellars and Janet Steel continue their discussion about censorship now. Conall Morrison chairs. “It’s very important if you’re going to tackle controversial material… you have to be mature.”Recording Date: 16-Jun-2006

345 THEATRE FORUM IRELAND 2006: ASKING FOR TROUBLE (3/3) Neal Foster, Stewart Lee, Peter Sellars and Janet Steel conclude their reflections on censorship now. Conall Morrison chairs. “You put your message a different way depending on whom you’re addressing. That’s a human thing.”Recording Date: 16-Jun-2006

346 INTERVIEW: BOBBY LOPEZ and JEFF MARX The creators of the American cult ‘adult puppet’ show, Avenue Q, talk to Philip Fisher on the eve of its premiere in London’s West End. “We wanted to give the audience a hug… wherever they were in their struggles, it was going to be OK.”Recording Date: 22-Jun-2006

347 WEST END REVIEW Rock ‘n’ Roll (Royal Court), On the Third Day (New Ambassadors), Evita (Adelphi) and Avenue Q (Coward). David Benedict, Mark Shenton, Charles Spencer and Matt Wolf discuss. “As a production, On the Third Day is more interesting than Rock ‘n’ Roll – it is nicely designed and well directed.”Recording Date: 30-Jun-2006
Recordings from July 2006Total Number of Recordings from this month: 4

348 SHAKESPEARE AND LEADERSHIP (1/2) An RSC ‘Broadside Brunch’ discussion chaired by Dominic Cavendish, with politics lecturer Liz Frazer, former Secretary of State for Culture Chris Smith and director Josie Rourke. Opening thoughts. “The last thing you should do if you’re trying to improve the Home Office is tell them they’re terrible.”Recording Date: 02-Jul-2006

349 SHAKESPEARE AND LEADERSHIP (2/2) Politics lecturer Liz Frazer, former Secretary of State for Culture Chris Smith and RSC director Josie Rourke discuss. Dominic Cavendish hosts. Excerpts.“This notion that toughness, strength and instruction is what government is all about is fatal.”Recording Date: 02-Jul-2006

350 BLACK VOICES: QABUKA Post-show chat about Zimbabwe at the Oval House Theatre, with director Ben Evans, actor Patson Mazuwa and human rights activist Peter Tatchell. Excerpt. “Robert Mugabe has murdered more black Africans than Apartheid ever did…”Recording Date: 04-Jul-2006

351 INTERVIEW: DOUG LUCIE The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his contribution to the 2006 NT Shell Connections season, Pass It On, and four decades of hardhitting drama. “I have spend a lot of time pointing out that the emperor has no clothes – it can get quite lonely.”Recording Date: 27-Jul-2006
Recordings from August 2006Total Number of Recordings from this month: 4

352 INTERVIEW: ALAN PLATER The legendary playwright and screenwriter talks to Aleks Sierz about Blonde Bombshells of 1943 (Hampstead Theatre), his current play with songs, and gives a career overview. Recorded at the Theatre Museum. “Peggy Ramsay used to say: We are surrounded by vulgar people – and now the world is run by vulgar people.” Recording Date: 03-Aug-2006

353 EDINBURGH 2006 The Imaginary Body’s Christopher Heimann and Diene Petterle join actor Sean Campion to talk about Food, a hit show about a masterchef at the Traverse. Philip Fisher hosts. “We’ve ended up with a tragedy – the man who builds everything up and then brings it all down.”Recording Date: 10-Aug-2006

354 EDINBURGH FRINGE 2006 Philip Fisher talks to Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, the co-stars and co-writers of In the Continuum (Traverse), about HIV in America and Africa. “For a great number of Africans their alternative medicine resource is the traditional healer.”Recording Date: 11-Aug-2006

355 EDINBURGH FRINGE 2006 REVIEW Strawberries in January (Traverse), Black Watch (Drill Hall), Realism (Royal Lyceum) and more. Lyn Gardner (Guardian), Mark Fisher (Herald) and Philip Fisher chat. “What Black Watch does is firmly put centre stage the experience of white, working-class males.”Recording Date: 17-Aug-2006
Recordings from September 2006Total Number of Recordings from this month: 9

356 THE SINGER AND THE SONG (1/2) A home live art discussion involving Orlando Gough, Christopher Green and Kazuko Hohki. Critic Louise Gray hosts. Excerpts. “There really is a slight sense of panic about the fact that we don’t sing together anymore.”Recording Date: 08-Sep-2006

357 THE SINGER AND THE SONG (2/2) A home live art discussion involving Orlando Gough, Christopher Green and Kazuko Hohki. Critic Louise Gray hosts. Excerpts. “One of the Japanese papers once said that Frank Chickens were a national embarrassment… ”Recording Date: 08-Sep-2006

358 REGIONAL THEATRE: SALISBURY Joanna Read, the artistic director of the Salisbury Playhouse, talks to Dominic Cavendish about running a regional rep and the musical Two Cities. “My intention was always to work in regional theatre, it’s where the best work is done.”Recording Date: 11-Sep-2006

359 BLACK VOICES: MICHAEL BUFFONG Steven Luckie interviews the director about his To Kill a Mockingbird at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. “The way I’ve developed my career is to literally go and knock on doors and keep on knocking.”Recording Date: 12-Sep-2006

360 INTERVIEW: COLIN TEEVAN The playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about his controversial new Iraq play, How Many Miles to Basra?, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. “I don’t think a single one of the last 10 pieces I’ve had on would have been produced in Ireland.”Recording Date: 14-Sep-2006

361 ASIAN VOICES: AMIT SHARMA The Actor, currently starring in Tamasha’s touring production of The Trouble with Asian Men, talks to Dominic Cavendish about the trouble with stereotypes. “To say, as one review does, that Asian men want to blow themselves up is disappointing and offensive.”Recording Date: 20-Sep-2006

362 INTERVIEW: SIMON RUSSELL BEALE The ever-popular British actor chats to Philip Fisher about his early career, appearing as Face in The Alchemist and starring in Spamalot. “I’ve come to regard the National as my second home: it’s the most amazingly creative place.”Recording Date: 25-Sep-2006

363 INTERVIEW: NICHOLAS HYTNER The National’s artistic director talks to Heather Neill about his modern-dress version of Jonson’s The Alchemist, and also has a punchy message for Shakespeare-deniers. “The notion that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays is just as absurd as Holocaust Denial.”Recording Date: 29-Sep-2006

364 WEST END REVIEW The Alchemist (National), Moon for the Misbegotten (Old Vic), Piano/Forte (Royal Court) and Wicked (Apollo). Mark Shenton (Sunday Express), Kate Bassett (Independent on Sunday), Aleks Sierz (Tribune) and Matt Wolf (Bloomberg) discuss. “London theatre this autumn is suddenly ablaze with a series of double-star turns.” Recording Date: 29-Sep-2006

Recordings from October 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 6

365 CULTURAL LEADERSHIP Professor Robert Hewison, a theatre critic who also teaches cultural leadership at City University, talks to Dominic Cavendish about this growing area of skills development. “Leadership is about heart, about vision, and it’s also about taking an organisation to a new place.”Recording Date: 10-Oct-2006

366 REGIONAL THEATRE: BASINGSTOKE John Adams, the artistic director of the Haymarket, Basingstoke, tells Dominic Cavendish about the campaign against the theatre’s imminent closure. “I’m sure there is an antagonism by the Arts Council towards the smaller regional producing theatres.”Recording Date: 11-Oct-2006

367 ASIAN VOICES: JATINDER VERMA (1/2) The artistic director of Tara Arts, marking its 30th anniversary with a revival of Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro, talks to Dominic Cavendish about the production’s cross-cultural rationale. “We often come across the cliche in the theatre: Do the text as written! But what does that actually mean?”Recording Date: 16-Oct-2006

368 ASIAN VOICES: JATINDER VERMA (2/2) The artistic director of Tara Arts considers the failures of multiculturalism, Enoch Powell, the difficulties of faith schools, and contemplates the future. Dominic Cavendish quizzes. “How do we talk across cultures? The one thing we have to let go of is notions of authenticity and to do that boldly.”Recording Date: 16-Oct-2006

369 INTERVIEW: KAY ADSHEAD The political playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about her new play, Bones, and argues that theatre is a great place for poetry and dreaming, as well as issues and debates. “It’s a political piece, but it’s also a psychological thriller and a really chilling ghost story.”Recording Date: 20-Oct-2006

370 SOAP BOX DEBATE: THEATRE IS BETTER THAN FILM Critic Michael Billington and director Rupert Goold propose the motion while film producer Nik Powell and ICA chief Ekow Eshun oppose. Rachel Halliburton and Patrick Marmion host at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Excerpt. “’Theatre has an absolutely unique capacity for ecstacy’ vs ‘Cinema is really the only art form of our age’.”Recording Date: 27-Oct-2006

Recordings from November 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 6

371 WEST END REVIEW Musicals galore: Spamalot (Palace Theatre), Cabaret (Lyric), Caroline or Change (National) and Dirty Dancing (Aldwych). Charles Spencer, David Benedict and Matt Wolf discuss the shows. Mark Shenton hosts. “Musicals thrive on repeat visits, as people come again and again, but I’ve seen Spamalot twice and that’s enough.”Recording Date: 03-Nov-2006

372 SEMINAR: Religion, Blasphemy and the Theatre (1/2) First excerpt from the keynote lecture given by Dr Steve Nicholson, Reader in 20th Century and Contemporary Drama at Sheffield University. Discussion held at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. Artistic director Sam Walters hosts and reads extracts. “In the 1930s the Lord Chamberlain sent plays that mentioned the Nazis to the German Embassy. You couldn’t get a play on stage that was critical of Germany…”Recording Date: 04-Nov-2006

373 SEMINAR: Religion, Blasphemy and the Theatre (2/2) Second excerpt from the keynote lecture given by Dr Steve Nicholson, Reader in 20th Century and Contemporary Drama at Sheffield University. Discussion held at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. Sam Walters hosts and reads extracts. “In the mid 1960s an MP was contacted by his local church querying why the Lord Chamberlain didn’t allow the appearance of a deity on stage.”Recording Date: 04-Nov-2006

374 INTERNATIONAL THEATRE South African poet and playwright Kobus Moolman discusses his play Full Circle, staged by the Blue Hug theatre company, at a postshow event held at the Oval House. “I am not writing just for a South African audience – I feel that would be too much of a limitation.”Recording Date: 09-Nov-2006

375 INTERVIEW: MICK GORDON The former artistic director of the Gate, Notting Hill, talks to Dominic Cavendish about his latest ‘theatre essay’, On Religion, written in conjunction with philosopher AC Grayling. “This is a provocative piece and it’s not didactic, but if Anthony Grayling were to be asked his opinion, in his view religion is only a bad thing.”Recording Date: 17-Nov-2006

376 DEBATE: A CRISIS IN NEW WRITING? Round-table featuring Paines Plough director Roxana Silbert, young writers James Graham and Duncan Macmillan, Guardian critic Lyn Gardner, Theatrevoice co-editor Aleks Sierz, and Royal Court young writers programme administrator Claire Birch. Culture Wars critic Andrew Haydon hosts. “You don’t get a Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill or Joe Penhall from nowhere: they come out of a bubbling group.”Recording Date: 24-Nov-2006
Recordings from December 2006

Total Number of Recordings from this month: 6

377 SOAP BOX DEBATE: CRITICS ARE PARASITES AND EUNUCHS Actor Mike McShane and Nick Hackworth, deputy art critic of the Evening Standard, propose the motion; Evening Standard theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh and Sarah Kent, former art critic for Time Out, oppose. Rachel Halliburton hosts. Excerpt. Sound quality: moderate. “The critic offers you modes of unlocking the mystery to enable you to understand and to achieve your orgasm…”Recording Date: 08-Dec-2006

378 INTERVIEW: RYAN CRAIG The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his new Holocaust denial play, The Glass Room, now at the Hampstead Theatre, and discusses whether there is such a thing as ‘a Jewish play’. “As regards the paradox of free speech, my point is this: confront the Holocaust denier, but do not gag them.”Recording Date: 11-Dec-2006

379 REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2006 Critics Jane Edwardes, Mark Shenton and Charles Spencer remember the highs and lows of a very remarkable year. David Benedict hosts. “What a year it’s been – with, at one point, no fewer than 25 musicals in 38 West End theatres.”Recording Date: 15-Dec-2006

380 SHAKESPEARE: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM The director Tim Supple, responsible for a sensational ‘Indian’ version of the play for the RSC, which visited the Roundhouse, London, talks to Heather Neill about the production. “The parental relationship to marriage is everywhere in India. A third of our cast have had traumatic relationships with their parents over marriage.”Recording Date: 18-Dec-2006

381 INTERVIEW: SEAN HOLMES The director talks to Heather Neill about staging Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle as the National Theatre’s 2007 touring show, in a new version by Frank McGuinness, produced in collaboration with Filter theatre company. “If you release everyone’s imagination in the room, it leads to argument but also to a stronger, more vivid language.”Recording Date: 20-Dec-2006

382 NEW YORK SPECIAL The British actor Julian Ovenden, who joined Nathan Lane in a revival of Simon Gray’s Butley at the Booth Theater New York, talks to Philip Fisher about the trials and tribulations of the world’s toughest profession. “To be asked to transform yourself is very rare, because if you want, say, a Scotsman who’s got ginger hair you can find them.”Recording Date: 28-Dec-2006