Stage Door Jonny

This week Jonny sees you “the coolest power couple in British theatre” (Jez Butterworth and Laura Donnelly, S3, E8) and raises you one “coolest power couple in British culture”, theatre and film powerhouse Sam Mendes and one of the world’s greatest classical and jazz trumpeters, Alison Balsom. In the first interview they’ve ever given as a couple, they treat SDJ Live at Jermyn Street Theatre to a...

This week’s guest is a man of many talents. James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia university, he is the Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York and he is the author of the mighty 1599, Baillie Gifford Award Winner for the best non-fiction book of the last 25 years. Jim has spent his life making Shakespeare come alive- on the page, in the rehe...

The second half of Jonny’s chat with actress Laura Donnelly and playwright Jez Butterworth, recorded live at Jermyn Street Theatre, delves into the twelve endings Jonny had to learn and perform for Jez’s play Parlour Song at Atlantic Theatre in New York; writing for the person you’re in love with; an actors contract with the audience and Sam Mendes’s opinion on Laura’s; what Jez believes is the fo...

Stage Door Jonny goes live with “the hottest power couple in theatre” (Vogue Magazine). This week’s episode talks to the doyenne of 21st Century playwrights, Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem, The Ferryman, Hills of California) and the leading actress in his last three plays, Laura Donnelly, partners in life as well as art. Act 1 of this live show at London’s Jermyn Street theatre covers: their first mee...

In Act II of Jonny’s chat with Simon they discuss the difference between immersion and identification; how much mystery Simon leaves in his understanding of a play; the director’s 3am thinks; why Simon has no problem with leaving a show; how directing can be like working in HR, his love of first days; Shakespeare’s school of life; what Simon fears most in the theatre- and why A Christmas Carol at...

This week’s guest is Simon Godwin, one of the finest directors on either side of the Atlantic. Simon sits down with Jonny in majestic surroundings (work with me here) and they discuss how Simon (and Hamlet) came to Jonny’s aid when he was trying to buy a house; how Simon assembled the site-specific Macbeth that is currently playing; his three play collaboration with its star, Ralph Fiennes; the di...

In this week’s chat Jonny takes a stroll down memory lane with acclaimed director Dominic Cooke. They both started at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 90’s and Dominic rose to become artistic director of the Royal Court, Olivier-award winner, CBE and now the director of a new blockbuster stage production based on The Biggest TV Show in History. No not Seinfeld. Jonny and Dominic chat abo...

In the second part of Jonny’s chat with director Dominic Cooke they discuss getting the end of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom wrong, some strategies actors use to avoid being vulnerable, Sophie Okonedo and giving her performance up to the gods, experiencing vulnerability as a director and having to be dragged back to see his own shows, his fears for free expression in young writers right now, his long c...

In the second act of Jonny’s chat with Dame Harriet Walter the conversation ranges over: age in the theatre; Harriet’s extraordinary encounter with her childhood hero, Rudolf Nureyev; being rejected by drama schools and what made her carry on; what she does and doesn’t want from a director; being robbed of time and power by other actors onstage; her search for a great comedy - and how the world ex...

This week’s guest is none other than a walking trifecta: a Dame, a national treasure and a star of Succession. Dame Harriet Walter sits down with Jonny and powers through a windy chimney and the sound of a little light bricklaying to talk about the unforgettable visual images of theatre; Rebecca Frecknall’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba; how she stays connected to the life of the play n...

In the first Act of this week’s conversation Jonny talks to the pride of Nempnett Thrubwell, the internationally renowned director of Mamma Mia on stage and screen, Phyllida Lloyd. Phyllida directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady but her visionary work in the theatre long preceded that. Phyllida’s remembers Jonny in a pond, talks about her most recent stage...

Welcome to Act 2 of Jonny’s chat with Phyllida Lloyd (unless you left at the interval, like Phyllida sometimes does…). Phyllida discusses her dreams of a Rusisian theatre commune, her relationship with Harriet Walter, and whether it’s always easy to direct a friend, chasing the artistic utopia of her schooldays with her famous trilogy of all-female Shakespeares, the one woman show that change...

The most cracked out of all theatre junkies is Jonny’s guest this week. At least 10,000 nights in the theatre and counting after over 50 years as the doyen of British theatre critics, Michael Billington was THE arbiter of critical taste for the entirety of Jonny’s life. In this chat Michael opens up about his trouble with mime, air-kissing C list celebrities, how even critics are joining in the ri...

The second part of Jonny’s chat with Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola recorded live at Jermyn Street Theatre introduces the potent memory and presiding spirit of Emily’s extraordinary father, Sir John Mortimer. From his heckling of Sarah Kane’s legendary “Blasted” to his meeting with Tom Cruise, from Alessandro’s Broadway debut opposite Helen Mirren and a catalytic biting incident, from an eld...

Welcome to this season’s first live recording! This episode is brought to you in association with the wonderful people at Jermyn Street Theatre in London and if there’s a more richly enjoyable podcast released this week, we want to hear it. Jonny talks to the blissfully honest, vulnerably human and wildly entertaining power couple that is Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins, Paddington 3, Lovely and Amaz...

Join Jonny in the Old Vic dressing room of one our finest - and most fragrant - actors, Bertie Carvel. Bertie is a double Olivier and Tony Award winning star and as deep a thinker about his life in the theatre as he is a transformational chameleon onstage. He and Jonny share a forensic discussion about larping, the inner body, Bertie’s magic trick, why he now reads his reviews (and why he thinks a...

Welcome to the big kick off of SDJ Season 3! Who better to launch us than one of the most electric young actors there is, Paapa Essiedu. Paapa welcomed Jonny into his bijou dressing room in London’s National Theatre and the conversation ranged over: drinking during a show, Paapa’s risky superstition, how Jamie Lloyd doesn’t want you to know where to stand, what a famous director in the audience ca...

We bring you important intel about a forthcoming live show with Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola at the Jermyn Street Theatre, as well as the next season of Stage Door Jonny, which is coming in January 2024. Tickets for for Jonny, Emily and Alessandro's conversation are available by clicking here . Until Sunday, or indeed January! It's good to be (almost) back ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

Jonny rounds off the summer season in style: the first SDJ live show at Jermyn Street Theatre in the heart of London’s West End - and two masters to talk to. Sir Nick Hytner and Sir Simon Russell Beale tell Jonny about the two decades and nine plays of their collaboration. It’s a fascinating insight into the dynamics of one of the great director-actor partnerships of our times. Who is the lover an...

From personal tragedy to Nathan Lane. In the second part of their chat John and Jonny discuss the formers three collaborations with the doyen of the American stage, crashing waves of laughter, having the confidence to play a comedy god with other real comedy gods, Pinter with Juliette Binoche and Liev Schreiber, getting ghosted backstage by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the “undeniability of theatre”...

John Slattery, everyone's favourite louche silver-fox for a four martini lunch is Jonny’s guest this week. They discuss white rappers, directing onstage, a plan to save the theatre, getting naked on stage whilst crying having auto-fluffed with a hairdryer beforehand, the brutal facts of using personal grief as onstage motivation, audition-fear and how to calm it, fighting to get in the room and Jo...

Legends alert. This week Jonny’s guests are the creme de la creme of Broadway musical composing, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Their music for the current Broadway smash Some Like It Hot is still on heavy rotation in the Stage Door household and they’re the musical force behind Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sister Act, Oscar-nominated songs by the bucketload,...

Want to know which public information advert from his childhood rolls off Mark's tongue like the alphabet? How uncanny his Gielgud impression is? Whether any man wants cock in Tod - and what that even means? The madrigals he sang the very first time he was on stage? What wonderful tradition began with Ralph Richardson firing rockets off the roof of the National Theatre? And why Mark will forever r...

In Act 2 of Jonny’s chat with Oscar-winner Kenneth Lonergan, they discuss the high-school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Kenny met his best friend and frequent collaborator, Matthew Broderick; Kenny’s misgivings about his acting range; the play of his he had the most fun with; the difficulty of getting started as an unconventional writer and why, despite a time of increasingly strid...

An American master this week everyone. And a little bit of a hero of Jonny’s. Kenneth Lonergan is the writer and directors of three movies, all of them masterpieces, and the playwright of groundbreaking plays like Lobby Hero and This Is Our Youth. Hear about birthing his plays, writing as the muscle memory of the brain, why he is fascinated by the state of adolescence, which of his plays started a...