British Theatre Guide podcast

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland has announced a repertory season for 2023 featuring a 19-strong ensemble of actors performing in 8 different productions, starting with the musical Gypsy . While the show was still in rehearsal, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the two lead actors: Blythe Jandoo who plays Louise, and Shona White, who plays Louise's formidable mother, Rose. Gypsy runs at P...

Cornwall's popular and highly acclaimed theatre company Kneehigh shut down in 2021, the year after its 40th anniversary. When the company closed, the Kneehigh Cookbook, an online educational resource, also closed, but it has become the basis for an ongoing archive of all of the company's work,  This is Kneehigh , hosted by Falmouth University and supported by digital arts platform The Space . BTG...

David Wood OBE , described by the late great Times theatre critic Irving Wardle as "the national children's dramatist", has written more than 70 plays, including adaptations of books by Judith Kerr, Michelle Magorian, Philippa Pearce and Roald Dahl, as well as original plays of his own. From 1959 until 2005, David kept up regular correspondence with Frank Whitbourn, whom he credits as his mentor,...

Factory International announced the 2023 edition of the biannual Manchester International Festival at an event at New Century Hall in Manchester on 14 March. After the announcement, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Manchester International Festival's Artistic Director and Chief Executive John McGrath, Adam Szabo from Manchester Collective about their co-production with Slung Low of Benjamin Br...

David Greig is a leading Scottish playwright and Artistic Director of Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. In 2016, he adapted The Suppliant Women , the only fully extant play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, and is now adapting the other two plays in the trilogy, even though only fragments of the originals still exist, the first of which, The Egyptians , opens at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury, Ken...

Joe O'Byrne has been producing his own work for stage around the North West, often to great acclaim, for some years, but recently, he has been taking more work further afield than ever. This year, he will again tour his ghost story The Haunting of Blaine Manor and four of his Tales from Paradise Heights, a series of plays that share characters and a location with interlocking stories: The Bench ,...

Jonathan Cake is an actor who has worked extensively on stage, film and television in the UK and the US, but his first love has always been theatre, and many of his friends in the business feel the same. In order to investigate what it is about theatre that keeps drawing them back, he has started a podcast, Stage Door Jonny , where he talks to some of those friends including Sam Mendes, Damian Lew...

During the pandemic, Peter Duncan kept the panto magic alive with his online pantomimes Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella . This year, he has created his third streamed pantomime: Pantoland .  BTG's Panto Editor Simon Sladen spoke to Peter about his foray into film-making and turning a very live genre into one that can work equally well on screen. Simon and Peter also discuss Peter's first exp...

London's VAULT Festival was founded in 2012 by Andy George and Mat Burtcher in the tunnels under Waterloo Station. The lockdown due to the COVID pandemic came during the 2020 festival and resulted in the cancellation of the 2021 and 2022 festivals, but the programme has now been announced for a big return in January 2023. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to VAULT's Director and co-founder Andy Ge...

Since 2005, Manchester-based property company Bruntwood has worked with the Royal Exchange Theatre to present the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting . The 2022 ceremony was held at the Royal Exchange on 14 November. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the three of the winners—International Award winner Rochelle Fong, North West Original New Voice winner Patrick Hughes and Bruntwood Prize for Playwri...

The new Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, Merseyside is an Elizabethan-style theatre which opened in July 2022. However, its first production of a play by Shakespeare came later with A Midsummer Night's Dream produced by Warrington-based associate company Not Too Tame. The production will transfer to Newcastle for a run in the Epic Space at Northern Stage. David Chadderton spoke to Not Too T...

On 29 September 2022, Manchester International Festival officially announced its plans for the opening of its new permanent performance venue, to be called Factory International , in the St John's area of Manchester city centre. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to John E McGrath, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of both Manchester International Festival and Factory International, about what...

Derby Theatre and Queen's Theatre Hornchurch are to stage a co-production of a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde . Neil Bartlett has brought the story up to date and introduced some female characters. BTG Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke to two of the actors, Nicholas Shaw and Polly Lister, about the show while Derby Theatre's Sarah Brigham who's directing and Mathew Russe...

Nottingham Playhouse is presenting a new play, The Clothes They Stood Up In , which is described as a "bittersweet exploration of marriage, dreams and lives unlived". Adrian Scarborough appears in the production and adapted the script from a story by Alan Bennett. Scarborough spoke to BTG Midlands editor Steve Orme about writing the script, getting the go-ahead from Bennett himself and how his car...

Oldham Coliseum Theatre is opening its 2022 autumn season with a revival of Jim Cartwright's acclaimed portrait of life in a Lancashire town in Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s, Road , which premièred at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1986. Returning to the Coliseum after directing the theatre's first post-COVID production, Love n Stuff , in September 2021 is director Gitika Buttoo , who spok...

Peter Straker's first big break was in the West End première of the musical Hair in 1968, following which he has had a long and impressive career in both musical and non-musical theatre and as a recording artist, notably collaborating with his close friend Freddie Mercury. His show based on the songs of Jacques Brel was a hit a few years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe, but this year, he is trying som...

Mischief Theatre, which rose to fame ten years ago with its smash hit comedy The Play That Goes Wrong , is returning to Edinburgh in 2022 with three shows: Charlie Russell Aims to Please , Mischief Movie Night and Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle . Charlie Russell, who writes and performs the show that names her in the title, has been a co-creator and cast member in most of the company's...

John Lloyd, the TV and radio producer behind many classic comedy programmes from The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Not the Nine O'Clock News and Spitting Image to Have I Got News For You , The News Quiz and QI , will be asking audiences to put his accumulated knowledge on all subjects to the test at this year's Edinburgh Fringe in his show Do You Know Who I Am? . BTG Editor David Chadderton...

London's Greenwich + Docklands International Festival began as a free, outdoor festival in 1996, managed to continue throughout the COVID pandemic and has now announced its 27th programme of events which will run from 26 August to 11 September 2022. GDIF Artistic Director Bradley Hemmings MBE, who also co-directed the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Paralympic Games, spoke to BTG Editor David...

One of the biggest hits of the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a one-man show about comedian Eric Morecambe written by Tim Whitnall and performed by Bob Golding. When comedy impressionist Jon Culshaw ( Dead Ringers , Spitting Image ) had the idea to pay tribute to comedian Les Dawson, he teamed up with Tim and Bob to create Les Dawson: Flying High , which will make its debut at this year's Edin...

David Sefton joined Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury as Artistic Director in 2021, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, after running the Adelaide Festival in Australia. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David about the 2022-23 season featuring companies such as Pussy Riot, 1927 and Improbable, and also about a career that took him from Liverpool to London's South Bank, where he creat...

The Still Room is a new play at Park Theatre in London set in the 'still room' of a hotel, where the waiters wait, in the North West of England in 1981. It was written by Sally Rogers, best known on TV as DC Jo Masters in The Bill and with theatre credits at the National Theatre, Royal Court and Out of Joint, based on her own experiences of working in a hotel near Stockport when she was just 16. B...

On 25 March 2022, Manchester arts venue Contact announced that writer, performer and producer Keisha Thompson would take over from Matt Fenton in June to become its first female, first Mancunian and youngest Artistic Director. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Keisha a week before the announcement. She explained about her 17-year history at the venue, the philosophy behind this unique theatre f...

British theatre company Les Enfants Terribles celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2022 with a new production adapted from Sophie Anderson's novel The House with Chicken Legs by company founder Oliver Lansley directed by Oli with Creative Director James Seager. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Oli and James during rehearsals, a week before opening night, about the production and their style and...

Writer, director and actor Ryan Calais Cameron is artistic director and co-founder of theatre company Nouveau Riche , and his play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy is about to open at London's Royal Court Theatre . BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Ryan a couple of weeks before the Royal Court opening and asked him about the play and its origins, about crea...