Curtain Call Podcast

Paul Minx - whose plays include The Long Road South which played at the King’s Head Theatre with Imogen Stubbs and Michael Brandon - has a new play in town. The Dog Walker makes its London premiere at the Jermyn Street Theatre with Victoria Yeates (Call the Midwife, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) and Andrew Dennis (One Man, Two Guvnors). Paul Minx’s story of finding connection in the...

Welcome to the first ever episode of the No Pressure Podcast hosted by Curtain Call's Matt Humphrey. Matt is kicking off the series with a duo whose work, ideas and initiative I have much admired since they made a splash on the scene a couple of years ago. Isabella Macpherson and Gala Gordon are driven, selfless and passionate creatives. They are kicking off 2020 with the 3rd Poetry Gala on Februa...

How many listeners have seen War Horse? Lion King? Avenue Q? The Grinning Man? Any Aardman project ever? What do they all have in common? Puppetry.  Puppetry has been a staple in theatre as long as there actually has been theatre, but the advent of massive theatre shows have taken puppetry to a new level, especially in the case of the first two of the aforementioned shows. After coming across Jimm...

Welcome to the Rock! takes you behind the scenes of one of the b biggest surprise hit musicals to hit Broadway and the West End. In our final episode of the series, you'll meet the lovebirds Nick (played by Robert Hands and Diane played by Helen Hobson in the West End and Sharon Wheatley who plays her on Broadway. Mayors Claude Elliott and Derm Flynn played by Clive Carter in the West End and Joel...

Cormac McCarthy is receiving his premiere in the UK with The Sunset Limited at the Boulevard Theatre’s dramatic debut with Jasper Britton and Gary Beadle, two phenomenal actors with credit lists as long as your arm, and who’ve appeared on stages up and down the country as well as on our screens, too. Gary and Jasper took time out of their rehearsal schedule to chat with me about the play, relying...

We are dedicating the final episodes of the series to bring you closer to the real life characters from Come From Away and some of the people that play them on both sides of the Atlantic. In this episode we’re introducing you to Harry Morrison and Sheriff Oz Fudge, David Shannon and Kevin Tuerff (otherwise known as the Gay Lumberjack) and from both Jenna Boyd and Astrid Van Wieren who play Beulah...

We are dedicating the final three episodes of the series to bring you closer to the real life characters from Come From Away and some of the people that play them on both sides of the Atlantic. In this episode we’re introducing you to Rachael Tucker and Captain Beverley Bass, Mary Doherty and Bonnie Harris, Nathanael Campbell and Tom MoCowan (who ends up as Bob in the musical) and lastly Jonathan...

Ros Blessed has been treading the boards around the country, following in her parent’s footsteps. And she has recently stepped into the shoes of the playwright, but has brought along her parents dad, Brian Blessed as executive producer and mom, Hildegard Neil as fellow cast member. Shedding light on what we often keep hidden from the world, The Delights of Dogs and the Problems of People and Lulla...

Before opening at the Phoenix Theatre in London’s West End, we heard from the company about their pre-West End run in Dublin. And before that, the cast had a launch party at the Canadian Embassy in London’s Trafalgar Square. And in this episode, we are giving you a front row seat at that party with two exclusive recordings from the London cast.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...

We’re taking a little festive break from that series to bring you our traditional Christmas episode where we read you a little story to help ring in the special season of hope, whichever religion (or not) may be. For the past two years, it has been me reading these stories. And I thought to myself “Surely there must be someone out there who can do a better job than me reading this…”, so I turned t...

Welcome to the podcast series, “Welcome to the Rock!” A behind the curtain peek at what it takes to get a show from a seed of an idea all the way to a Broadway hit. In this episode, the creative team and the cast take you through their experience of opening a show in Dublin on their way to The West End. Many of them didn’t know what to expect and weren’t sure exactly how the show would be received...

Welcome to the podcast series, “Welcome to the Rock!”. A behind the curtain peek of the multi-award winning musical Come From Away - and what it takes to get a show from a seed of an idea all the way to a Broadway hit and beyond. In this episode, meet the producers of Come From Away as they take us through what it takes to get a musical from a high school workshop performance to an international s...

Welcome to the podcast series, “Welcome to the Rock!”. A behind the curtain peek of the multi-award winning musical Come From Away - and what it takes to get a show from a seed of an idea all the way to a Broadway hit and beyond. In this episode, meet the real inhabitants of Gander, Newfoundland and the Come From Away’s that you see on stage in the musical, including Captain Beverley Bass, Sheriff...

Welcome to the podcast series, “Welcome to the Rock!” A behind the curtain of the musical hit Come From Away. Listen to the incredible real-life story of the passengers from all over the world that were grounded in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland in the wake of the events of 9/11. In the first episode, the creative team behind Come From Away discuss their personal experiences on the journey...

Grace Blackman is a shining example of how you don’t have to go to drama school to make a living as an actor. She a true grafter, in every sense of the word. When she’s not working on feature film set or a short film set or on stage, she’s working tackling strangers in an escape room or she’s working on her showreel or she’s working on a new monologue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...

Richard Brooker has been involved in theatre for his entire life. From working on the New London Theatre production of Cats, he worked his way up to Sound No. 1 and mixed shows for a dozen years before he started designing. He’s now one of the country’s top sound designers working on shows such as Dreamgirls, The Bodyguard, Funny Girl, Bend it like Beckham, Annie, West Side Story, Sister Act and m...

Michael Longhurst’s production is a hard-hitting brutal play about teen depression, broken relationships, new relationships and stressed loyalties. But there is so, so much more in this play to discover. We had the opportunity to sit down with the principals in the cast just before warm up - Amaka Okafor, John Light, Laurie Kynaston and Amanda Abbington - to discuss the plays themes, the rehearsal...

Sophie Cohen, founder of House of Kittens, an erotic immersive theatre company sat down to chat with me about her new show Amatory Asylum. The audience will find themselves transported into a world of sensual theatre to experience a unique, immersive journey embracing the surreal, the dramatic and the erotic. We chat about House of Kittens, shows they create and how immersive theatre is a perfect...

We’re going off-piste this week. This week, we’re going to give you a three of the bard’s finest works as you have never heard them before. A colleague of mine many years ago in the Reduced Shakespeare Company - Mikey O’Connor - well, we started a little project taking classic literature and turning it into palatable short versions that you would hear around a campfire, including folk songs. You g...

Ken Davenport is a multiple-Tony Award-winning Broadway producer whose work spans around the globe. Ken is also busy giving back as much as he can to the theatre community at large. In that vein, he puts on a conference - The Producer’s Perspective Super Conference - every year where the world’s top theatrical talent gather for a weekend of education, inspiration and connection. We talk to Ken abo...

There’s a new theatre in London. And there’s a London debut to mark its opening. The Boulevard Theatre, right-smack-bang-in-the-middle of Soho, is London’s most technologically advanced theatre with a capacity of up to 165, and featuring a full revolving balcony and auditorium! David Malloy chats all things Ghost Quartet, its London premiere and working with the creative team that drove the succes...

Earlier in the week, we brought you Samantha Pauly, Trent Saunders and Ektor Rivera as they got ready to go on stage. But I thought that just wasn’t going to be enough to really show you backstage before a show. Hopefully you’ll get a feel of what it’s like to be part of a company as I go from room to room and chat with some of the fantastic theatre professionals working on Jamie Lloyd’s productio...

We were back at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre this week - one of our favourite places to do our Curtain Call visits. It was a welcome return for us to see not only a Jamie Lloyd production, but following the sell-out success of Jesus Christ Superstar two years ago, another Andrew Lloyd Webber hit show. Samantha Pauley as Evita Peron, Trent Saunders as Che and Ektor Rivera as Juan Peron discus...

This week, we talk to The Inbetweeners Joe Thomas, Olivier Award nominees Summer Strallen and Alex Gaumond, as well as Bo Poraj and Laura Patch about their new dark comedy "What's in a Name?", in which a dinner party gets wildly out of hand when a father-to-be suggests his son just might given the name of one of history's most vile human beings.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...

Shure have come up with a microphone that is hitting the theatre world by storm. Smaller, lighter, better response and performance along with a body back that is far less conspicuous than those they have released before. I had the pleasure of talking to the Senior Product Manager, Microphones at Shure about the years of development and incredible invention and iteration that has seen their new Axi...