Sophie Stanton News

Ayub Khan Din’s much loved modern classic East is East premiered at the Birmingham Rep back in 1996 before being adapted for the screen a few years later. In celebration of its 25th year the play arrives at the National Theatre for a limited run. Thanks to cleverly considered, often sensitive direction from Iqbal Khan and a strong and cohesive cast, the revival shows little signs of its age and instead feels as fresh, relevant, and engaging as ever.

The cast will include Amy-Leigh Hickman as Meenah;  Irvine Iqbal as Mr Shah/Dr; Tony Jayawardena as George; Adonis Jenieco as Saleem; Rachel Lumberg as Annie; Noah Manzoor as Sajit; Joeravar Sangha as Maneer; Gurjeet Singh as Tariq; Sophie Stanton as Ella and Assad Zaman as Abdul.

The National Theatre today announces nine productions that will play on the South Bank in 2020-2021 alongside previously announced shows. These run alongside our international touring productions, three plays that will tour to multiple venues across the UK and a West End transfer. The NT also announces today that it will increase the quantity of low-price tickets on the South Bank by 25%, with 250,000 available across the year at £20 or less.

As you enter the Barbican's auditorium to watch the RSC's The Taming of the Shrew, you can't miss the sound of fireworks in the background. It's implied a celebration is coming. As part of this RSC season alongside As You Like It and Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew is directed by Justin Audibert. But is it an explosion of theatrical goodness or a wet fizzle? Prithee, read on to find out.

After spending most of the year in its hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company's newest As You Like It kicks off their London Season at the Barbican Centre. Directed by Kimberley Sykes, the production is a delicate and inventive voyage into a Forest of Arden that feels truer than Shakespeare's fictional real world. It never forgets that it's a comedy at heart, and Lucy Phelps' precise physicality plays into the genre. She has Rosalind win the audience's fondness wink by wink, pulling them towards her side through chuckles and playful nudges.

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From highly anticipated musicals to mountaineering and Welsh apocalypse, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld's reviews, interviews and features!

Turning the 1590's patriarchy into a matriarchy, Justin Audibert breaks down why he chose to gender reverse The Taming of the Shrew for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and what effects the decision has had on the actors and audience alike.

A bold and often beautifully staged production that makes women men and men women to throw light on the often brutal text. What emerges is plenty of new insight, but the nagging doubt persists that the play just isn't very good.

For the first time the Royal Shakespeare Company will tour three productions in repertoire to six regional theatres, playing for two weeks in each venue. As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure will visit Salford in September 2019, and then Canterbury, Plymouth, Nottingham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Blackpool in early 2020. Performance dates at the end of the release.

The collaborative, cross-cast company is announced for the Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) productions of As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, playing in a newly reconfigured Royal Shakespeare Theatre next summer. All three productions will then tour in repertoire for the first time to six regional theatres in 2019 and 2020. The actors will each appear in two of the three plays performed as part of the Summer 2019 repertoire. Design for all three productions is by Stephen Brimson Lewis, Director of Design for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Next up at the RSC's Swan Theatre is an oft-forgotten Restoration comedy by Mary Pix; originally titled The Beau Defeated, Jo Davies' production shifts the focus onto the widowed protagonist with the new title The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich. It comes in the same year as two new productions of another Restoration Comedy, The Country Wife, are unveiled at Southwark Playhouse and Chichester's Minerva Theatre - and plays alongside The Duchess of Malfi and Macbeth (in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre).

Read all about it! Following a wildly successful run at the Almeida in the summer, James Graham's first of three new plays for 2017 has transferred to London's West End for a limited run at the Duke of York's Theatre. It will soon have Labour of Love as a close neighbour on St Martin's Lane, and Quiz will make its debut at Chichester later in the year.

Sonia Friedman Productions and the Almeida Theatre today announce full casting for the West End transfer of Ink, written by James Graham (This House), which will play a limited season at the Duke of York's Theatre from 9 September, following a sold-out run at the Almeida Theatre.

London is never short of theatre temptations, whether West End epics or bold fringe offerings. From starry Sondheim to political plays and a new Florian Zeller, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld's reviews...

James Graham's portrait of Seventies politics, This House, recently enjoyed a West End outing, and his latest epic venture into Britain's past may well follow suit. If slightly weighed down by detailed research, it's still a riveting depiction of the birth of The Sun as we know it, and the revolution it signalled in the way we tell our national story.

Fleet Street. 1969. The Sun rises. James Graham's ruthless, red-topped new play Ink leads with the birth of this country's most influential newspaper - when a young and rebellious Rupert Murdoch asked the impossible and launched its first editor's quest, against all odds, to give the people what they want.

London is never short of theatre temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From a classic musical and acclaimed Shakespeare to buzzy history plays, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld's reviews…

St. Ann's Warehouse teams up once again with London's Donmar Warehouse to introduce American audiences to director Phyllida Lloyd's immensely celebrated new all-female staging of The Tempest, tonight, January 13, through February 19, 2017.

St. Ann's Warehouse teams up once again with London's Donmar Warehouse to introduce American audiences to director Phyllida Lloyd's immensely celebrated new all-female staging of The Tempest, January 13 - February 19, 2017.

'Inmates, coming through.' That's our introduction to Phyllida Lloyd's landmark trilogy, as the homogenised prisoners are steered through the audience by prison officers. But this extraordinarily empathetic project, developed with Clean Break, gives those inmates individual voices and means of expression, while the all-female cast that inhabit them gives new voice to three familiar plays.