BWW Staff - Page 98

The production next has its sights set on a run in NYC, hopefully in time to capitalize on the Sex and the City brand's resurrection by way of the HBO Max reboot.

The celebrated tenor Kim Begley made his Royal Opera House debut in 1983 and has since then established himself at the forefront of the repertoire, with credits ranging from Britten to Busoni, Wagner to Brett Dean's opera of Hamlet. In keeping wih Shakespeare, if not this time round with singing, Begley has joined a starry lineup of British opera world names to perform King Lear later this month at the Grange Festival for three performances - and we're talking the play in its full, unadultered majesty and not the opera, with Sit John Tomlinson as Lear, Thomas Allen as Gloucester, and Begley as the Fool, and many other notable names besides. As it happens, Begley cut his teeth as a performer some years back with the Royal Shakespeare Company and explains this return to his classical roots below. 

As the UK’s culture and performance sector gets back on its feet, attention is turning to a thriving, ambitious and often revolutionary sector that at its best is considered fringe, and at its worst overlooked or even frowned upon: outdoor arts.

John McGrath is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Manchester International Festival [MIF], a worldclass celebration of original work that had marked seven festivals prior to the imminent 2021 cultural celebration that starts July 1. Unfolding over 18 days both indoors and outdoors, both in three dimensions and online, MIF21 wasn't about to let a pandemic stand in the way of its pioneering vision, as McGrath himself explains below. 

BroadwayWorld is seeking passionate members of the Atlanta theater community and theatergoers to join our team of theatre enthusiasts. 

Abdul Shayek was announced last year as the new artistic director and joint CEO of Tara Theatre (formerly Tara Arts), the British Asian company founded in 1977 in direct response to a racist attack on a Sikh teenager. Based in southwest London, Tara Theatre is the only building-based South Asian theatre company in the UK and is marking its new directorship with an ambitious and provocative new season as outlined by Shayek below. 

BroadwayWorld is seeking passionate members of the San Antonio theater community and theatergoers to join our team of theatre enthusiasts. 

What the Ladybird Heard was first brought to the West End in 2017, marking a theatrical perch for the hugely popular sequence of picture books created by the writer Julia Donaldson and the illustrator Lydia Monks. The stage adaptation is back on the West End this summer to be followed by a UK tour, with Monks once more on board as design consultant. The bestselling illustrator discusses what it has been like to bring her creations to three-dimensional life.

Tricia Thorns has been a professional actress for some 35 years and has of late added directing to her distinguished CV. Her latest production is a revival of Staircase, a two-hander from 1966 that was made into a 1969 movie starring, of all people, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton. Charles Dyer's play about two gay Brixton hairdressers starts a monthlong run at Southwark Playhouse on June 23, with Paul Rider and John Sackville as its cast. Thorns explains her attraction to the material below and to a play that, she says, has in no way aged with time. 

We at BroadwayWorld want to get to know how you're feeling and your thoughts on theatre for the rest of the year and beyond.

During the time I was running a theatre my boyfriend used to say that the difference between Monday to Saturday and then Sunday was that all the days of the week were the same, except that on Sunday there was somebody on the sofa fast asleep. And so it was that after eighteen years and something like 200 shows I decided enough was enough, it was time to go.

'Namedropping in the Wings' is intended as a lighthearted memoir of how someone in his early twenties with no technical knowledge or training whatsoever became celebrated as a sound expert. It began when a very green 17-year-old got a job in a small London theatre where the artistic director was a young Peter Hall, the genius who went on to found the Royal Shakespeare Company.'

Start spreading the news! Broadway is coming back to NYC this fall and with it, off-Broadway. Which shows will return when?

Nick Bromley has been a West End company manager for the past half-century, but also happens to be a member of the Ghost Club and the Society for Physical Research. So he is perfectly poised to write Stage Ghosts and Haunted Theatres, a guided supernatural tour that offers an all-access pass to the phantoms past and present of London theatreland. Bromley here sets out his vision for the book, which has a foreword by Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Show renown.

A few years ago, I had a meeting with an industry professional about our company represent. At this meeting, I was told about a sizeable donation that had been received from an ethically dubious source. The entire board of directors was assembled as to whether to accept the donation or not. Instantly, the idea for 'Money' was born.

The Portuguese performer Lara Martins played the opera diva Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera on the West End nearly 1700 times - a record-breaking run in that role - before exiting the London production in 2018. She rejoined the show for its Greek premiere last year when the pandemic hit, and is now expanding her range with a debut album, Cancao, that extends her skill-set yet further.

Tom Piper is at the forefront of British stage design, having worked over the years for a sizable swathe of theatres up and down the UK. Piper had a long and fruitful association with the Royal Shakepeare Company as well as a longstanding relationship with Indhu Rubasingham, artistic director of the Kiln, where he is that playhouse's new associate designer, Among his initiatives at the Kiln has been the launch of two nine-month resident assistant designer positions so as to abet people early in their careers.

On Wednesday, we're due to give a one-off, live, online performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring Dan Stevens, Rebecca Hall, Luisa Omielan, and Wendy Morgan and I'm cautiously excited about what we're making here!

Mark Ravenhill has written such era-defining plays as Shopping and F***ing, Mother Clap's Molly House, and The Cane, and has now turned the pandemic to advantage to pen Angela, his most autobiographical play to date. Telling of his late mum, who died in 2019 age 84, the audioplay stars Pam Ferris in the title role alongside Toby Jones as the author's dad and Joseph Millson as Mark himself. The playwright sets this especially personal piece of writing in context below.

The Friday Hangout talk series at the Arab British Centre is back in partnership with MENA Arts UK, the organisation of arts professionals from the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding areas who have been gathering on an informal basis to discuss their work and answer live questions from the public. Guests this year have included the filmmaker Sally El Hosaini and playwright Abi Zakaria; the British Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry is up next and sets his appearance in context below.