Alan Bennett News

Joining the previously announced Kirsty Besterman (Constance Wicksteed), Jasper Britton (Arthur Wicksteed), Matthew Cottle (Canon Throbbing), Ria Jones (Mrs Swabb), Thomas Josling (Dennis Wicksteed), Caroline Langrishe (Lady Rumpers), Catherine Russell (Muriel Wicksteed) and Abdul Salis (Mr Shanks), are Katie Bernstein (Felicity Rumpers), Kelvin O'Mard (Mr Purdue) and Dan Starkey (Sir Percy).

Bunbury Productions has announced the first national tour of “Mono”, a comedy tour de farce from three of Australia’s best loved performers.

Academy Award-nominee Taryn Edgerton will join Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey in Mike Bartlett's play Cock this spring on the West End. 

The antics of the Wicksteed home are a darkly satirical merry-go-round in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus.  Family, friends and the quest for sexual pleasures of the body (“corpus”) are the ruling passions in this farcical comedy of ill-manners. Through an escapade of mistaken identities and carnal encounters, one motto holds fast: “He whose lust lasts, lasts longest.”

Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Everyman Theatre Productions have announced the full tour dates for Ronald Harwood's highly acclaimed drama The Dresser starring the much loved UK entertainer Julian Clary as 'Norman' and Olivier Award winner Matthew Kelly as 'Sir'. 

Directed by Olivier Award-winning Terry Johnson, The Dresser will run at Theatre Royal Bath from 9 September 2021, before dates at Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, Theatre Royal Brighton, Norwich Theatre Royal, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Richmond Theatre, Malvern Festival Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury and newly announced– the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford and the King's Theatre in Edinburgh where the tour finishes in February 2022.

Playwright and novelist Michael Frayn was today awarded  the Critics Circle Award for Services to the Arts, the Critics Circle’s highest honour. Every year since 1988, the Critics’ Circle has voted for a single leading artist to receive an engraved crystal rose bowl in recognition of their distinguished contribution to the arts.

Inspired by memories of working as Donald Wolfit's dresser as a young man, Ronald Harwood's evocative, affectionate and hilarious portrait of backstage life is regarded as one of the most acclaimed dramas of modern theatre.

The line up includes shows from London's West End; Adam Kay's This is Going To Hurt Live, Olivier Award Winning Showstoppers the improvised musical and West End in the Park, a night of musicals with Kerry Ellis, Oliver Tompsett, Nadim Naarman and Siubhan Harrison. Straight out of your TV and onto the stage see Basil Brush, Sooty, Magical Bones from Britain's Got Talent, CBeebies' Katy Ashworth and a one-person homage to Friends!

Harry and Denise find each other in a village hall every Thursday evening and (almost) 'find each other' too.

Opening in the company's new smaller studio space, The Mixing Room, is the world première of Brian & Roger – A Highly Offensive Play inspired by their hit podcast Brian & Roger, written and performed by Harry Peacock and Dan Skinner. Artistic Director of the Menier David Babani directs the production opening in October.

Featuring shows from London's West End, such as Adam Kay's This is Going To Hurt Live, Olivier Award Winning Showstoppers the improvised musical and West End in the Park, a night of musicals with stars from across the best shows in town. Straight out of your TV and onto the stage see Basil Brush, Sooty, Magical Bones from Britain's Got Talent, CBeebies' Katy Ashworth and a one-person homage to Friends!

And they're off! London theatres have been open for several weeks now, and the reviews once again are coming hard and fast as a glance at this very site will confirm. Quick off the mark have been the smaller-sized shows: solo plays like Cruise or Harm or a three-person West End entry like Amy Berryman's Walden (though that title was beset by pre-opening dramas of its own, more of which below). But as the big musicals prepare their own re-emergence on to a scene marked out already by the producer Sonia Friedman's RE:EMERGE season (of which Walden is the first of three to open), excitement is in the air. The question now remains as to who, precisely, the audience is likely to be for these shows, given the difficulty for many in travelling to the UK.

Nottingham Playhouse has announced that Julie Hesmondhalgh and Frances de le Tour will join the actors starring in its digital theatre project Still Life.

Melbourne's most dynamic and exciting new performance venue, the BRUNSWICK BALLROOM is thrilled to announce that due to demand, four new shows have been added to the Melbourne season of Coral Browne: This Effing Lady, currently playing at the Brunswick Ballroom as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

BAFTA Award winning Katherine Parkinson’s (Home, I’m Darling, The IT Crowd) debut play Sitting has been adapted for the screen, airing at 10.30pm on Wednesday 7th April on BBC Four.  Jeremy Herrin directs the hour-long comedy-drama.

Metta Theatre – one of the UK's leading production companies devoted to British musical theatre – is pleased to announce the release of a film of a brand-new musical, CELLS, written, developed and recorded entirely during lockdown by the award-winning writer/director P Burton-Morgan and composer Ben Glasstone.

We're tight close-up on a pair of eyes that become many pairs of eyes as single, spat out verbs tell us the emotions such eyes transmit. Done more slowly, it would capture something of those silent movie screen tests from 100 years ago in which Clara Bow would express fear or Theda Bara allure.

Nottingham Playhouse reveals a Spring Loaded season of twenty three events. New work from Alan Bennett, Emteaz Hussain and other artists will join an array of ambitious new programming this spring.

In 2019, Amanda Muggleton packed her bags for the UK to star in the London premiere season of the outrageously titled play Coral Browne: This F**king Lady!