Ben Daniels News

Yesterday, the 31st annual Critics Circle Theatre Awards were given. Among the top winners was Cabaret, which took home three top honors at this year's ceremony.

Nominations have been announced for the Olivier Awards 2022 with Mastercard, British theatre’s most prestigious honours, which take place on Sunday 10 April at the Royal Albert Hall. View the full list.

WhatsOnStage today announced that Jodie Prenger and Tom Read Wilson will host the 22nd Annual WhatsOnStage Awards. They are joined by presenters Chris Bush, Graziano Di Prima, Omari Douglas, James Graham, David Harewood, Frances Mayli McCann, Stephanie McKeon, Drew McOnie, Daniel Monks, Tracy Ann Oberman, Johannes Radebe, and more.

A fire is ignited as the ensemble gather silently in an act of remembrance. It then ascends high above the Olivier stage, where it continues to burn for the duration of the play. It conjures a feeling of warmth, comfort, and community, echoed by the in-the-round configuration of the extensive auditorium that somehow soon feels intimate.

Writer and activist Susan Sontag once famously referred to Larry Kramer as 'one of America's most valuable troublemakers.' His play The Normal Heart is now being revived at the National Theatre.

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.

An ever-mutating virus has led to general uncertainty on and off the West End about the start-up of live performance. That shifting scenario in turn brings to mind some of the titles from this time last year that were sounding especially promising and that, with luck, will reappear at some point to make good on their potential.

It's not clear as of this writing quite when live theatre will return in force, so in the interest of casting as wide a net as possible, what follows are five performances to whet the appetite, culled from offerings both online and, in due course, inside an actual playhouse.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) invites you to join Emmy award-winning actor, director, singer/songwriter Jeff Daniels for an intimate virtual concert experience full of original songs, personal stories from his stage and movie career that only he can tell—and plenty of smiles.

In the spirit of eternal optimism, here is a handful of London show titles promised for the year ahead that have us giddy with anticipation to be in a playhouse once again.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center invites you to join Emmy award-winning actor, director, singer/songwriter Jeff Daniels for an intimate virtual concert experience full of original songs, personal stories from his stage and movie career that only he can tell—and plenty of smiles. Stick around for a 15-30 min audience Q&A following the performance.

This week's Theater Stories features the American Airlines Theatre! Learn about the Tony-winning plays to grace the stage, including 12 Angry Men, The Constant Wife and more; the theatre's upcoming shows 1776 and Birthday Candles, and much more!

For one year only, pantomime comes to the National Theatre. Jude Christian and Cariad Lloyd's hilarious and heartfelt version of Dick Whittington, first staged at Lyric Hammersmith in 2018 and freshly updated for 2020, will open in the socially distanced Olivier theatre on the 11 December.  

BWW has reviewed the BBC's epic adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays, The Hollow Crown, available for streaming on Britbox (free 30 days trial).

Today we rewind to 2008 for the two-month Broadway run of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, starring Laura Linney, Ben Daniels, Kristine Nielsen, Mamie Gummer and Benjamin Walker. Adapted from the 1782 novel of the same title by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the play focuses on the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, rivals who use sex as a weapon of humiliation and degradation, all the while enjoying their cruel games. Their targets are the virtuous (and married) Madame de Tourvel and Cécile de Volanges, a young girl who has fallen in love with her music tutor, the Chevalier Danceny. In order to gain their trust, Merteuil and Valmont pretend to help the secret lovers so they can use them later in their own treacherous schemes.

A violent storm sweeps the coast. Diana Stuckley and her daughter are struggling to keep the roof on their run-down manor house, when neighbours and strangers begin to appear on their doorstep, seeking shelter from the floods.

The National Theatre has announced its upcoming lineup for December 2019 - June 2020.

The National Theatre has announced its productions on-sale for October 2019 a?' March 2020

Music's Biggest Night - the GRAMMYs - is here! Live from STAPLES Center, and hosted by Alicia Keys, the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards will be broadcast on CBS at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT. 

The Purple Rose Theatre Company will conclude its stellar 2017-2018 season with Willow Run, an original play featuring the women behind local World War II efforts who became known as Rosie the Riveters. Tickets are on sale now.