Ben Daniels News

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.

A new virus is infecting gay men across New York City.  As the rising death toll is ignored by government and the medical establishment, fear and confusion turns to rage and division.  Using this anger, writer and activist Ned Weeks sets out to unite the community in their fight for recognition and right to survive. 

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.

Extra tickets go on sale to the public from Monday 19 July. Tickets for The Normal Heart, East is East, Manor and Hex on sale to the public from Friday 30 July. Learn more about all of the upcoming productions here!

The National Theatre has today announced its programming until the start of next year with productions on all three South Bank stages as well as three major UK tours, two productions on Broadway, a return to cinemas, and a new feature film to be broadcast on television this autumn. In the week the theatre reopened for audiences again, six new productions were announced, and five productions halted by the pandemic were confirmed to return to the South Bank.  

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).

The red-eyed, twenty-foot paper mache shark that lives above the bar at Solana Beach's famous Belly Up nightclub has been witness to countless jaw-dropping live shows in this intimate, 600 capacity live music venue—and the shark misses concerts just as much as the rest of us who are now sheltering-in-place.

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.

Olivia Colman (Queen Elizabeth II), Helena Bonham Carter (Princess Margaret), Tobias Menzies (Prince Philip), Josh O'Connor (Prince Charles), Erin Doherty (Princess Anne), Peter Morgan (Writer/Creator) and Suzanne Mackie (Executive Producer) discuss the new season of The Crown.

Netlix has released the main trailer for the third season of The Crown. The third season sees a new guard sweep into Downing Street, as Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) and her family struggle to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing Britain. From cold-war paranoia, through to the jet-set and the space age - the exuberance of the 1960s and the long hangover of the 1970s - Elizabeth and the Royals must adapt to a new, more liberated, but also more turbulent world.