Jack Holden News

Olivier-nominated play CRUISE has returned to the West End for a strictly limited run at the Apollo Theatre from 13 August – 4 September.  Check out all new photos here!

Original Theatre and Riverside Studios are delighted to present Originals online on demand, featuring the world première play-readings of Tikkun Olam by Teunkie Van Der Sluij, The Fall by Drew Hewitt, and Miles by Eilidh Nurse – the winners of Original Theatre Company's Originals Playwriting Award. 

CRUISE is an urgent, moving and inspirational play written and performed by Jack Holden (Ten Per Cent, Amazon Prime Video; War Horse, National Theatre), directed by Bronagh Lagan (The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, UK Tour; Little Women, Park Theatre), with original music composed and performed live by John Patrick Elliott (The Little Unsaid).

Original Theatre Company today announces the judging panel for their new playwrighting prize, the Originals Playwriting Award – Mike Bartlett, Sarah Butcher, Angel Coulby, Jack Holden, Nick Marston, Dafydd Rogers, Abdul Shayek and Rachel Tackley.

It's the final day to vote in the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. Voting closes at midnight, so you've still got time to get those last votes in... 

It's the final week of voting for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. Voting closes on Friday, 25 March.

Voting continues for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. See the current standings below, and cast your vote...

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.

Voting continues for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. See the current standings below, and cast your vote...

Voting continues for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favourites. See the current standings below, and cast your vote...

Today, the shortlist is announced for the 2021 BroadwayWorld UK Awards, celebrating the best of theatre - from the West End to shows around the country and online. CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

From Jeff Whitty, the creator of Avenue Q, and the Scissor Sister's Jake Shears and John Garden comes ARMISTEAD MAUPIN'S TALES OF THE CITY, THE MUSICAL based on Armistead Maupin's landmark series of novels about San Francisco in the 70s. The presentation is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the premiere musical staging at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater in 2011.

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.

As the likes of classic hit favourites Wicked and The Lion King reopen round the corner, the West End also returns with a more alternative offering, in the form of Jack Holden’s Cruise – the story of a gay man in the 80s embarking on one last hedonistic purge. Diagnosed with HIV, and given only a short window to live, it’s time to party, dance, sweat, f**k and take every drug available. It’s 1988 Soho, and Michael’s supposedly last day on earth.

Tonight marks the official opening of the world premiere of Cruise at the Duchess Theatre in the West End (where it is running through to 13 June, prior to the return of the long-running hit The Play That Goes Wrong). BroadwayWorld's Tom Hayden Millward interviewed the show's writer/performer Jack Holden, who has starred as Albert in War Horse in the West End and whose other London credits include the RSC's Oppenheimer and Almeida Theatre's Ink (seen on Broadway in 2019).

Written and performed by Jack Holden (War Horse, West End; Ink, Almeida Theatre), CRUISE  is an urgent, moving and inspirational new play with live music and spoken word. Bringing to life 1980’s Soho, this one-man show is a celebration of queer culture; a kaleidoscopic musical and spoken word tribute to the veterans of the AIDs crisis.

Based on a true story Jack was told whilst volunteering for Switchboard, the LGBTQ+ Listening Service, this new play pays tribute to a generation decimated by HIV and AIDs.

The fabled date is getting nearer!  For months, May 17 has loomed large in the calendar of London theatreland as the signal for playhouses to reopen their doors after a five-month lockdown - a period of closure that has, of course, been much longer in New York for the simple reason that London theaters did at least flicker partially to life last autumn.

As an actor, Jack Holden has appared onstage in such hit plays as War Horse and Ink and has now written a new solo venture for himself to perform: Cruise, which tells of a young man called Michael who is diagnosed with HIV in 1984 and told he has four years to live at most. Directed by Bronagh Lagan, the play will reopen the Duchess Theatre, preceded by a streamed film version of the material online.

Images taken during the filming of the world premiere of CRUISE  have been released today. Written and performed by Jack Holden (War Horse, West End; Ink, Almeida Theatre), CRUISE  is an urgent, moving and inspirational new play with live music and spoken word.