Karen Ascoe News

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced the cast for Love All, the first production in its forthcoming Temptation Season.

There’s a certain gravitas that follows Hamlet, a reverence that seems to accompany the great Dane alone. When you happen to have a centuries-old church at hand for Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, this happenstance only grows. Freddie Fox stars at the Prince and Holy Trinity Church in Guildford acts as “most excellent canopy”. Director Tom Littler’s first take on the most dysfunctional of Danish families comes off as tentative rather than assured, never quite fully coming into itself. 

Alan Strachan and Alistair Whatley’s well-received production of A Splinter Of Ice was streamed online before a national tour. This understated and intriguing look at friendship, loyalty and allegiance now comes to the Jermyn Street Theatre. In 1987, the Cold War is very recent history. Ben Brown’s play imagines the conversation that may have taken place between novelist Graham Greene and his old MI6 boss Kim Philby when Greene visited him in Moscow while attending a peace conference.

Moscow, 1987. As the cold war begins to thaw, an extraordinary reunion takes place between one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, and his old MI6 boss, the notorious Soviet spy, Kim Philby. It's taken thirty years and the beginnings of a new world order.

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its first full season since it reopened with the Footprints Festival earlier this year.  The Encounters Season, which runs from mid-September to the end of the year, features some of the greatest on-stage talent in the UK, in a line-up that includes Sîan Phillips, Michael Pennington, Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer.

Theatre is no stranger to fictional renderings of famous get-togethers. There’s One Night in Miami, where Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown celebrate at Hampton House Hotel in 1964 ­– the night Clay became world heavyweight champion. Malcolm X features again in The Meeting, alongside Martin Luther King. And in Copenhagen, the previous play on at Theatre Royal Bath, Nobel-winning physicists Dane Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg have a clandestine encounter.

Set in Moscow 1987,  the cold war begins to thaw,  after declining his offer for more than 30 years, novelist Graham Greene travels into the heart of the Soviet Union to meet with his old MI6 boss, Kim Philby.  Under the watchful eye of Kim’s Russian wife, Rufa, the two men set about catching up on old times.

I must admit, my first reaction was not wholly positive: some time in January this year, the producer Alastair Whatley rang me to say that he proposed to go ahead with rehearsing my new play, A Splinter of Ice, in March, despite the national lockdown. But since it was now impossible to invite an audience to see it at the Everyman Theatre Cheltenham (where it had been due to open), he’d instead like to film it onstage in the empty auditorium and release it online. I felt like I’d written a knife that would now be judged as a spoon.

Karen Ascoe will be joining the previously announced Oliver Ford Davies (Graham Greene) and Stephen Boxer (Kim Philby) as Rufa Philby. 

New dates have been added to Original Theatre Company's first live stage production since March 2020.  The UK Tour of Ben Brown's new political drama, A SPLINTER OF ICE, will open on 8 June in Malvern and will tour until 31 July, with extra dates in York and Cambridge.

The record-setting Broadway sensation, Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical today confirms casting for its Cardiff run at Motorpoint Arena Cardiff from Wednesday 20th a?' Sunday 24th November 2019 and it's Christmas season at The Lowry opening on Tuesday 10 December 2019 and running through until Sunday 5 January 2020. Comedy legend Griff Rhys Jones will star as Old Max, alongside X-Factor winner Matt Terry as Young Max and Edward Baker-Duly as the world-famous mischief maker, The Grinch.

Power, lust and secrecy - are these the ingredients for everlasting romance? Things are more complicated than they seem in Joe Hampson's playwriting debut Rabbits, a sharp, quick-witted and sexually inquisitive dark comedy that explores the domestic struggles that takes place throughout a couple's life together.

A new black comedy tale of marital strife and bunny murder comes to Park Theatre from Skins, The News Quiz & Newsjack writer Joe Hampson, who makes his stage writing debut with Rabbits. An exploration of contemporary sexual politics, Rabbits follows the fallout as Frank prepares to save his and Susan's marriage by taking their pet rabbit to be murdered - by a psychopath. With caustic jokes and abominable intentions, the production will run 26 July - 19 August 2017.

A new black comedy tale of marital strife and bunny murder comes to Park Theatre from Skins, The News Quiz & Newsjack writer Joe Hampson, who makes his stage writing debut with Rabbits.

In this time of austerity, Alexandra Wood offers up a neat two-hander about the effects of both wealth and poverty on morality, questioning what merits real action.

London is never short of theatre temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From a computer-created musical to tabletop Shakespeare, here are some of this week's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld's reviews, and if you need more ticket-booking inspiration, here is last week's round-up.

Directed by Tom Littler. Designed by Phil Lindley. Sound by Max Pappenheim. Lighting by Rob Mills.

'PETER PAN', which has played to over 150,000 people in Kensington Gardens this summer, with gross takings in excess of £5 million, will now move to The O2 for a six-week run over the Christmas period from Tuesday 1 December to Sunday 10 January 2010.

Peter Pan, who has returned home for the first time in over 100 years with a new production of JM Barrie's 'PETER PAN' being performed in a one million pound purpose-built theatre tent in Kensington Gardens, is so successful that already its run has been extended to the end of the Kensington Gardens season. Due to the triumph that is 'PETER PAN', many of the performances in the current booking period are sold out. The extra performances are from 1 - 13 September and these are now on sale.

'PETER PAN', which has played to over 150,000 people in Kensington Gardens this summer, with gross takings in excess of £5 million, will now move to The O2 for a six-week run over the Christmas period from Tuesday 1 December to Sunday 10 January 2010.