Merle Hensel News

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

“To begin at the beginning”, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas never got to fulfil his true dream for his troubled radio play Under Milk Wood. It took 20 years of laborious work to put the final touches on the personalities of fictional Llareggub. Alcohol poisoning might have taken Thomas’s life before he heard his drinking - and acting - mate Richard Burton’s take on BBC Radio in 1954, a year after his sudden demise.

The National Theatre today announces plans to reopen in June, welcoming audiences back to the South Bank for the first time since closing last December.  

The National Theatre has announced 15 productions of new plays and fresh adaptations by leading writers.

Marlene is the first woman to head the Top Girls employment agency. But she has no plans to stop there. With Maggie in at Number 10 and a spirit of optimism consuming the country, Marlene knows that the future belongs to women like her.

National Theatre has announced its listings for May - October 2019. Check out the full lineup below!

Top Girls comes to the National Theatre! Check out rehearsal photos below!

The National Theatre has announced its upcoming lineup for the first half of 2019.

The British Library isn't the most obvious place to stage a dance installation but in the case of choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh's Contagion, (which has toured to other non-theatre spaces around the country) the mezzanine floor of the main auditorium of the library takes on the ambience of a dedicated and exactly the right performance space.

For the first time the National Theatre will stage Top Girls, Caryl Churchill's wildly innovative play about a country divided by its own ambitions.

The National Theatre has today announced its new season

The plot of AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE seems ripped from today's headlines: think Flint, think Detroit. Of course, Norwegian Henrik Ibsen (an iconoclast in his day, generally regarded as "The Father of Social Realism" in western theater history) penned this prescient piece back in 1882. What the Guthrie is producing is a new adaptation by Brad Birch, first staged in 2016 in Wales. It's undergone further revision for this production. Birch's adaptation is most welcome. The familiar story is lifted up to a whole new level by the striking visuals and swift, intriguing transitions devised by director Lyndsey Turner and her design team.

Debbie Tucker Green's latest work, a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun) has its premiere with an unexpected staging in the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

The Royal Court Theatre announces that Gary Beadle, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Lashana Lynch, Shvorne Marks and Meera Syal have been cast in new play a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun) written and directed by debbie tucker green. It runs in the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from Tuesday 28 February 2017 to Saturday 1 April 2017 with Press Night on Monday 6 March 2017.

Playwright Alistair McDowall has been hailed as one to watch out for in British theatre. His production of Pomona last year at the National Theatre was championed by critics and theatre-goers and so there is much anticipation surrounding his latest play, X currently being staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. The production takes place on a research base on Pluto, where the crew have lost contact with earth and can do nothing but sit tight and wait for someone to rescue them.

Rudi Dharmalingam, Darrell D'Silva, James Harkness, Jessica Raine and Ria Zmitrowicz start rehearsals on Monday 22 February for X which runs from 30 March - 7 May 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. Press night is on Tuesday 5 April, 7pm.

John Heffernan and Anna Maxwell Martin lead the company in Carrie Cracknell and Lucy Guerin's ambitious new staging of Macbeth at Birmingham Repertory Theatre from 26 - 30 January. This powerful interpretation is the first of three Shakespeare plays to be presented at The REP in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of his death.

Abi Morgan's new play The Mistress Contract, adapted from the transcripts of a real-life couple, premiered at the Royal Court on 5 February, 2014. Let's see what the critics had to say:

Full casting is announced for the first two plays in the 'Roaring Girls' season. Led by Royal Shakespeare Company Deputy Artistic Director, Erica Whyman these rarely performed Jacobethan plays reveal some of the great parts written for and about women.

Following a two-week extension, Alan Cumming's acclaimed one-man production of Macbeth concludes its limited Broadway engagement today, July 14, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (243 W. 47th St.). Preview performances began, April 7, ahead of an official opening night on April 21. BroadwayWorld takes you back to the production's beginnings on Broadway below!