Sandy Grierson News

Check out all new production photos  from Antigone at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre which opens on Friday this week.

Regent's Park Open Air Theatre has announced casting and the full creative team for Antigone. Written by Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles, Three Sisters), this contemporary retelling of Sophocles's epic story has been commissioned by the theatre in its 90th anniversary year.

Bristol Old Vic today announces a week-long extension of the world première of Dr Semmelweis, based on an original idea by Mark Rylance, and written by Stephen Brown with Rylance. The production opened on 26 January, and now runs until 19 February 2022. 

Tom Morris directs the previously announced Rylance (Ignaz Semmelweis), who is joined by Jackie Clune (Anna Müller), Sandy Grierson (Jakob Kolletschka), Felix Hayes (Ferdinand von Hebra), Enyi Okoronkwo (Franz Arneth), Clemmie Sveaas (Lisa Elstein), Thalissa Teixeira (Maria Semmelweis), Alan Williams (Johann Klein) and Daniel York Loh (Karl von Rokitanksy) with dancers Roseanna Anderson, Joshua Ben-Tovim, Megan May Cameron, Megumi Eda, Suzy Halstead and Millie Thomas.

Check out this week's list of new and upcoming book, music, and film releases, including a Hadestown lyric book, new music from Telly Leung, Melissa Errico, and more!

The RSC visit the Canterbury venue with As You Like It, The Taming Of The Shrew and Measure For Measure between Wednesday 29 January and Saturday 8 February. It is the first time the RSC has performed three plays in repertoire at the theatre.

The final installment of the Royal Shakespeare Company's season in London sees Artistic Director Gregory Doran's Measure for Measure coming into town. The choice of play is momentous, as it's historically the Bard's only active denunciation of men's unfair treatment of women. Doran sets the piece in a turn-of-the-Century Vienna that's torn between the lasciviousness of its brothels and strict ideals of conservative purity.

After spending most of the year in its hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company's newest As You Like It kicks off their London Season at the Barbican Centre. Directed by Kimberley Sykes, the production is a delicate and inventive voyage into a Forest of Arden that feels truer than Shakespeare's fictional real world. It never forgets that it's a comedy at heart, and Lucy Phelps' precise physicality plays into the genre. She has Rosalind win the audience's fondness wink by wink, pulling them towards her side through chuckles and playful nudges.

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From highly anticipated musicals to mountaineering and Welsh apocalypse, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld's reviews, interviews and features!

Director of Design Stephen Brimson-Lewis has over twenty years of experience designing for the RSC. Stephen takes us through the collaborative process of designing Measure for Measure.

'Measure still for measure': justice is still a tricky concept. Gregory Doran's insightful realisation of Shakespeare's notorious 'problem play' highlights Measure for Measure's enduring, perhaps even increasing, relevance.

Later this year, the three Shakespeare productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) Summer 2019 Stratford season transfer to the Barbican from 26 October 2019. The Company features 27 actors, who each appear across two of the three productions:

For the first time the Royal Shakespeare Company will tour three productions in repertoire to six regional theatres, playing for two weeks in each venue. As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure will visit Salford in September 2019, and then Canterbury, Plymouth, Nottingham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Blackpool in early 2020. Performance dates at the end of the release.

The collaborative, cross-cast company is announced for the Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) productions of As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, playing in a newly reconfigured Royal Shakespeare Theatre next summer. All three productions will then tour in repertoire for the first time to six regional theatres in 2019 and 2020. The actors will each appear in two of the three plays performed as part of the Summer 2019 repertoire. Design for all three productions is by Stephen Brimson Lewis, Director of Design for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Sandy Grierson returns to the London stage in othellomacbeth, taking on the roles of Cassio and Macbeth in one show. No stranger to doubling, Grierson previously played the roles of Faustus and Mephistopheles in the Royal Shakespeare Company's acclaimed production of Doctor Faustus in 2016, the parts decided with the lighting of matches. Taking us through his thoughts on and experience with Shakespeare, Grierson shares Jude Christian's vision of the two plays and just why they chose (and to an extent needed) to 'f*** with them a bit'.

'But men are men...' Gender is taking centre stage in the current climate, telling her story not history. From new writes like SIX and The Old Vic's Sylvia, to the reframing of classics from a female perspective, the Liverpool Everyman's female led Othello and the Globe's Imogen prove the relevance of these texts to modern audiences. Elayce Ismail and Jude Christian's othellomacbeth is a hybrid of these: retelling two of Shakespeare's greatest plays, with the emphasis on the women and new additions. While bold it may be, the result is a mixed bag of 'confused events, new hatch'd to [this] woeful time'.

Casting is today announced for the Lyric Hammersmith and HOME's production of othellomacbeth, which runs 14-29 September at HOME in Manchester and 05 October - 03 November at the Lyric Hammersmith.

London is never short of temptations, whether splashy West End shows, epic dramas or bold fringe offerings. From a new theatrical epic to Shakespeare and musical spoof, here are some of this month's most eye-catching openings. Don't forget to check back for BroadwayWorld reviews, interviews and features!

Paul Bentall, Sandy Grierson, Helena Lymbery, Sophia Di Martino, Siobhan McSweeney, Francesca Mills, Abraham Popoola, Paul G Raymond and Dorian Simpson have been cast in the world premiere of Pity, by Rory Mullarkey. It is directed by Royal Court Associate Director (International) Sam Pritchard and will feature members of Fulham Brass Band.

Gary Naylor sees plenty of relevant stuff and controversial material in a new version of Marlowe's influential classic.