British Theatre Guide podcast

As it prepares to leave its building in the hands of developers for refurbishment, Bolton’s Octagon Theatre takes its audiences on the road, literally, for its seasonal musical Summer Holiday, based on the Cliff Richard film. The performance begins at the new Bolton Interchange bus station where the audience will meet before travelling by bus with the actors to the theatre, where the rest of the production takes place. A little over a week before opening, BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to two of the actor musicians, Barbara Hockaday and Greg Last, and Ben Occhipinti, who is co-directing with Octagon Artistic Director Elizabeth Newman. Summer Holiday will be performed at Bolton Travel Interchange and Octagon Theatre Bolton from Thursday 31 May to Saturday 23 June 2018.

29 Mai 201824min

Filament Theatre's latest production is Rufus Longbottom and the Space Rabbit, which was created after the production team collaborated with more than 600 schoolchildren on ideas for characters for the new show. At the start of the show's UK tour in Derby, BTG's Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to Filament co-founder Osnat Schmool, who co-created the project and wrote the music and lyrics, and performer and sound artist Lula Mebrahtu, who plays the titular Space Rabbit using innovative music technology. Rufus Longbottom and the Space Rabbit opened at Derby Theatre on 21 May 2018, after which it tours to Stratford Circus Arts Centre, Stantonbury Theatre, Greenwich Theatre, Norden Farm, South Street Arts Centre and Pegasus Theatre in Oxford, where it ends on 9 June.

22 Mai 201821min

BTG's Philip Fisher talks to Amanda Mehtala from Theatre in Paris, a venture designed to open up the Parisian theatre scene to English speakers by providing English surtitles for French productions in major Paris theatres.

26 Apr 20188min

The Tiger Lillies is an Olivier Award-winning and Grammy-nominated musical trio with more than thirty years of success around the world as a live band, as recording artists and as part of several theatre productions, including the Olivier Award-winning Shockheaded Peter on the West End. Their latest collaboration is with visual director Mark Holthusen and writer Peder Bjurman on a story set along the Mexican border, Corrido de la Sangre, which will be performed as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival 2018 at HOME Manchester. In this episode, BTG editor David Chadderton speaks to two thirds of the Tiger Lillies, Martin Jacques and Adrian Stout, about the new show and also about the joys and the problems of being uncategorisable outsiders, what it means to be genuinely 'alternative', the way the look and the sound of the band were carefully conceived and have evolved and some other projects currently in development or on the horizon. Corrido de la Sangre featuring The Tiger Lillies will be performed at HOME Manchester from 20 April to 5 May 2018 as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival. They will perform Poe’s Haunted Palace at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall from 28 to 30 August 2018.

18 Apr 20180s

Director Jake Murray, who was co-artistic director for Manchester's Royal Exchange Studio space with current Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom until he left Manchester in 2008, is back in the city with his new Durham-based Elysium Theatre Company. His latest production is of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pullitzer Prize-winning play Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train, which has only been produced twice in the UK before. BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Jake at HOME Manchester a month before the production opened about the play, the aims of the new company, regional theatre in general and in Manchester in particular and about the issue of new plays that opened in London rarely getting new productions in the regions any more—a problem that Elysium is trying to confront with its programming. Jake Murray’s production of Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train for Elysium Theatre Company premières at The Assembly Rooms Theatre in Durham on 14 May 2018 before running at HOME Manchester from 16 to 19 May.

11 Apr 201830min

Legacy is a new play written by Paul Birch for the York Theatre Royal as an intergenerational collaboration: its cast is made up of Youth Theatre members as well as actors aged 65-plus from the local community. Exploring themes of corruption and the uses—and misuses—of individuals' online identities, the play uses a sci-fi thriller lens to examine some extremely timely questions. Mark Smith talks to director Kate Veysey and performers Hannah Brown and Shirley Williams about the development of the play, as well as the different attitudes to technology brought into stark contrast by the intergenerational nature of the cast. "It's not an anti-technology play, but it does start you thinking about how much can be changed of what you've said, and how it can be taken out of context." "It's a very topical issue but for us it's become very personal."

6 Apr 201821min

James Brining has been Artistic Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse since 2012. Prior to that, he spent sixteen years in Scotland as Artistic Director of TAG Theatre and then Dundee Rep. He talks here to Mark Smith about his forthcoming production of Sunshine on Leith, a musical based on the songs of The Proclaimers, which he originated with writer Stephen Greenhorn at Dundee Rep in 2007. In a wide-ranging discussion, James talks about the challenges and pleasures of returning to a play in a new production, about community and "home", about different versions of ensemble, and about the different theatre "ecologies" of Scotland and England. Finally, he talks us through the thinking behind the massive redevelopment project which is set to close the West Yorkshire Playhouse's two main stages from June, and how he hopes the theatre will turn to face Leeds and "open its arms to the city". "All the great companies of the historical past—Molière, Brecht, Shakespeare—they're based on actors. [...] There's something about the durational nature of those relationships—creative and personal—that takes the work into a different sort of place. [...] There's a brutal honesty there that I think can deepen the work." (Photo of James Brining in rehearsals for Sunshine on Leith by Anthony Robling)

25 Mar 201838min

On 20 February 2018, regional theatre director, artistic director and chief executive John Blackmore died at the age of 77. He was chief executive at Bolton's Octagon Theatre for 12 years, but he also put together a plan to save Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse theatres, was Artistic Director of Manchester’s Library Theatre in the 1960s, founded the company that became Northern Stage in Newcastle, was one of the founders of Out of Joint, was director or artistic director of Midlands Arts Centre (now mac) in Birmingham, The Dukes in Lancaster, Warwick Arts Centre and the English Shakespeare Company and chief executive of Leicester Haymarket. In tribute, this episode is an interview by BTG editor David Chadderton with John from 2011 looking back on his impressive and varied career in theatre, followed by some reflections in 2018 from Mark Babych, now Artistic Director at Hull Truck but previously Artistic Director at the Octagon for ten years, on his time working with John.

18 Mar 201853min