Monday, November 18, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames: The second in the Orange Tree's interlocking Middlemarch trilogy concerns the fortunes of the recklessly progressive Dr Lydgate, a rather dash…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:24AMSunday, November 17, 2013
What was so refreshing about Grayson Perry’s series of Reith Lectures, Playing to the Gallery, was that the flamboyant potter and cross-dresser seemed happily unfazed by the gravitas that …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:20AMMonday, October 28, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond: The first in an ambitious three-part adaptation of George Eliot's sprawling saga of upper middle class English life in the 1830s is as ingenious as it is …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:19AMSunday, October 13, 2013
Nick Smurthwaite talks to Simon Callow and finds him as eager as ever to go on tour, this time with Felicity Kendal, reviving a theatrical relationship going back to the 1970s
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:28AMSunday, September 29, 2013
Author Jonathan Croall talks to Nick Smurthwaite about his new biography, the story of his father, unassuming silent film and stage heart-throb John Stuart
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:40AMThursday, September 26, 2013
Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames: For his <a href="http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2013/03/stephen-unwin-to-step-down-from-kingston-rose/">swansong production at the Rose, a…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:06AMMonday, September 23, 2013
No doubt in deference to its older listeners, BBC Radio 4 moved Fry’s English Delight from its usual 9am slot to 11pm last week. The reason? He devoted the entire programme to the F-word, …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:03AMMonday, September 16, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: Why has a play written by a significant American dramatist in 1943 never been produced before? By the end of this turgid, over-written drama of fam…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:57AMSunday, September 1, 2013
Clive Francis tells Nick Smurthwaite why there’s always room for Dickens, his latest role in Thark at the Park Theatre in London, and why, as a cartoonist releasing a collection of his fin…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:53AMSaturday, August 17, 2013
Colman Domingo tells Nick Smurthwaite how it feels to be in the award-winning The Scottsboro Boys, while he prepares to make his London debut in his solo show
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:04PMMonday, August 12, 2013
One of talk radio’s most familiar and intelligent voices, Paul Gambaccini marks 40 years of broadcasting with a four-part retrospective, The Gambaccini Years, in the company of some of the…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:16AMMonday, July 29, 2013
Much as I loathed Russell Brand in the wake of Sachsgate, I have to admit he gave a good account of himself on Desert Island Discs, thanks in no small part to Kirsty Young’s intelligent...
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:39AMMonday, July 15, 2013
Was Churchill a frustrated thesp? The war leader and statesman, that is, not the monosyllabic dog from the TV commercials. We all know the story about the former prime minister muttering his…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:52AMSunday, June 30, 2013
As it celebrates its half-century this year, Nottingham Playhouse artistic director Giles Croft tells Nick Smurthwaite why he’s confident the venue can cope with the latest funding cuts
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:23AMSaturday, June 22, 2013
As Punchdrunk makes waves in New York, Nick Smurthwaite talks to artistic director Felix Barrett about the company's new show
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:06AMMonday, June 17, 2013
Not always given his due credit, Little Richard was rightly celebrated in A Whop Bop a Lua, a Whop Bam Boom as the most flamboyant of all the founding fathers of rock’n’roll. Each had hi…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:44AMFriday, May 31, 2013
Theatre Royal, Windsor: From the title and the publicity, you might expect a jolly musical version of Some Like It Hot, but Richard Hurford's play with music is altogether more ambitiou…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:26AMTuesday, May 28, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: Not, as you might imagine, a reworking of the 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle, David Lewis's new play is in fact an absorbing and often funny take…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:48AMMonday, May 6, 2013
A career spanning 70 years is cause for celebration, especially when it has been notched up by one of our most cherished character actors, Bernard Cribbins. In the two-part Bernard Who?, vet…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMMonday, April 22, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: In language, fashion and class delineation, it is very much a play of its time, yet this sparkling 1931 comedy by Somerset Maugham deals with peren…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:42AMMonday, April 8, 2013
A whole generation of comedians started out at the Windmill Theatre in Soho – Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Dick Emery et al. In many respects it was the Come…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMThursday, April 4, 2013
Rose, Kingston-upon-Thames: A domestic comedy about a family of murdering drug dealers might seem like a tall order but the resourceful Richard Bean is nothing if not ambitious.
Read the ful…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:05AMFriday, March 29, 2013
Returning to her award winning role in a Doll's House, Hattie Morahan talks to Nick Smurthwaite about why she is pleased to revisit such an iconic part and how her confidence is growing with…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 02:11AMMonday, March 18, 2013
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond: Can a woman still be feminine, soft and nurturing in a relationship if she is also the main breadwinner?
Read the full review
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:16AMMonday, March 11, 2013
Chuckle muscles at the ready, I prepared to be simultaneously tickled and enlightened by David Mitchell’s History of British Comedy. Sadly, however, it turned out to be an all-too-familiar…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:00AMThursday, February 14, 2013
Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames: While there is no doubting the shock value of The Vortex, the play that put Noel Coward on the map, when it was first produced in 1924, today it seems mer…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:47AMSunday, February 10, 2013
Nick Smurthwaite catches up with original Oh What a Lovely War cast member Murray Melvin to reflect on the controversial production on it's 50th anniversary revival
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 02:00AMSaturday, January 19, 2013
Nick Smuthwaite talks to the author of the hit West End play The 39 Steps, Patrick Barlow
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 02:00AMWednesday, January 9, 2013
Was there ever a time when Ken Dodd wasn’t waving his tickling stick while firing off more gags than most of us ever learn in a lifetime? Now 85, the indefatigable jester of Knotty Ash...
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 09:57AMFriday, December 21, 2012
Orange Tree, Richmond upon Thames: During his 40-year tenure at the Richmond venue, Sam Walters has made many forays into the world of farce, both as director and actor. The fact that he fee…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:57AMTuesday, December 4, 2012
Even before the iconic Genevieve came out in 1953, Dinah Sheridan was well known as an archetypal English rose, having appeared in more than 20 British films since the mid-1930s. The irony w…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 12:42PM 
