All stories by Billy Barrett on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Revolution of the heads: how we staged the Battle of the Beanfield by Billy Barrett

In 1985, 1,300 police clashed with 600 hippy travellers near Stonehenge – and closed a chapter of British counterculture. Theatre director Billy Barrett describes how he staged a zero-budg…

SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:04AM
Saturday, May 23, 2015

Sponsored feature: The first step on the ladder at CSSD by Billy Barrett

The eyes of many hopeful performers finishing school or sixth-form college in July will be set on that sought-after drama school BA. But deciding to follow a three year degree course after j…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 12:25PM
Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Feature: Belarus Free Theatre – What is the value of art? by Billy Barrett

What is the value of art? It’s a question that makers, audiences and advocates of the arts are increasingly being asked, and having to ask themselves, in this age of austerity. But it&…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 12:57PM
Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sponsored feature: Spoiling – “It’s about the referendum but it’s not about the referendum” by Billy Barrett

“It’s about the referendum,” says John McCann on his new play, Spoiling, “but it’s not about the referendum.” We’re downing coffees between festival shows in Edinbu…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:14AM
Friday, July 25, 2014

Latitude review: Number 1, The Plaza by Billy Barrett

There’s been a lot of shit around lately. In Christian Cresoli’s La Merda, still touring after a ridiculously successful Edinburgh run two years ago, a woman sits naked on a stoo…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 01:13PM

Latitude review: Hopelessly Devoted by Billy Barrett

Kate Tempest does music now. Not content with shaking our very bones with her epic, intimate spoken word, she’s now released an album, Everybody Down, and gave a stonking set in Latitu…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 01:01PM
Thursday, July 24, 2014

Latitude review: Revolt. She said. Revolt again. by Billy Barrett

“Revolt, as I understand it – psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt – refers to a permanent state of questioning, of transformations, an endless probing of appearances.&…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:54AM

Latitude review: Faraway Forest by Billy Barrett

Latitude’s main theatre spaces hosted some big names last weekend, packing the crowds sardine-style into hot marquees for headline productions, but the Faraway Forest was alive with sm…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:41AM

Latitude review: Margaret Thatcher, Queen of Soho by Billy Barrett

Not since Tory socialite Henry Conway’s 2010 election party, for which he dressed as Margaret Thatcher and hired pole dancers (poll tax, geddit?) has the Iron Lady glittered so disturb…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:20AM
Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Latitude preview: Made in China – transferrable skills by Billy Barrett

What separates theatre and live art? Marina Abramović, grandmother of performance art and flogger of Adidas trainers, has a quote doing the rounds at the moment: “theatre is fake,” she …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:26AM
Monday, July 14, 2014

Feature: Latitude preview – Secrets from the Forest by Billy Barrett

The seeds of Forest Fringe were planted at its namesake – Edinburgh’s Forest Cafe – eight years ago now, but the theatre and live art collective has long since pulled up its roots.…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:05AM
Thursday, May 22, 2014

Review: The Valley of Astonishment, Bouffes du Nord – Paris by Billy Barrett

“It could do with a drop of paint,” Kathryn Hunter says as she steps out on the Bouffes du Nord stage in Peter Brook’s The Valley of Astonishment. Referring to the theatre’s …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 09:06AM
Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Incoming Festival preview: Antler Theatre – Coming in from the Cold by Billy Barrett

Standing in line at a Soho cafe, I see three figures emerge – hair streaming down their faces and pools of water dripping in their wake. Clutching my own sodden map, I’d been approac…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:39AM
Thursday, April 10, 2014

Feature: How to Describe a Plague: Dan Phillips on directing Safe Sex and On Tidy Endings by Billy Barrett

The weekend of our first same-sex weddings, Dan Phillips started rehearsals for the UK premier of Safe Sex and On Tidy Endings. Harvey Fierstein’s 1987 plays depict a darker chapter in…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:12AM
Sunday, April 6, 2014

Review: The Little Foxes, Les Gémeaux, Paris by Billy Barrett

The plot of Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play The Little Foxes (given the French title La Vipère here) is pure soap. Foxes or vipers, the Hubbards are not a family you want to be born …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:46PM
Monday, March 10, 2014

Review: Hamlet, Les Gémeaux, Paris by Billy Barrett

David Bobee’s Russian Hamlet is, among other things, a strong argument for age-appropriate casting. While in Britain we like our Princes of Denmark to be ‘accomplished’ act…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:00AM
Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Feature: Call for Action – IdeasTap Inspires by Billy Barrett

“We’ve built a site that manages calls for action,” says Amanda White, Strategic Partnerships Director for IdeasTap. The charity maintains a database of more than 135,000 p…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:36AM
Friday, February 14, 2014

Review: The Raven, Bouffes du Nord by Billy Barrett

Bouffes du Nord’s The Raven is like a bad acid trip in suburbia. A sky-blue flat with a window onto a residential street sits in the theatre’s crumbling proscenium – the first …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:14AM
Monday, February 10, 2014

Review: La Maison de Bernarda Alba, Bouffes du Nord, Paris by Billy Barrett

Sparing us the po-faced shroud that tends to fall over stagings of Lorca’s rural tragedy, Bouffes du Nord’s The House of Bernarda Alba liberates the text with a joyful force and …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:29AM
Saturday, February 8, 2014

Feature: The Worst of Scottee – more than a mirror-wank by Billy Barrett

I first saw Scottee at Bestival. Through a hungover haze of September rain and heckling revellers, the thickly made up “low-rent Liberace” appeared on the outdoor stage and decla…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 10:06AM
Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Feature: Speaking out – Sochi 2014 by Billy Barrett

“This is no time for complacency,” says Tess Berry-Hart, “or appeasement, or political apathy.” We’re in a North London cafe with the writer’s husband an…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 11:15AM
Monday, September 30, 2013

Feature: Weapons of Mass Creation – the Paul Robeson Art is a Weapon Festival by Billy Barrett

Denied permission to leave the US, actor and singer Paul Robeson famously telephoned in a performance to a Canadian trade union convention in 1952, singing well-known hits down the cable inc…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:06AM
Thursday, September 12, 2013

Feature: “Is ‘Fleabag’ a feminist action? Absolutely” by Billy Barrett

“People immediately assume it’s you”, says Phoebe Waller-Bridge when I ask about the challenges of performing her own writing. “We had that conversation early on – …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:19AM
Friday, August 2, 2013

Latitude Festival: Maison Foo’s Pendulum’s Bargain Emporium by Billy Barrett

“I fell asleep during that one and dreamt about a woman giving birth to a pile of clothes,” my friend confesses, feeling a little the worse for wear after our last show of Latitu…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 07:22AM
Thursday, July 25, 2013

Review Latitude Festival: The Frenzy by Billy Barrett

RashDash’s The Frenzy is perfectly pitched for Latitude. Based on The Bacchae, this thirty minute music and dance show was composed by Becky Wilkie, who joins company founders and phys…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 03:57AM

Review Latitude Festival: MirrorballAr by Billy Barrett

AIDs, drugs, fabulous clothes and a bad father-son relationship. Sound familiar? Anthony Bull’s Mirrorball relies on every gay cliché in the well-worn book, as Terry (James Moore) med…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 03:50AM
Saturday, July 6, 2013

A most rare vision: The RSC’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dreaming’ by Billy Barrett

“He doesn’t like to be interrupted,” I’m told before entering the RSC’s Ashcroft Room to sit in on rehearsals for its interactive project, A Midsummer NightR…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:13AM
Friday, May 3, 2013

Review on Tour: Major Tom by Billy Barrett

I have to say that I walked into this piece, a one-woman, one-dog show from Brighton-based artist Victoria Melody, with some trepidation. The intimate venue, slightly interactive format and …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:59AM
Tuesday, April 9, 2013

“All the art I do is about life”: An interview with Declan Donellan by Billy Barrett

Billy Barrett talks to Declan Donellan of Cheek by Jowl as Ubu Roi arrives at the Barbican this week.The post “All the art I do is about life”: An interview with Declan Donellan …

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 05:00AM
Thursday, February 14, 2013

Review: The Zero Hour by Billy Barrett

“Movies are a world of fragments”, reads a quote from Jean-Luc Godard in the programme of imitating the dog’s multimedia piece, The Zero Hour. Those familiar with Godard’s wo…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 04:48AM
Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Review On Tour: We Hope That You’re Happy (Why Would We Lie?) by Billy Barrett

“We hope that you’re happy,” we are told repeatedly in Made in China’s 50-minute touring show that originated at the BAC. As a rule, any piece of theatre that gives out popco…

SOURCE: A Younger Theatre at 08:24AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards