British Theatre Guide podcast

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland has announced a repertory season for 2023 featuring a 19-strong ensemble of actors performing in 8 different productions, starting with the musical Gypsy.

While the show was still in rehearsal, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the two lead actors: Blythe Jandoo who plays Louise, and Shona White, who plays Louise’s formidable mother, Rose.

Gypsy runs at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 19 May to 30 September 2023, while Elizabeth Newman’s adaptation of The Secret Garden will run from 7 July to 19 August and The Maggie Wall by Martin McCormick from 9 to 28 June.

Other productions in the season include Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Emma Rice’s adaptation of Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, new plays from Peter Arnott and Isla Cowan—Group Portrait In A Summer Landscape and To The Bone—and Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Lipstick, Ketchup and Blood by Lesley Hart.

Cornwall’s popular and highly acclaimed theatre company Kneehigh shut down in 2021, the year after its 40th anniversary.

When the company closed, the Kneehigh Cookbook, an online educational resource, also closed, but it has become the basis for an ongoing archive of all of the company’s work,This is Kneehigh, hosted by Falmouth University and supported by digital arts platform The Space.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Kneehigh founder Mike Shepherd and lead archivist for the project Sarah Jane from Falmouth University about the archive, the process of archiving live performance, the closure of the company and Mike’s ongoing creative work at The Barns, the former home of Kneehigh in Cornwall which he continues to run as a creative arts facility.

Contact details can be found on the This is Kneehigh web site—Sarah welcomes any feedback on the site.

David Wood OBE, described by the late great Times theatre critic Irving Wardle as “the national children’s dramatist”, has written more than 70 plays, including adaptations of books by Judith Kerr, Michelle Magorian, Philippa Pearce and Roald Dahl, as well as original plays of his own.

From 1959 until 2005, David kept up regular correspondence with Frank Whitbourn, whom he credits as his mentor, which is currently being edited into a book called Frank Exchanges.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David when he was still working on the manuscript with editor Chris Abbott about the book and how Frank’s observations helped his career, as well as about writing for children, producing children’s theatre with his company Whirligig Theatre, the status of children’s theatre in the industry, cultural clashes in theatre-in-education in the 1980s and much more.

Frank Exchanges is due to be published by The Book Guild on 28 June 2023.

[Image of David Wood and Frank Whitbourn at Whitbourn's home in Winchester, 2001, credit: Mary Wright]

Factory International announced the 2023 edition of the biannual Manchester International Festival at an event at New Century Hall in Manchester on 14 March.

After the announcement, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Manchester International Festival’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive John McGrath, Adam Szabo from Manchester Collective about their co-production with Slung Low of Benjamin Britten’s community opera Noah’s Flood, Scottee about acting as dramaturg for a musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s cult 1977 book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions and MIF’s Creative Director, Low Kee Hong.

Manchester International Festival 2023 runs from 29 June to 16 July at venues all around the city centre and beyond.

(Images: John McGrath, credit Tarnish Vision; Low Kee Hong; Rakhi Singh and Adam Szabo, co-founders of Manchester Collective, photo by Robin Clewley.)

David Greig is a leading Scottish playwright and Artistic Director of Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh.

In 2016, he adapted The Suppliant Women, the only fully extant play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, and is now adapting the other two plays in the trilogy, even though only fragments of the originals still exist, the first of which, The Egyptians, opens at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury, Kent at the end of February 2023.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David about the fascinating process or reconstructing these ancient works, staging them in a way that gives a modern audiences a similar experience to those who watched them 2,500 years ago rather than as museum pieces and his views on Scottish theatre.

The Egyptians will have an initial run at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury from 22 to 25 February 2023.

Macbeth (an undoing) by Zinnie Harris, after Shakespeare, runs at Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, also until 25 February.

Joe O’Byrne has been producing his own work for stage around the North West, often to great acclaim, for some years, but recently, he has been taking more work further afield than ever.

This year, he will again tour his ghost story The Haunting of Blaine Manor and four of his Tales from Paradise Heights, a series of plays that share characters and a location with interlocking stories: The Bench, Diane’s Deli, Strawberry Jack and I’m Frank Morgan: Rewired.

BTG Editor David Chadderton has been following Joe’s work for over a decade, and he spoke to him about his work and his newly increased energy and ambition for taking his work around the UK, and potentially onto TV.

For more information on all of Joe’s work for stage, screen and canvas, see talesfromparadiseheights.com, and also check outhis YouTube channel.

Jonathan Cake is an actor who has worked extensively on stage, film and television in the UK and the US, but his first love has always been theatre, and many of his friends in the business feel the same.

In order to investigate what it is about theatre that keeps drawing them back, he has started a podcast, Stage Door Jonny, where he talks to some of those friends including Sam Mendes, Damian Lewis, David Harewood, Jez Butterworth, Ethan Hawke, and, in the very first episode, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Jonathan about the podcast and the often quite personal revelations of his celebrity guests, as well as about his own career and why he keeps coming back to theatre.

You can find Stage Door Jonny on all the usual podcast platforms.

During the pandemic, Peter Duncan kept the panto magic alive with his online pantomimes Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella. This year, he has created his third streamed pantomime: Pantoland.

BTG’s Panto Editor Simon Sladen spoke to Peter about his foray into film-making and turning a very live genre into one that can work equally well on screen. Simon and Peter also discuss Peter's first experience of pantomime, growing up in a theatrical household and writing, directing and starring in pantomimes across the country—and Blue Peter gets a mention, of course.

For more information, see Panto Online.

(photo credit Gordon Render)

London’s VAULT Festival was founded in 2012 by Andy George and Mat Burtcher in the tunnels under Waterloo Station.

The lockdown due to the COVID pandemic came during the 2020 festival and resulted in the cancellation of the 2021 and 2022 festivals, but the programme has now been announced for a big return in January 2023.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to VAULT’s Director and co-founder Andy George about the principles and criteria for the festival programme, it’s humble beginnings ten years ago, survival over three years of COVID and highlights of the 2023 event, plus he comes up with an interesting metaphor for creating theatre taken from Wallace and Gromit.

VAULT Festival 2023 takes place in various venues around Waterloo from 24 January to 19 March featuring more than 500 theatre, comedy, cabaret and late-night shows.

Since 2005, Manchester-based property company Bruntwood has worked with the Royal Exchange Theatre to present the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.

The 2022 ceremony was held at the Royal Exchange on 14 November.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the three of the winners—International Award winner Rochelle Fong, North West Original New Voice winner Patrick Hughes and Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting winner Nathan Queeley-Dennis—immediately after the ceremony about their work and how they felt about their awards.