British Theatre Guide podcast

Theatre company Told by an Idiot will be one of the first theatre companies to resume performances to live audiences after the coronavirus lockdown when it takes part in the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival with a revival of its family show Get Happy at outdoor venues.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Told by an Idiot founder Paul Hunter, who is directing the piece, during rehearsals about this and past works by the company, as well as about his comedy influences, some of whom he has worked with, and the company’s way of working when devising its distinctive style of physical comedy show.

Get Happy will be performed at Woolwich Common Basketball Court on 29 August, The Moorings Estate in Thamesmead on 30 August and Eltham on 12 September 2020.

Tara Arts is a London-based multicultural theatre company which has only had one artistic director, Jatinder Verma MBE, since it was formed in 1977 until he stepped down earlier this year.

He will be replaced by Abdul Shayek, a director originally from East London who has spent the last nine years based in Cardiff, initially working with National Theatre Wales and for the last four years running Fio, a theatre company that he formed in 2016.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Abdul just after his appointment had been announced about his plans for Tara, running a multicultural theatre company in Cardiff, theatre as a tool for social change and a few of the many projects he currently has on the go or planned for the near future.

Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak’s musical Godspell, based on the Gospel of St Matthew, is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

To commemorate this, Thomas Hopkins & Michael Quinn for Ginger Quiff Media in association with Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre are to stream an online concert version of the musical in August 2020 with a cast headed by West End stars Ruthie Henshall, Darren Day, Sam Tutty, Ria Jones and Jenna Russell.

Also starring is Jodie Steele, who was touring as Katherine Howard in the hit musical Six until the coronavirus pandemic caused the theatres to close.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Jodie a month before the concert about the show, recording her performance at home, finding out that Stephen Schwartz knew who she was, keeping her musical theatre school going online during the lockdown and her experiences as a West End understudy amongst other things, some of which she said she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to tell us.

The 50th anniversary online concert of Godspell will be available from 27 to 29 August 2020. The performance is a charity event in aid of Hope Mill Theatre, National AIDS Trust and Acting For Others, with tickets at £15 available from the Hope Mill Theatre web site.

No Milk for the Foxes was a one-act play written and performed by Conrad Murray and Paul Cree for Beats & Elements at Camden People’s Theatre in 2015 that looked in on the lives of two young, working-class lads, Marx and Sparx, working as security guards on zero-hours contracts and which used beatboxing and live looping between dialogue scenes.

An archive recording of this production has now been made available on YouTube in order, according to Conrad, to introduce some diversity into the huge amount of online theatre that has suddenly become available by throwing some working class voices into the mix.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Conrad about the play, about beatboxing and hip hop theatre and about his views on the importance of seeing genuine working class characters on stage, even if they don’t fit the preconceptions and sensibilities of the middle classes—even if they read The Sun.

No Milk for the Foxes is now available on the Beats & Elements page on YouTube, where you can also find a link to make donations via Patreon. You can find out more about Conrad on his web site.

New Perspectives Theatre Company has teamed up with writer David Rudkin to produce a ten-part audio series called PlacePrints.

Rudkin has written stories set in different locations around the British Isles and they’ve been recorded over the past four years. The cast includes Michael Pennington, Toby Jones, Juliet Stevenson and Stephen Rea.

In this episode, Steve Orme speaks to Jack McNamara from New Perspectives about how the series came together and how the company’s work has changed since its tours were called off due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Photo of Jack McNamara, credit Emanuele Costantini.

Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield is producing a star-studded multi-cast audio play, The Understudy, an adaptation by Henry Filloux-Bennett of a novel by David Nicholls about an actor who is failing in most aspects of his life.

The cast includes Stephen Fry, Russell Tovey, Emily Atack, Sheila Atim, Layton Williams, Sarah Hadland, Mina Anwar, Jake Ferretti, Sasha Frost, Marie Lawrence, James McNicholas and Lizzie Muncey.

Each actor has recorded his or her own dialogue at home in isolation and it has all been assembled by the sound design team of Alexandra Faye Braithwaite with Annie May Fletcher and Sophie Galpin.

The proceeds from ticket sales will go to theatre charities the Theatre Development Trust, Acting for Others and the Equity Charitable Trust.

In this episode, BTG Editor David Chadderton speaks separately to director Giles Croft, actor Mina Anwar, who plays deputy stage manager Donna, and writer Henry Filloux-Bennett, who is also Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Lawrence Batley Theatre.

Part 1 will be released on Wednesday 20 May and Part 2 on Wednesday 27 May 2020. For more information and to purchase tickets, see the Understudy Play web site.

Slung Low, a theatre company founded in 2000 and currently based in the oldest social club in Britain in Holbeck, Leeds, programmes work in its own performance spaces but also creates large-scale works in non-theatre spaces, often involving large community casts.

During the coronavirus lockdown, Slung Low is releasing a short film, The Good Book, written by James Phillips with a cast of three professional actors alongside more than a hundred people from Leeds in the first piece of work to be produced by the new Leeds People’s Theatre, filmed in January in Holbeck and Leeds.

Slung Low’s Artistic Director Alan Lane spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton about the film, and also about the philosophy of the twenty-year-old company and what they are currently doing during the coronavirus lockdown.

Slung Low and Leeds People’s Theatre’s The Good Book will be available to watch online from 1 May 2020. For more information, see www.slunglow.org.

In common with most of the UK’s theatres and other arts venues, HOME Manchester announced it would close soon after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s statement on 16 March 2020 appealing to the public to stay away from public places to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

A week later, HOME announced a series of commissions, titled Homemakers, from artists asking them to devise new works in their homes for audiences who will also be at home.

The initiative was created by HOME’s Associate Director Jude Christian who spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton online, both in their own homes, a few days after the announcement. Jude explained about the project and the commissioning process and about some wider issues relating to the impact on theatre of the country’s current shutdown.

Homemakers aims to launch its first works online in early April 2020.

For the second successive year, Derby Theatre is producing a major show featuring fully integrated British Sign Language and captioning.

In 2019, the theatre presented Neil Duffield’s adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book; in 2020 Treasure Island will get similar treatment.

For this episode, BTG Midlands editor Steve Orme chats to Derby Theatre’s artistic director Sarah Brigham about the show and what the theatre is doing regarding the coronavirus outbreak.

He also interviews Beth Hinton-Lever who plays Long John Silver and T J Holmes, taking the role of Israel Hands.

Treasure Island runs at Derby Theatre from 28 March until 11 April 2020.

(Photo of Sarah Brigham, Beth Hinton-Lever and T J Holmes, credit Steve Orme)

Amy Leach is a theatre director and Associate Director at Leeds Playhouse, currently working on a new version of Oliver Twist.

This new adaption is by Bryony Lavery, and it’s being staged by Leeds Playhouse in collaboration with the Ramps on the Moon consortium, a partnership between six National Portfolio Organisation theatres and Graeae Theatre. Ramps on the Moon aims to create change within the UK theatre industry in terms of the inclusion and integration of deaf and disabled audiences and theatre-makers.

Benjamin Wilson is one of Ramps on the Moon’s Agents for Change. He’s a cast member in this latest production, and has had a key role in developing creative approaches to audio description for this and a number of other shows he’s worked on at Leeds Playhouse and Sheffield Theatres.

Amy and Ben joined Mark Smith towards the end of their rehearsal period to discuss the Ramps on the Moon initiative, the opportunities opened up by creative approaches to access for D/deaf and visually impaired audiences and performers, and the reasons behind Amy’s choice of Dickens’s work for her latest project.

Oliver Twist plays Leeds Playhouse’s Quarry Theatre from 28 February to 21 March 2020, ahead of a UK tour to Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Sheffield Theatres, New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich and Theatre Royal Stratford East, which are all part of the Ramps on the Moon consortium alongside Graeae, the UK’s leading disabled-led theatre company.

(Oliver Twist rehearsal images of director Amy Leach and of Brooklyn Melvin and Benjamin Wilson, credit Anthony Robling.)