Spieling The Beans

My guest today is Simon Evans, director and co-adaptor of Cyrano de Bergerac for the Royal Shakespeare Company, starring Adrian Lester and Susannah Fielding, currently playing its West End transfer at the Noël Coward Theatre. He became a very familiar face during the pandemic with the BBC TV series Staged, which he wrote, directed and co-starred in, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant, all playing exaggerated versions of themselves.

A prolific theatre director, his productions also include The Dazzle (starring Andrew Scott), Bug (James Norton), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Lenny Henry), Killer Joe (Orlando Bloom) and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Toby Stephens and Claire Skinner), and Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright, written by and starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, at the Wyndham's Theatre and the Hammersmith Apollo.

Our interview was recorded at Fiction Studios on the 7th anniversary of Spieling The Beans, 21st August 2026. Produced by Dom Stephens & Emma Judge.

My guest for this episode of Spieling The Beans is Dame Judi Dench. You know who she is.

Recorded 9th April 2026.

My guest this episode is the globally-renowned, multi-award-winning playwright, poet, and performer, Inua Ellams MBE FRSL, whose work has been produced by the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC / Disney+'s Doctor Who, to name just three. Research Producer: Eileen Gbagbo

Tomorrow, the Steve Coogan and Éanna Hardwicke starring SAIPAN opens in UK cinemas. In October, at the London Film Festival, I got to talk to its directors, Glenn Leyburn & Lisa Barros D’Sa. This is that.

Producer: Farah Sadek.

My guest this episode is Daniel Bailey: award-winning director, writer, dramaturg, former Associate Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre, Chair of Judges for the Alfred Fagon playwriting awards, and all-round theatre-making phenomenon. Recorded at ID Studios, Hackney, December 2025. Research Producer: Eileen Gbagbo.

For the finale of season seven, my guest is the Booker Prize winning author Sir Salman Rushdie. Recorded at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2024.

In the longest interview we've ever done on Spieling The Beans, my guest is the sixth Artistic Director of the National Theatre (2015-2025), Sir Rufus Norris.

Dom speaks to the globally revered comedian Gary Gulman (The Great Depresh, Born on Third Base), on constructing masterful stand-up, working with directors, and effability of the word 'ineffable'.

Dom talks to Simon McBurney OBE, the co-founder and artistic director of the monumentally consequential theatre company Complicité, and an actor you’ll recognise from his roles in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Duchess, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and Rev, to name just a few. His latest show is FIGURES IN EXTINCTION, a co-creation with the Olivier Award winner Crystal Pite; a collaboration between Complicité and Nederlands Dans Theater. The conversation ranges from what it's like to direct Al Pacino in a play, to being directed by Robert Eggers and Christopher McQuarrie, to humanity’s relationship with mortality and how to convey that through physical theatre. With special thanks to Sadler's Wells, Will Ferreira Dyke, and Farah Sadek.

My guest today is Rupert Goold - the double-Olivier-winning, Tony-nominated director behind such shows as Dear England, Enron, Ink, King Charles III, Tammy Faye, Patriots, and Cold War. His screen career includes directing Ben Whishaw in the BBC adaptation of Richard II, James Franco and Jonah Hill in the movie True Story, and perhaps most notably directing Renée Zellweger’s Oscar winning performance as Judy Garland in 2019’s Judy. This summer, we met in the boardroom of the Almeida (of which he's Artistic Director), to talk about directing film vs theatre, when to give an actor a note, his early inspirations, what he looks for in emerging talent, how to cast Hamlet, and so much more.