Stage Door Jonny

By Jonathan Cake

Hosted by actor Jonathan Cake, Stage Door Jonny is a podcast about theatre ... and life ... and life in the theatre. Jonathan has appeared in countless plays around the world - and made a fair few cel... more

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FAQs about Stage Door Jonny:

How many episodes does Stage Door Jonny have?

The podcast currently has 91 episodes available.

Stage Door Jonny episodes:

February 19, 2024 Dame Harriet Walter (Act I)
This week’s guest is none other than a walking trifecta: a Dame, a national treasure and a star of Succession. Dame Harriet Walter sits down with Jonny and powers through a windy chimney and the sound of a little light bricklaying to talk about the unforgettable visual images of theatre; Rebecca Frecknall’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba; how she stays connected to the life of the play night after night; how she wishes a play could always have a live conductor; undressing Hitler; what trying to effect change through the theatre means to her now; being an ensemble player, hiding under her desk to avoid the school play, all-women Shakespeare, sympathy for the overdog and what she thinks of Jonny’s pleas to her to play Macbeth.
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42min
February 15, 2024 Phyllida Lloyd (Act I)
In the first Act of this week’s conversation Jonny talks to the pride of Nempnett Thrubwell, the internationally renowned director of Mamma Mia on stage and screen, Phyllida Lloyd. Phyllida directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady but her visionary work in the theatre long preceded that. Phyllida’s remembers Jonny in a pond, talks about her most recent stage production at the National Theatre in 2023- a verbatim play based on the testimony of the survivors of the Grenfell fire-and how theatre can play a part in bringing a public outrage to account. They also discuss how Mamma Mia was a cultural disrupter, Phyllida’s problem with spreadsheets, the power of art in prison and what it takes for an actor to endure through a lifetime.
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41min
February 13, 2024 Phyllida Lloyd (Act II)
Welcome to Act 2 of Jonny’s chat with Phyllida Lloyd (unless you left at the interval, like Phyllida sometimes does…). Phyllida discusses her dreams of a Rusisian theatre commune, her relationship with Harriet Walter, and whether it’s always easy to direct a friend, chasing the artistic utopia of her schooldays with her famous trilogy of all-female Shakespeares, the one woman show that changed her and why there’s no excuse for making dull theatre. Not to mention how she wouldn’t direct the Tina Turner musical now and why it’s over for blokes like Jonny.
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29min
February 05, 2024 Michael Billington
The most cracked out of all theatre junkies is Jonny’s guest this week. At least 10,000 nights in the theatre and counting after over 50 years as the doyen of British theatre critics, Michael Billington was THE arbiter of critical taste for the entirety of Jonny’s life. In this chat Michael opens up about his trouble with mime, air-kissing C list celebrities, how even critics are joining in the rise in audience participation, spaghetti in the stalls, hearing Laurence Olivier in his head, the “inexhaustible surprise” of the theatre, missing Harold Pinter, never finding Marilyn Monroe, how Chekov understood his 20 year old feelings and the way criticism completes the cycle of creation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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1h 18min
January 30, 2024 Emily Mortimer & Alessandro Nivola (Act II) - Live at Jermyn Street Theatre
The second part of Jonny’s chat with Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola recorded live at Jermyn Street Theatre introduces the potent memory and presiding spirit of Emily’s extraordinary father, Sir John Mortimer. From his heckling of Sarah Kane’s legendary “Blasted” to his meeting with Tom Cruise, from Alessandro’s Broadway debut opposite Helen Mirren and a catalytic biting incident, from an elderly actor calling in sick to the stage door of the RSC, to sharing a dressing room with a pep-talking Bradley Cooper, to what transgression and freedom means onstage today, the spirit of Sir John was alive and well and appearing for one night only at Jermyn St theatre.

Buy tickets for Jonny's next live show with Jez Butterworth & Laura Donnelly here
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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35min
January 29, 2024 Emily Mortimer & Alessandro Nivola (Act I) - Live at Jermyn Street Theatre
Welcome to this season’s first live recording! This episode is brought to you in association with the wonderful people at Jermyn Street Theatre in London and if there’s a more richly enjoyable podcast released this week, we want to hear it. Jonny talks to the blissfully honest, vulnerably human and wildly entertaining power couple that is Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins, Paddington 3, Lovely and Amazing) and Alessandro Nivola (American Hustle, Many Saints of Newark, Jurassic Park) and the conversation ranges from furries to fairies, from shyness, fear and how Robert de Niro overcomes them, from first kisses to problematic acting teachers, from vomiting in Moscow, via breaking into Laurence Olivier’s trailer to the truly harrowing story of Emily’s Scottish Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

Buy tickets for Jonny's next live show with Jez Butterworth & Laura Donnelly here
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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50min
January 22, 2024 Bertie Carvel
Join Jonny in the Old Vic dressing room of one our finest - and most fragrant - actors, Bertie Carvel. Bertie is a double Olivier and Tony Award winning star and as deep a thinker about his life in the theatre as he is a transformational chameleon onstage. He and Jonny share a forensic discussion about larping, the inner body, Bertie’s magic trick, why he now reads his reviews (and why he thinks acting companies should hold post-review therapy sessions), wanting the play to end just after you’ve opened, what it felt like to play Donald Trump and doing 652 performances of Missy Trunchbull in “Matilda”. This really is a conversation that captures what it sounds like to hear a great actor in the awkward and exhilarating throes of creativity. He’s also the first guest to use the word “shriven”.
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1h 14min
January 15, 2024 Paapa Essiedu
Welcome to the big kick off of SDJ Season 3! Who better to launch us than one of the most electric young actors there is, Paapa Essiedu. Paapa welcomed Jonny into his bijou dressing room in London’s National Theatre and the conversation ranged over: drinking during a show, Paapa’s risky superstition, how Jamie Lloyd doesn’t want you to know where to stand, what a famous director in the audience can do to you, two actors nightmares that launched Paapa on the stage, separation anxiety and what it does to his brain and what onstage chemistry is and how to preserve it. Happy New Year everyone, its Streetcar Time.
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58min
December 05, 2023 News Of A Live Show & Season 3 Of Stage Door Jonny!
We bring you important intel about a forthcoming live show with Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola at the Jermyn Street Theatre, as well as the next season of Stage Door Jonny, which is coming in January 2024. Tickets for for Jonny, Emily and Alessandro's conversation are available by clicking here. Until Sunday, or indeed January! It's good to be (almost) back ...
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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3min
August 16, 2023 Stage Door Jonny Live: With Sir Simon Russell Beale & Sir Nicholas Hytner
Jonny rounds off the summer season in style: the first SDJ live show at Jermyn Street Theatre in the heart of London’s West End - and two masters to talk to. Sir Nick Hytner and Sir Simon Russell Beale tell Jonny about the two decades and nine plays of their collaboration. It’s a fascinating insight into the dynamics of one of the great director-actor partnerships of our times. Who is the lover and whom the beloved in this relationship? How does Simon know when Nick thinks it isn’t working? Nick’s thoughts on change in the theatre and in life, how he directs actors, Paul Scofield, Daniel Day-Lewis and much more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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47min

FAQs about Stage Door Jonny:

How many episodes does Stage Door Jonny have?

The podcast currently has 91 episodes available.