Episode 103: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Max Webster Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s first tragedy, although in fact, scholars believe that Shakespeare did not write the whole play himself. Whatever its origins, the play is notorious for its graphic horror, which includes multiple killings, amputations, decapitations, rape and cannibalism. Horrors that have overwhelmed audiences and alienated critics for centuries. Although the play was hugely popular in Shakespeare’s time, later critics dismissed it for its excessive violence and crude, fragmented structure. However, the play’s bleak portrait of amoral leadership, sexual violence, racial conflict, and personal and political despair has struck a chord in more recent times, with several acclaimed productions and restored critical opinion.

As we record this episode an exciting new production of the play is on stage at the Hampstead theatre in London, having transferred following its acclaimed run at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. The production is directed by Max Webster, who joins me to explore Shakespeare’s full-blooded tragedy.

Episode 102: Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Duncan Macmillan              Jonny Donahoe

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Every Brilliant ThingWhen their mother attempts to take her own life, a seven-year old child decides to start a list; a list of “everything brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for.” A list for mum.

This is the premise for Every Brilliant Thing, the hit one-person play created by playwright Duncan Macmillan and performer Jonny Donahoe. The play started life at Ludlow Fringe Festival in 2013, and in the decade or so since, it has been seen in over 70 countries around the world. As we record this episode Every Brilliant Thing has reached London’s West End, with a rotating cast of five different performers appearing over its three-month run at the Soho Place theatre. The critic, Lyn Gardner, described Every Brilliant Thing as “one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see about depression.” She is spot on – it is funny and poignant and finally life affirming.  I am very privileged to be joined in this episode by the show's two creators, Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe. 

Episode 101: The 101 Greatest Plays

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Michael Billington              Mark Lawson

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

In 2015 the esteemed theatre critic, Michael Billington, published The 101 Greatest Plays – From Antiquity to the Present. Michael wrote that his selection was intended as a “provocation”, a “prelude to debate”. Ten years on I invited Michael and the arts journalist, Mark Lawson, to join me to review and debate his criteria and selection.

During our discussion we not only wrangled over specific inclusions and exclusions in Michael’s list, including most controversially his omission of both King Lear and Waiting for Godot, we also addressed more general questions about the criteria for selection, what elements make a great play, and what makes a play more likely to endure beyond its own time. Join us in the debate!

Episode 100: A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Beth Wynstra

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

A Moon for the Misbegotten is the last play that Eugene O’Neill wrote. It is in some way a eulogy for his brother, Jamie O’Neill, who like the character of Jim Tyrone in this play, drank himself to death. In fact, it is also an epilogue of sorts to his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night, where we first met Jim Tyrone. It is eleven years later, and Jim is about to leave the family home in Connecticut following the death of his parents, but not before saying a final goodbye to the woman who lives next door, Josie Hogan. Josie and Jim have unacknowledged feelings for each other, but their tortured moonlit night together does not offer them the salvation or future that they may have thought possible. As we record this episode, a new production of A Moon for the Misbegotten is playing at the Almeida theatre in London, and I am delighted to be joined by O’Neill expert, Beth Wynstra, to explore what one American critic called ‘a major minor-masterpiece”.

To mark our 100th episode listeners have a chance to win £100 of theatre tokens – visit https://www.theplaypodcast.com/100-a-moon-for-the-misbegotten-by-eugene-oneill/  for details on how to enter!

Episode 099: Till the Stars Come Down by Beth Steel

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Beth Steel

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

It is Sylvia and Marek’s wedding day. But this is not an entirely traditional English wedding, because unlike her older sisters, Sylvia’s husband-to-be is not a local man; Marek is a Polish immigrant. As the festivities unfold, fuelled by beer and vodka, emotions run high, and fault lines appear within the family that will change their lives forever.

Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down, is an hilarious and heartbreaking family drama, as well as a richly layered exploration of the social and economic landscape of the country they live in.

Till the Stars Come Down premiered to great acclaim at the National Theatre in January 2024, and as we record this episode is back on stage at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End. I’m delighted to be joined by the play’s author, Beth Steel.

Episode 098: Stereophonic by David Adjmi

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: David Adjmi

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

It is 1976, and a fictional rock band are holed up in a studio in California attempting to record their much anticipated second album. The pressures of an inflated studio budget and raised artistic expectations expose the fault lines in the band’s professional and personal relationships. David Adjmi’s Tony-award-winning play, Stereophonic, is a fly-on-the-wall depiction of both the magic and the monotony of collaborative artistic endeavour, as the cast recreates the live process of making music, and play out the price they pay for their art and fame.

As we record this episode, Stereophonic has opened in London’s West End following its triumph on Broadway, and I am thrilled to be joined by the play’s author, David Adjmi, to explore his unique creation.

Episode 097: Giant by Mark Rosenblatt

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Mark Rosenblatt

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

It is 1983, and the famous children’s author Roald Dahl’s life is in some turmoil. He has just divorced his wife of 30 years, and his new fiancée has just moved into the family home and has initiated disruptive renovations to the house, disturbing his very particular writing routines. Dahl also now finds himself the target of publlic outrage for the antisemitism contained in his recent published criticism of Israel’s violent attack on Lebanon. Representatives from his British and American publishers have arrived to try to persuade Dahl to issue some conciliatory response, but Dahl is characteristically disinclined to retreat from his deeply-felt opinions.

This is the premise for Mark Rosenblatt’s award-winning first play Giant, which is currently earning five-star reviews in London’s West End. I am delighted to be joined by the play’s author, Mark Rosenblatt, to explore his electrifying play.

Episode 096: Dealer's Choice by Patrick Marber

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Matthew Dunster

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

A poker game in the basement of a London restaurant is the setting for six men to play out their dreams and disappointments in Patrick Marber’s first play, Dealer’s Choice. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 1995, and thirty years on a cracking new production is on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in London. I’m delighted to be joined by its director, Matthew Dunster, to explore Marber’s perceptive portrait of male conflict and compulsion.

Episode 095: Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Omar Elerian

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

A rhinoceros charges through the square of a small French village, and soon all of its inhabitants are being transformed into rhinoceros themselves. Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist satire, Rhinoceros, was conceived as a metaphor for support for the rise of Fascism in Europe between the world wars, and for conformism more generally.

As we record this episode an imaginative new adaptation of the play is playing at the Almeida theatre in London, and I’m delighted to be joined by the show’s translator and director, Omar Elerian.

Episode 094: Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Professor Edith Hall

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Sophocles’ tragic drama of the myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, not only directly inspired Freud’s notorious dream theory, but has itself survived as a masterpiece of theatrical invention and power. Written nearly two and a half thousand years ago, Oedipus the King has endured because of the dramatic trauma of Oedipus’s personal story, and also as an allegory of authoritarian political rule. The play has proved remarkably adaptable to modern social and political times, which is attested by the fact that not one, but two major productions of the play have been staged in London this year.

I’m delighted to review Sophocles’ shattering classic with the esteemed Classics professor, Edith Hall.