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.

Episode 093: Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Rory Mullarkey

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.

Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, the third of the quartet of great plays that he wrote in the last years of his short life, is a symphonic study of the search for purpose and love.

Three Sisters premiered in January 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where his previous two major plays, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull had debuted.

As we record this episode a spellbinding new production is on stage at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. The text for that production is translated by playwright Rory Mullarkey, who joins us to explore Chekhov’s masterpiece.

Episode 092: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorainne Hansberry

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Tinuke Craig

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.

When Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun opened in New York in 1959, its author became the first African-American woman to have a play on Broadway, and this with her debut at age of 29. The play was ground-breaking for its realist portait of a black working-class family, spotlighting their personal dreams and the public prejudice they confront.

We recorded this episode shortly after an acclaimed new production of the play completed its run at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in London, and I am delighted to talk with the production’s director, Tinuke Craig, about this landmark play.

Episode 091: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Arifa Akbar

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.

Tennessee Williams’s third great play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a blistering drama of family conflict and repressed sexuality. The play opened on Broadway in 1955 to rapturous reviews, and the film that followed with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman was a box-office hit, despite its egregious watering down of the play’s sexual trauma and family strife.

As we record this episode a stunning new production of the play is on at the Almeida Theatre in London, and I am delighted to talk about this classic with Arifa Akbar, the Guardian newspaper’s chief theatre critic.

Episode 090: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

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.

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is arguably the most famous romantic comedy in theatrical history. The play is renowned for its effervescent portrait of aristocratic romance, and its impossibly clever wit, including some of the most quotable lines in dramatic literature. But it is also an anarchic parody of social custom and pretension – a serious statement of aesthetic principles and coded sexual politics.

As we record this episode, a joyous new production of the play is running at the National Theatre in London, and I am delighted to talk about Wilde’s classic with its acclaimed director, Max Webster.