Episode 113A: Arcadia Footnotes

Host: Douglas Schatz 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.

Tom Stoppard's dramatic masterpiece, Arcadia, is a teasing detective story, a joyous comedy, and an emotionally rich exploration of love and loss. It is also a play of ideas. These Footnotes supplement our main episode on Arcadia, with observations on subjects woven into the fabric of the play, including garden design, Fermat's Last Theorem, Iterated Algorithms and something called Fractals, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Chaos Theory.

Episode 113: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Carrie Cracknell

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.

Tom Stoppard's 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York's theatre in London's West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard's dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.

Episode 112: Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: 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.

David Mamet's modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.

As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London., with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.

To explore Mamet's unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.

Episode 111: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Stephen Sharkey and Tom Kuhn

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.

Bertolt Brecht's 'gangster spectacle', The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.

As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.

I am delighted to be joined by both the show's translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht's political parody.

Episode 110: Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Howard Sherman 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.

Playwright Edward Albee described Thornton Wilder's Our Town as "the greatest American play ever written." In fact Wilder's quintessential portrait of rural America in a bygone time has somehow transcended its iconic American setting to become a universal meditation on mortality, community, and how we live our individual lives, wherever that may be.

The play premiered on Broadway in 1938, winning Wilder the Pulitzer Prize, and it has been a staple of school, amateur and stock performance ever since. In fact, according to critic John Lahr writing in the introduction to the text of the Penguin edition, "the play is performed somewhere in the world every day."

Howard Sherman, author of Another Day's Begun – Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century, joins me to explore this American classic.

Episode 109: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries 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.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most famous love story of all time. The tragic tale of their ecstatic young love has become iconic, not only in the theatre, but in the countless forms it has been retold, in musicals, dance, opera and film. As we record this episode a daring new production is playing in London's West End, directed by Robery Icke, and starring Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe as the "star-crossed lovers".

I'm delighted to be joined to explore the play by Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries from Cambridge University, author of the introduction to the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the text.

Episode 108: The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Professor Kirsten Shepherd, Tzen Sam 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 Henrik Ibsen's lyrical play The Lady from the Sea premiered in 1889, the critics were bewildered. On the surface it is a conventional drama of marital strife and the constrained social position of women, but the play is enriched by its acute portrait of psychological trauma and mystical undercurrents. I was prompted to explore the play having seen Simon Stone's modern adaptation at the Bridge theatre in London in the Autumn of 2025, and I am delighted to welcome Ibsen expert, Professor Kirsten Shepherd, back to the podcast, to discuss this intense and mysterious work. Kirsten and I are also joined by Oxford PHD student, Tzen Sam.

Episode 107: Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Dr Emma Parker 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.

Joe Orton's black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane offended many established critics when it premiered in 1964. Orton's first full-length play signalled the arrival of a unique new voice, defined by its anarchic farce, camp sexuality, and faux-refined language, like a ramped-up Oscar Wilde let loose in the emerging age of free love. The play's first production was promoted with ads warning that it was "not for the narrow minded".

I have long wanted to cover Orton on the podcast, and I was prompted to start with this play by the recent revival staged at the Young Vic theatre in London. I am delighted to welcome Orton enthusiast and expert, Dr Emma Parker, to help me explore Orton's provocative farce.

Episode 106: End by David Eldridge

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: David Eldridge 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.

David Eldridge's new play End is the final instalment of what David has described as a "triptych for the theatre", following Beginning in 2017, and Middle in 2022. Each of the plays in the series presents a snapshot of a couple at a particular time of life. In End we meet a couple who are facing the premature end of their life together. The play is not only an emotionally painful meditation on mortality, but also a testament to the life affirming power of love.

As we record this episode End is playing at the National Theatre in London, with Saskia Reeves and Clive Owen as the couple. I was privileged to talk with David about Beginning way back in episode 11 of the podcast, and then Middle in episode 47, so I am delighted to be able complete the trilogy by welcoming David back to talk about End.

Episode 105: The Weir by Conor McPherson

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Conor McPherson 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.

The curtain rises on a small rural pub in northwest Ireland. A few of the regulars have dropped in for company and bit of the craic. This is the simple premise of Conor McPherson's breakthrough, internationally successful play, The Weir. The play is a quiet, yet mesmerising piece of drama that consists of nothing more than a handful of people coming together and telling a few stories. Stories which reveal not only personal anxieties, regret and grief on the part of its characters, but which, in the telling, draw us into a collective experience of the mystery of being alive.

The Weir premiered in a tiny space at the Royal Court Upstairs in July 1997. It has since been performed all over the world, and as we recorded this episode a new production was playing in London's West End, directed by the author himself and starring Brendan Gleeson as Jack. I'm delighted to be able to talk with Conor himself about his magical play.