Episode 089: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Matthew McFrederick

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.

Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot, is a notoriously confounding work of theatre. The play is renowned for its lack of conventional plot or exposition, and for its existential predicament. Given its desolate philosophical landscape it is also surprisingly funny. Its theatrical imagery and intellectual provocation remain as potent as when it was first performed in Paris in 1953.

As we record this episode an illustrious production is on stage at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London starring Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati. I am delighted to be joined by Dr Matt McFrederick from the University of Reading to help survey this famously challenging landmark of modern drama.

Episode 088: Roots by Arnold Wesker

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Diyan Zora

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.

Arnold Wesker’s quiet classic, Roots, is a story of doomed love, rural poverty and social protest, and most of all, of cultural aspiration and growing up and away from family, from one’s roots.

We recorded this episode as a sensitive revival of the play was finishing its run at the Almeida theatre in London, and I was delighted to be able to talk to its director, Diyan Zora, about Wesker’s love letter to his wife and her roots.

Episode 087: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Dan Rebellato and Atri Banerjee

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.

John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger is one of the landmark plays of twentieth century British theatre. It’s raging protagonist, Jimmy Porter, represented a generation of disaffected youth, and its proletarian setting heralded a new style of ‘kitchen sink drama’. But how well has Jimmy’s abusive anger aged?

I’m delighted to welcome two experts to help us address this question, and many more: Dan Rebellato, the author of 1956 and All That: The Making of Modern British Drama, and, Atri Banerjee, the director of the first revival of the play in London for 25 years, currently running at the Almeida Theatre.

Episode 086: Death of England by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Roy Williams

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.

Clint Dyer and Roy William’s trilogy of plays, Death of England, is a searing state-of-the-nation drama voiced by both black and white working-class characters. Having been performed individually at intervals at the National Theatre through Covid lockdowns, the three plays were greeted with acclaim when they were finally brought together at the Soho Place theatre in the summer of 2024.

I am delighted and honoured to welcome playwright Roy Williams to the podcast to discuss this important work.

Episode 085: The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard

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.

Tom Stoppard is renowned for his intellectual wit and playful dramatic form, both of which are certainly on show in The Real Thing, but the play also explores more personal emotional territory: on what constitutes the real thing in love, politics and art.

As we record this episode, a new production of the play is on stage at the Old Vic theatre in London. My guest to help us navigate the romantic entanglements and structural twists in the play is the renowned arts journalist, Mark Lawson.

Episode 084: Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Nadia Fall

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.

Mike Leigh’s 1977 ‘tragi-comedy’, Abigail’s Party, is renowned for its iconic snapshot of the material and social fabric of its time. The play’s portrait of suburban social pretensions is both hugely funny and excruciating to witness. It is not just an exercise in period kitsch, however, because underneath there are universal human truths, about aspiration and identity, as well as about honesty and generosity, or the lack thereof, in intimate relationships.

As we record this episode a vibrant new production of the play is on stage at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, directed by the theatre’s Artistic Director, Nadia Fall. I’m delighted to talk with Nadia about this classic of British theatre.

Episode 083: The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Justin Audibert

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 it premiered in London’s West End in 1960, The Caretaker catapulted its author to fame and fortune. The play is set entirely in a single room in a dilapidated house, and presents the territorial battle between three men living on the margins of society. The pschological manoeuvrings of the men are dramatised in what we now recognise as Pinter’s cryptic mix of comedy and menace, along with his characteristic relish in the precision and panache of language.

As we record this episode a new production of the play is playing in the Minerva theatre in Chichester, and I am delighted to welcome its director, Justin Audibert, to the podcast to help us explore Pinter’s enigmatic work.

Episode 082: People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Duncan Macmillan and Jeremy Herrin

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.

Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places & Things is a blisteringly frank and funny portrait of addiction and invented identity. When the play premiered at the National Theatre in 2015, Denise Gough won awards for her electrifying performance, and as we record this episode she revives her role in London’s West End.

It is a fascinating and challenging play, and an exhilarating piece of theatre. I am delighted to talk in this episode with its author, Duncan Macmillan, and the production’s director, Jeremy Herrin.

Episode 081: The Government Inspector by Nikolay Gogol

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Patrick Myles

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.

Vladimir Nabokov described The Government Inspector as the “greatest play in the Russian language”. Gogol’s comedy of mistaken identity is an unexpected mix of fantastical farce and serious social satire. that has survived as a paradigm of political corruption and social hypocrisy in any age or place.

As we record this episode a new adaptation of the play written and directed by Patrick Myles arrives on the London stage, and I’m delighted to talk with Patrick about this classic play and its enigmatic author.

Episode 080: Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Jeremy Herrin

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.

Eugene O’Neill wrote his autobiographical magnum opus, Long Day’s Journey into Night, in 1941, but because of the personal revelations it contained he gave explicit instructions that it was not to be published until 25 years after his death and that it should never be staged. In the event his widow allowed both to occur in 1956, only three years after his death, when the play won O’Neill his fourth Pulitzer prize.

As we record this episode, a powerful new production of the play is playing in London, with Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson heading the cast. I am delighted and privileged to talk with the production’s director, Jeremy Herrin, about O’Neill’s monumental play.