The Play Podcast

Episode 037: Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall

Host: Douglas Schatz Guests: Joe Penhall and James Dacre

The Play Podcast is a podcast dedicated to exploring the greatest new and classic plays. In each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

In Joe Penhall's explosive and unsettling play Blue/Orange we are asked to observe and judge an extended debate between two psychiatrists who differ on their diagnosis and treatment of a young patient who is apparently experiencing delusions that may be symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. The doctors are divided by their ambitions, relative status and racial identity and assumptions, and their discussions escalate into an increasingly bitter and personal power struggle, in which their patient becomes an unfortunate pawn.

Blue/Orange premiered at the National Theatre in 2000, and is now revived in a new production by the Royal & Derngate Northampton, Theatre Royal Bath, and Oxford Playhouse, starring Giles Terera, Michael Balogun and Ralph Davis, and directed by James Dacre. Twenty years on the play is as powerful and topical as ever, addressing the uncertainties and dangers around the diagnosis of mental illness, the latent racial prejudices that can distort our judgements, and the pernicious inflections of hierarchical power in inter-personal relationships.

I'm delighted to be joined in this episode by the playwright Joe Penhall and the director James Dacre.

Episode 036: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Greg Hersov

The Play Podcast is a podcast dedicated to exploring the greatest new and classic plays. In each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

It is arguably the world's most famous play. The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark contains all of the elements of great drama: a revenge thriller, a family ripped apart, a tragic love story, political ambition and intrigue, wondrous poetry and philosophical insight, but most of all a uniquely intelligent, vibrant and sympathetic character who we see in all his brilliance and frailty.

We always knew that at some point we would come to this Everest of all plays, and we do so now inspired by a new production at London's Young Vic theatre, where Cush Jumbo is winning huge acclaim in the eponymous role. I am delighted to be joined by the director of this production, Greg Hersov, who with his immense experience helps guide us through the almost infinite enchantments and challenges of the play.

Episode 035: Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Matt Beresford

The Play Podcast is a podcast dedicated to exploring the greatest new and classic plays. In each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

It is 1789 and a group of convicts in the newly-founded colony of Botany Bay in Australia are assembled to put on a production of George Farquhar's Restoration Comedy The Recruiting Officer. The true story of this unlikely theatrical enterprise is the subject of Timberlake Wertenbaker's award-winning play, Our Country's Good, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1988 almost exactly 200 years after the events it portrays. The play is a vivid portrait of the volatile new settlement in New South Wales, which raises timeless questions about what makes for a country's good: the exercise of justice, the iniquities of class, the value of education and culture, and particularly of the redemptive power of theatre itself.

It made complete logical sense to follow our last episode on The Recruiting Officer with this wonderful play, and even more sense to invite Director Matt Beresford back to talk us through it.

Episode 034: The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Matt Beresford

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.

George Farquhar's rollicking Restoration Comedy The Recruiting Officer is ostensibly a portrait of officers engaged in the nefarious art of impressing men into the army in the country town of Shrewsbury, but it is as much a tale of the local ladies themselves recruiting for lovers and husbands. The classic comic satire of love and war, and sex and deception was first performed at Drury Lane in 1706, and went on to become one of the most frequently performed plays of the 18th century and a staple of education curricula and theatre programming ever since.

Director Matt Beresford joins us to assess the 'recruiting officers'' respective strategies and successes.

Episode 033: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Patrick Marber

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 ambitious new play Leopoldstadt is a sweeping work of history and ideas which charts the diaspora and decline of an Austrian Jewish family through the convulsive events of the first half of the twentieth century. It addresses profound moral questions of identity, memory and prejudice that are insistently relevant in our time. It is not only a towering intellectual achievement, it is also very personally poignant because it is based partly on Stoppard's own remarkable family history.

Leopoldstadt opened in the West End in January 2020, only to be closed prematurely by the pandemic a few weeks later. Happily it has returned to the London stage this Autumn, and I am privileged and delighted to talk in this episode with the director of the London productions, playwright Patrick Marber.

Episode 032: Footnotes Volume 3

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.

Footnotes Volume 3 is a recording of the facts and observations that we've published on the website to supplement the plays that we've covered in episodes 24-31. A smorgasbord of trivia and analysis ranging from Greek Tragedy to the stock characters of Commedia dell'Arte , through the music of Bob Dylan, the filming of Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone during lockdown, and the theatrical installations of Samuel Beckett.

A compendium of dramatic intelligence!

Plays referred to in this episode include:

• Consent by Nina Raine
• Medea by Euripides
• A Servant to Two Masters by Goldoni, and One Man Two Guvnors by Richard Bean
• Present Laughter by Noel Coward
• Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan
• A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
• Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill
• Happy Days by Samuel Beckett

Episode 031: Happy Days by Samuel Beckett

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Lisa Dwan

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 third great dramatic masterpiece Happy Days is a timeless exploration of existential threat and personal survival. It's central image of Winnie buried in a mound of scorched earth also speaks to our own time when many have endured enforced confinement in a world struck by collective disaster.

Irish actress and Beckett scholar Lisa Dwan, fresh from her triumphant performance as Winnie at the Riverside Studios in London, joins us to share her unique experience of playing Beckett and this majestic play.

Episode 030: Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Elaine Aston

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.

Caryl Churchill's stunning play Escaped Alone presents an ordinary scene of four women of a certain age chatting over tea in a suburban garden. Of course not all is as tranquil as it appears, for each of the women harbour dark personal anxieties, and from time to time one of them steps away from the garden to share news with us about apocalyptic disasters that have struck the world. Produced at the Royal Court in 2016, Churchill's vision of a world overcome by collective disaster has proved to be extraordinarily prophetic. Joining me to explore our first Churchill play is Professor Elaine Aston, author of a monograph on Caryl Churchill as well as the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill.

Episode 029: A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Nadine Holdsworth

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.

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey caused a sensation when it appeared at the Theatre Royal Stratford in 1958 because of its frank portrayal of a working-class, single mother and daughter, as well as its bold representations of a mixed-race relationship and a young homosexual as a central character. Delaney sent her first play to the renowned director Joan Littlewood who helped develop it into an historic production which went on to the West End and Broadway. Professor Nadine Holdsworth helps us to explore the enduring power and relevance of the play.

Episode 028: Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson, music and lyrics by Bob Dylan

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.

Girl from the North Country is an extraordinary collaboration between the playwright Conor McPherson and the musician and song writer Bob Dylan. The result is a magical work where McPherson's portrait of families struggling to survive in Depression America is transfigured into an uplifting theatrical experience by the ravishing period arrangements of Dylan's songs. The play opened at the Old Vic Theatre in London in 2017 to a rapturous response and reviews, and was followed by runs in the West End and New York. This is a very special episode, first because I am privileged to talk with none other than the play's author Conor McPherson, and secondly because we have also been given kind permission to include several extracts from the original cast recording of the music from the first London production.