The Holy Terror: An Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard II by Kevin Connell The “holy terror” is a king named Richard, seemingly trapped in adolescence. Perpetually doomed to act out like a child (rather than out of evilness or hatred), he is a sensitive soul, deeply affected by the death—when he was nine years old--of his father, Edward the Black Prince (b.1330 - d.1376). “Connell's adaptation, which adds text from a variety of sources to an abbreviation of Richard II, streamlines the story and themes of Shakespeare's original. . . . A bang-up job of good old-fashioned storytelling.”-- Martin Denton (NYTheatre.com)
Play E-Book includes 8 color photographs; ISBN: 978-0-9825828-0-0; Available through PayLoadz (link above) for $9.99--regularly $15.00
The unprincipled Mrs Cheveley threatens to reveal Sir Robert Chiltern's secret past unless he agrees to give his support in Parliament to a questionable Argentinian venture. Faced with ruin in the eyes of the country and his wife, he seems to have no alternative. Wildean wit and the elegance of English society is woven into this classic drama.
The Earl of Caversham ...... Geoffrey Palmer Viscount Goring ...... Jasper Britton Sir Robert Chiltern ...... Alex Jennings Lady Chiltern ...... Emma Fielding Lady Markby ...... Sara Kestelman Miss Mabel Chiltern ...... Joanna Page Mrs Cheveley ...... Janet McTeer Vicomte De Nanjac ...... Oliver de Sueur Mrs Marchmont ...... Patience Tomlinson Countess of Basildon ...... Lucy Whybrow Mr Montford/James ...... John Cummins Phipps ...... Hugh Dickson Mason ...... Derek Beard
Siobhan Redmond and Paul Higgins head a cast of leading Scottish actors in this new production of Chekhov's classic drama. In part a tragic play about eternally unhappy people, Chekhov has always surprised his audiences by viewing it as a comedy, poking fun at human folly. All the characters are dissatisfied with their lives. Some desire love. Some yearn for success. Some crave artistic genius. But no one ever seems to attain happiness. When famous actress Irina Arkadina arrives to spend the summer on her brother Sorin's country estate, tempers inevitably get frayed.
Adapted for radio by Stuart Paterson from the first ever English translation by George Calderon.
CAST Arkadina......... Siobhan Redmond Trigorin......... Paul Higgins Konstantin ........ Robin Laing Sorin............. Sean Scanlan Nina .............. Ashley Smith Shamrayev......... . Lewis Howden Polina........... Daniela Nardini Masha .............. Meg Fraser Dorn............. Finlay Welsh Medvedenko ........... Tom Freeman
Written by Anton Chekhov and translated by Sasha Dugdale.
A new production of Chekhov's timeless study of a Russian aristocratic family forced to sell their house and beloved cherry orchard during the great social transitions of the 19th century.
Danny Sapani stars in this Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play exploring race relations in America. It is 1957 and once-famous baseball player Troy Maxson now works as a rubbish collector. The 1950s are yielding to the spirit of liberation of the 1960s. The civil rights movement is kicking in but Troy can't see it.
Troy Maxson ...... Danny Sapani Rose Maxson ...... Adjoa Andoh Bono ...... Jude Akuwudike Lyons ...... Alex Lanipekun Cory ...... Daniel Anthony Raynell ...... Lily Andoh-Cunnell Gabriel ...... Ray Shell
Productions of two of Irish playwright JM Synge's pivotal short plays. The Tinker's Wedding is a light comedy about the country people of Wicklow while Riders to the Sea is often described as the definitive Irish tragedy. They are presented alongside a documentary recorded on location in Galway and the Aran Islands.
Sarah Casey ...... Denise Gough Michael Byrne ...... Stephen Hogan Mary Byrne ...... Brid Brennan Priest ...... John Rogan
Riders to the Sea
Maurya ...... Brid Brennan Nora ...... Fiona O'Shaughnessy Cathleen ...... Denise Gough Bartley ...... Nick Lee Old Man ...... John Rogan Another Man ...... Stephen Hogan One of the Women ...... Caroline Guthrie With contributions from Thomas Conway, James Harrold, Dara O Conaola, Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola, Maire Mulkerrin, Dolores Lyne and Sean O Coistealbha.
(Thulani Davis's article appeared in BOMB 41/Fall 1992.)
Anna Deveare Smith
Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, by Anna Deveare Smith, was performed to sold-out houses and great critical acclaim at the New York Shakespeare Festival from May until August this year. The work is part of a series developed by Smith called On the Road: A Search for American Character.
In the series, Smith creates theatre pieces out of interviews, performing all the interview subjects verbatim. She is interested in “where a person’s unique relationship to the spoken word intersects with character.” Each show has a diverse collection of women, men, and youths with varied points of view about current issues. Some of the interviewees are well known and others are not. Fires in the Mirror focuses in part on a racial conflict that erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in August of 1991.
Thulani Davis As we begin, Anna is describing a crisis that evolved when she got her students to work on the play Movie Stars by Adrienne Kennedy.
Anna Deveare Smith I had gone to find that play because being the African-American on the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1979, the expectation was that I would find the play for the black senior who had not been cast the whole time she had been in school. But I really didn’t want to do a “black” play. I wanted to do a play that would have a racially mixed cast, and that would have race mixed in a way that I had never seen before. So I was shocked to stumble on Movie Stars, because it was exactly that. It played with persona, and with what many of us are afraid to play with as black people—the extent to which, in a real visceral way, white images have influenced our identities. And [Adrienne] is so honest about that, so clear, and so brave. That’s why I was attracted to the material, but it also put me in a crisis…
TD How did this come to a point of crisis?
AS I was having trouble with the text because (pause) it was very disturbing, almost like a bad dream. The structures I had for thinking about my own black experience were very different in meeting her text. And so I can remember going home one night, and I was very distraught, in a great loneliness about the whole experience. And I turned on the television, and turned the sound down, because I was now in the habit of watching TV with the sound down so that I could get used to splitting up action and gesture and speech—which I needed to do to direct the play. And Sophia Loren was on the Johnny Carson Show. The show was so strange.
A classic American expressionist drama from 1921. It tells the tragic tale of Yank, a stoker whose whole world is turned upside down when a young heiress ventures into the engine room of a transatlantic ocean liner.
(O’Hara starred in the original casts of ‘Hair’, ‘George M!’, and ‘Promises, Promises’--Tony nomination. Visit her Web site for an audio interview about her music and career http://www.jilloharamusic.com/.)
Beatrice-Joanna is due to marry Alonzo e Piracquo, until she falls in love with Alsemero and seeks the help of her father's man, De Flores.
Beatrice-Joanna ...... Anna Madeley De Flores ...... Zubin Varla Vermandero ...... Nicky Henson Tomazo de Piracquo ...... Alex Hassell Alonzo de Piracquo ...... Alex Blake Alsemero ...... Simon Muller Jasperino ...... Nigel Hastings Diaphanta ...... Liz Richardson Isabella ...... Catherine Bailey Alibius ...... Philip Fox Lollio ...... Stephen Hogan Antonio ...... Piers Wehner Franciscus ...... Joseph Cohen-Cole Pedro ...... Rhys Jennings
Directed and adapted for radio by Jeremy Mortimer.
As Russians fight off the Nazis in the savage 1942 siege of Leningrad, three teenagers are thrown together in a war-torn apartment block. Having lost everything, they forge relationships that bind them together and a new hope that keeps them alive - the promise of a better future.
Lika ...... Ruth Wilson Leonidik ...... Harry Lloyd Marat ...... Russell Tovey
