Giles Terera, Michael Balogun and Ralph Davis
in Blue/Orange

037 – Blue/Orange, by Joe Penhall

Nov 18, 2021 | Podcast Episodes | 0 comments

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 patient believes, for example, that he is one of former Ugandan President Idi Amin’s 43 children, which although it sounds implausible, is not impossible. However, his conviction that the oranges in a bowl in the consultation room are blue proves more problematic.

The debate between the two doctors is anything but straightforward. It is complicated and clouded by their relative status and personal ambitions, as well as their own racial identity and assumptions. The disturbed young man who is their patient finds himself a pawn in what becomes an increasingly bitter and personal power struggle between the professionals.

Blue/Orange premiered at the National Theatre in April 2000 and transferred for a six-month run in London’s West End a year later, winning the Evening Standard Best Play award, as well as both the Critics Circle and Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play. The play addresses issues that remain as topical today as when it was first written, including 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. As we record this episode, it is being revived in a new production co-produced by the Royal and Derngate theatre in Northampton, the Oxford Playhouse and the Theatre Royal Bath, where it will tour to all three theatres in November 2021.

I am delighted and honoured to be joined in this episode by James Dacre, the Artistic Director of the Royal and Derngate theatre, and the director of the new production, and by the playwright Joe Penhall himself.

Joe Penhall

Joe Penhall is acclaimed as both a playwright and screen writer, having written a dozen plays, including Some Voices, Pale Horse, Dumb Show and Birthday, all for the Royal Court Theatre, as well as more recently Mood Music at the Old Vic and the musical Sunny Afternoon, which he wrote with Ray Davies of the Kinks and which won four Olivier Awards in 2015. His screen writing credits include the films from the novels Enduring Love and The Road, and the TV series Moses Jones and Mindhunter.

Recommended Play

Joe recommended Downstate by Bruce Norris

James Dacre

James Dacre has been the Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton since 2013. The Royal & Derngate is one of our outstanding regional theatres, commissioning and co-producing a consistently successful steam of new work that regularly tours and reaches the West End. Recent productions include TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, Alone in Berlin, The Worst Witch, Touching the Void, and The Lovely Bones. James himself has directed world premieres of adaptations of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, as well as Roy Williams’ Soul and Arthur Miller’s The Hook, as well as a diverse catalogue of other new and classic titles.

Before the Royal & Derngate, James directed shows at numerous of our best regional and London theatres, including Manchester Royal Exchange, The New Vic, Theatre Royal Bath, the Traverse, Trafalgar Studios and Shakespeare’s Globe, among others. James started directing at Cambridge and then won a fellowship to train at Columbia University in New York.

Recommended Play

James recommended Our Lady of Kibeho by Katori Hall

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Blue/Orange include some further thoughts on the significance of the slightly awkward back slash in the title of the play.

Footnotes for Patrons

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The Texts

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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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.