059 – Paradise Now! , by Margaret Perry
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The subject of this episode is a scintillating new play written by Irish playwright, Margaret Perry, which as we recorded our conversation had recently completed an acclaimed run at the Bush Theatre in London. When it opened in December 2022 the Telegraph said that Paradise Now! “might well be the best new play of the year”.
Paradise Now! brings together a group of women who sign up to a pyramid selling scheme that promotes a range of body and home oils under the brand banner ‘Paradise’. The so-called “Essential” oils offer balm to a myriad of stresses in modern life, while also promising the team that sell them both wealth and a nurturing community of supportive colleagues. ‘Paradise’ is a parody of the well-being industry and of corporate culture generally, and it is a very funny and incisive satire. It is also an affecting exploration of private ambition and the search for self-worth and connection in our fractured world of social media and short-term success. The women who join the sales scheme are themselves looking for cures to challenges in their own lives, and the road to Paradise Now! is not so sure and smooth.
I’m delighted to be joined by Margaret Perry to talk about her perceptive, funny and moving new play.
Margaret Perry
Margaret Perry, like some of the characters in her new play, is originally from Cork in Ireland, and now lives in London. Her debut play, Porcelain, was picked from the unsolicited script pile and produced by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2018. Porcelain masterfully interweaves the story of a new mother in London in 2017 battling post-natal depression, with the famous 19th century Irish tale of Bridget Cleary, whose husband murdered her claiming that she had been taken by fairies.
Her second play Collapsible started life at the Vaults Festival in London in 2019, going on to win awards at both the Edinburgh and Dublin Fringe Festivals, followed by a successful run at the Bush in 2020.
Recommended Play
Margaret recommended John by Annie Baker.
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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
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.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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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.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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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.
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