082 – People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan
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Duncan Macmillan’s play, People, Places & Things, is an unflinching portrait of the real struggle and pain of battling addiction, as well as an exploration of how we seek to define our identity to our self and to anyone else. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 2015, before transferring to the West End the following year, and then on to New York a year later. Denise Gough won awards for her electrifying performance as the disturbed actress, Emma, and as we record this episode she is reprising her role nearly a decade on at the Trafalgar theatre in London’s West End. It is an unforgettable, virtuoso performance: fierce, funny, poignant and technically completely commanding.
Duncan Macmillan was surprised by the play’s initial commercial success, saying “it’s about a difficult person, being difficult to other people who are in a difficult situation!” It is a fascinating, funny and challenging play, and an exhilarating piece of theatre.
The current revival is directed by Jeremy Herrin, who also directed the original production. I am therefore especially delighted to be able to talk in this episode with both the author, Duncan Macmillan, and the play’s director, Jeremy Herrin.
Duncan Macmillan’s plays include Lungs from 2011, which was revived in 2019 at the Old Vic with Claire Foy and Matt Smith, and then live streamed from the empty auditorium in the early days of Covid in June 2020; his adaptation of 1984 co-written with Robert Icke; People, Places & Things; 2071 (co-written with Chris Rapley); Every Brilliant Thing, with Jonny Donahoe, which was a break-out hit at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, and which returns to Edinburgh ten years on in 2024; Rosmersholm (adapted from Ibsen); An Enemy of the People (English version of Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Ibsen); City of Glass (adapted from Paul Auster).
We covered Lungs in episode 7 of the podcast: 07 Lungs
We covered An Enemy of the People in episode 77 of the podcast: 077 An Enemy of the People
Jeremy is a founding director of Second Half Productions.
The Footnotes to our episode on Duncan Macmillan’s devastating and humane portrait of addiction, People, Places & Things, include observations on Emma’s propensity to lie, and on how she uses her intelligence to resist the prescribed treatments and to delude herself.
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.
110 – Our Town by Thornton Wilder
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Playwright Edward Albee described Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as “the greatest American play ever written.” In fact Wilder’s quintessential portrait of rural America in a bygone time has somehow transcended its iconic American setting to become a universal meditation on mortality, community, and how we live our individual lives, wherever that may be.
The play premiered on Broadway in 1938, winning Wilder the Pulitzer Prize, and it has been a staple of school, amateur and stock performance ever since. In fact, according to critic John Lahr writing in the introduction to the text of the Penguin edition, “the play is performed somewhere in the world every day.”
Howard Sherman, author of Another Day’s Begun – Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century, joins me to explore this American classic.
Michael Sheen as the Stage Manager in Our Town, Welsh National Theatre, photo by Helen Murray.
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