086 – Death of England by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | TuneIn | RSS | More
Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England is a trilogy of interconnected plays that offers an account of the state of the nation from the perspective of two working-class families, one white and one black. In part one, Michael is grieving for the death of his father, while trying to make sense of the complicated legacy of his father’s racism. In part two, Michael’s best friend, Delroy, presents an alternative view of Michael and his family, and of England, from his experience as a young black man. In the final play, Closing Time, Michael’s sister, Carly, and Delroy’s mother, Denise provide their voice on the challenges of living with their respective families in a multi-racial country.
The trilogy had a decade-long gestation, beginning in 2014 with a ten-minute film introducing Michael grieving for his late father, which Dyer and Williams then expanded into a full-length play in the form of a monologue delivered in a raging performance by Rafe Spall at the National Theatre in early 2020. Delroy was due to tell his story on the same stage in the Autumn of 2020 when Covid forced the closure of our theatres. In an inventive response to lockdown, Dyer and Williams amalgamated these first two monologues into a staged film entitled Death of England: Face to Face. The final part of the family story was performed at the National in October 2023, before all three plays were updated and mounted together at the Soho Place theatre in London in the summer of 2024.
The plays certainly touched a nerve with its audiences, and I am delighted and honoured to be able to welcome playwright, Roy Williams, to the podcast to talk about his searing state-of-the nation drama.
Roy Williams
Roy Williams is one of Britain’s most important playwrights, exploring “the fault lines of race, class and nationhood”, as critic Dan Rebellato describes his work, in more than 20 plays, including Death of England, Sing Yer Heart out for the Lads, Sucker Punch, The No-Boys Cricket Club, Fallout, and an adaptation of Sam Selvon’s 1956 Windrush novel The Lonely Londoners.
Roy has also written for radio and television, including 8 seasons of the contemporary crime series The Interrogation on BBC Radio, and the BAFTA nominated TV film, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle.
He was awarded an OBE for Services to Drama in 2008.
Roy recommended Class Enemy by Nigel Williams.
Photo by Piers Allardyce
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
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.
0 Comments