Morfydd Clark as Beatie
Roots
Almeida Theatre, London, October 2024
Photo by Marc Brenner
088 – Roots by Arnold Wesker
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Arnold Wesker’s play Roots is set in the Norfolk countryside. It is a coming of age story, of doomed love, rural poverty and socialist protest, and most of all, of cultural aspiration and growing up and away from family, from one’s roots. Roots was first presented at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry in 1959, before transferring to the Royal Court in London and then to the West End. It is the second play in what is known as The Wesker Trilogy, a sequence of plays drawn from the author’s own life and socialist political concerns that were part of a movement in theatrical form and subject that came to be labelled ‘kitchen sink’ drama.
As we recorded this episode a new production of Roots was finishing its run at the Almeida theatre in London. It played in repertory with John Osborne’s, Look Back in Anger, which in repertory scheduling of our own, we also covered in our most recent episode. The Almeida show starred Morfydd Clark in an effervescent and very moving performance as the coming-of-age Beatie. The production is directed by Diyan Zora, and I am delighted to say that Diyan joins me today to tell us about Wesker’s classic play.
Diyan Zora
Diyan Zora was the 2021 recipient of the Genesis Future Director’s Award, which is a collaboration between the Genesis Foundation and the Young Vic Theatre that over the past 20 years has developed the careers of some of the UK’s most dynamic directors.
Diyan’s directing credits include the Pulitzer-prize winning play English at the RSC and Kiln Theatre; Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles in Chichester, Tom Fool at the Orange Tree Theatre, Lysistrata at the Lyric Hammersmith; and Klippies at the Young Vic.
Diyan is also a playwright, and was a member of the Bush Theatre’s 2022 Emerging Writer’s Group.
Diyan recommended The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen.
Photo by Marc Brenner
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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