Ronke Adekoluejo as Viola
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, September 2025
Photo by Helen Murray
104 – Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | TuneIn | RSS | More
William Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, renowned for its clever cross-dressing plot and festive hi-jinks, but also for its ambiguous tone, fluctuating between the comic and a darker cruelty, as well as for its rendition of fluid gender and desire. The second part of the play’s full title points to the license on display in the characters’ search for love, identity and status. It is also an offer to us, the audience, to make we will of what Shakespeare presents.
As we record this episode a new production of Twelfth Night is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, which highlights the play’s mix of the carnival and the sober, the joy and the woe. I’m delighted to welcome to the podcast the Globe’s Director of Education, Dr Will Tosh.
Dr Will Tosh
Dr Will Tosh is the Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. He is responsible for dramaturgy, events for students and adult learners, and for the Globe’s scholarly research programme. He is the host of ‘That Is The Question’, the Globe’s award-winning YouTube series.
He is also the author of three books, Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse; Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England; and most recently Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.
Recommended Play
Will recommended Cressida by Nicholas Wright.
The Footnotes that accompany our episode on William Shakespeare’s subversive romantic comedy, Twelfth Night or What You Will, include additional notes on the characters of Viola and Sebastian.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
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