Exploring the greatest new and classic plays
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Our Guests
Adam James is one of the most recognised actors working in Britain today, with an extensive list of credits on both stage and screen. His stage appearances include Consent at the National Theatre, Bull at the Young Vic, and King Charles III at the Almeida, the West End, and New York…
Alan Brodie heads his eponymous theatrical agency Alan Brodie Representation Ltd, which works with both contemporary playwrights, and with trusts and estates of some of the greatest names in 20th century drama, including the Noël Coward Estate.
Andy Miller is a reader, editor and author of books, most recently The Year of Reading Dangerously, as well as the co-host of the award-winning literary podcast “Backlisted”.
Sir Christopher Hampton is a renowned playwright and screenwriter whose plays have so far garnered four Tony Awards, three Oliviers, and five Evening Standard awards.
Chrstopher Haydon is the Artistic Director at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, where inn October 2022 he directed the first major London production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle for twenty-five years.
Clare Lizzimore is an acclaimed director and playwright. She directed the 25th anniversary production of Patrick Marber’s Closer at the Lyric Hammersmith in the summer of 2022.
Conor McPherson is from Dublin and began writing plays as a member of the University of Dublin drama society. His early plays include St Nicholas, Shining City, The Seafarer, and The Weir, which opened at the Royal Court before transferring to the West End of London and Broadway, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play for 1999.
Cordelia Lynn’s most recent plays include Sea Creatures, Love and Other Acts of Violence, and One for Sorrow.
Dan Rebellato is a playwright, journalist and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Daniel Bailey is a director, dramaturg and writer, is the Associate Artistic Director at the Bush Theatre, where he directed Tyrell William’s play Red Pitch.
Daniel Raggett is an acclaimed director. His hilarious production of Dario Fo’s classic farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist was a smash hit in Sheffield and London.
David Eldridge is widely regarded as one of the most important playwrighting voices at work today. His play Beginning premiered at the National Theatre in October 2017, before transferring to the West End.
David Ian Rabey is Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Theatre Practice at Aberystwyth University, and the author of The Theatre and Films of Jez Butterworth.
Dominic Cooke is an acclaimed director of stage and screen, including most recently the West End production of C.P. Taylor’s Good with David Tennant.
Douglas Rintoul is the Chief Executive of the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. He was the Artistic Director of the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch from 2015 to 2022.
Eamonn Jordan is Professor in Drama Studies at the School of English, Drama and Film, at University College Dublin.
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Kings College London, where she specialises in ancient Greek literature. She has published no fewer than thirty books, including Introducing the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle’s Way – How ancient wisdom can change your life, and Greek Tragedy – Suffering under the Sun.
Elaine Aston is a Professor at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, acclaimed for her work on theatre research and feminism.
Professor Emma Smith teaches early modern drama at Hertford College, Oxford, with a special focus on Shakespeare. She has written widely on both early modern drama and Shakespeare.
George Spender is the founder of specialist publisher Salamander Street. He previously the Editorial Director at dram specialist Oberon Books.
George Turvey trained as an actor and has appeared on stage and screen in many diverse roles. He co-founded Papatango in 2007 and became the sole Artistic Director in January 2013.
Graham Saunders is the Allardyce Nicoll Professor of Drama at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Love me or Kill me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes, About Kane: the Playwright and the Work, and the editor of Sarah Kane in Context.
Greg Hersov was the Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 1987 to 2014, where he directed more than 50 productions, including plays by Wilde, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Miller, T Williams, Pinter, Mamet, Baldwin, Cartwright, and many more.
Henry Filloux-Bennett is a writer and Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield.
Ivan Wise is a former editor of The Shavian, and he joins us to talk about Shaw’s sparkling comedy Arms and the Man.
James Dacre has been the Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton since 2013. The Royal & Derngate is one of our outstanding regional theatres, commissioning and co-producing a consistently successful steam of new work that regularly tours and reaches the West End. Recent productions include TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, Alone in Berlin, The Worst Witch, Touching the Void, and The Lovely Bones.
The playwright James Graham is one of our most prolific and popular dramatists, renowned for both his stage plays and TV dramatizations. He has carved out a niche in bringing contemporary political history to life, turning sometimes arcane events into lucid and compelling drama.
Joe Dowling is an acclaimed director who was the youngest Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, before moving to North America and leading the prestigious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis for nearly twenty years.
Joe Penhall is acclaimed as both a playwright and screen writer, having written a dozen plays, including Some Voices, Pale Horse, Dumb Show and Birthday, all for the Royal Court Theatre, as well as more recently Mood Music at the Old Vic and the musical Sunny Afternoon, which he wrote with Ray Davies of the Kinks and which won four Olivier Awards in 2015.
John Mitchinson is a writer and publisher, co-founder of Unbound, the crowdfunding publishing platform for books, and co-host of the award-winning books podcast, Backlisted.
John Tiffany is the winner of two Tony Awards, an Olivier, a Drama Desk and an Obie award as a director, and his productions have earned countless other award nominations and wins. His recent work includes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in both London and New York….
Josie Rourke is an acclaimed theatre and screen director. She is the former Artistic Director of both the Bush and the Donmar theatres in London. Most recently she directed ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ at the National Theatre, and is our guest in episode 63 about the play.
Justin Greene is a director, writer and producer for theatre, television and radio. His writing credits include the musical Spend Spend Spend, which he wrote the book and lyrics for with composer Steve Brown, and also directed. The show won the Evening Standard, Critics Circle and Barclays Theatre awards for Best Musical and was nominated for an Olivier in the same category.
Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German at New College Oxford. She joins us on The Play Podcast to talk about Frank Wedekind’s controversial play Spring Awakening.
Lindsay Posner has directed Michael Frayn’s Noises Off twice, and he joins us to share his unique insights on this comic masterpiece.
Lisa Dwan is an award-winning actress, director, writer and scholar. She is most well known internationally for her performances and adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s work, including multiple performances of Beckett’s Not I over the past 15 years at London’s Battersea Arts Centre , the Southbank Centre, and at the International Beckett Festival in 2012.
Lucy Bailey’s credits as a director range from Shakespeare to modern classics, including a special affinity with the plays of Agatha Christie.
Lucy Kirkwood is a playwirght and screenwriter. Her plays include Chimerica, The Children, Mosquitoes and The Welkin.
Margaret Perry’s latest play Paradise Now!’ received rave reviews during its run at the Bush Theatre in December 2022. Her previous plays include Porcelain and Collapsible.
Mark Taylor-Batty is a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at Leeds University. His key areas of interest include Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and twentieth-century French and British theatre.
Matt Beresford is a director, speaker, trainer and leadership coach. He spent fifteen years working in business, before re-training as a Theatre Director at RADA, followed by an MA at St. Mary’s, University of London.
Matthew McFrederick is a theatre practitioner, historian and academic, and Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Reading, where he completed his PhD investigating the production histories of Samuel Beckett’s drama in London.
Michael Frayn is a bestselling and award-winning novelist, journalist, screen writer and playwright…
Monica Dolan is an Olivier and Bafta award-winning actor, whose work spans television, film and stage. She won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 2019 West End production of All About Eve, a Bafta Award for her unforgettable performance as Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult on ITV in 2011, and a Bafta nomination for Best Supporting Actress in A Very English Scandal alongside Hugh Grant.
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. Her book English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation published in 2020 examines how contemporary drama presents groups and issues that divide our society.
Neil Anthony Docking is as a writer whose work appeared in press, television, radio and film, before he wrote his first play, the funny and devastatingly moving The Revlon Girl.
Nicholas Rowe has appeared on many of London’s stages including in two productions of Mike Bartlett plays at the Almeida, Albion and King Charles III, which also transferred to the West End.
Nick is the founder of Nick Hern Books, the play publishers who have led the UK in championing the best new playwrights for the past 30 years.
Nigel Slater OBE is the presenter of nine BBC television series, and the author of a collection of bestselling books including the classics Appetite two-volumes of Tender, as well as The Kitchen Diaries trilogy.
Nina Raine is both a playwright and a director. Her own plays include Rabbit, Tribes, Consent, Stories and Bach & Sons.
Oliver Kaderbhai is an actor, director and producer. Hwe is the founder of the devising theatre company Delirium.
Oliver Soden is the author of Masquerade – The Lives of Noël Coward, the first new biography of Coward for thirty years.
Patrick Marber is a writer, director, actor and comedian. He is the author of a dozen plays including Dealer’s Choice, Closer, Howard Katz and The Red Lion, as well as adaptations of a number of classics.
Samuel Bailey began writing plays in Bristol and developed work with the Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory Theatres and Theatre West. His play Shook won the 2019 Papatango award.
Simon Stephens is one of the most acclaimed and prolific playwrights of our time whose work has been originated at theatres around in the globe.
Dr Stephen Marino is the founding editor of The Arthur Miller Journal, which features essays on all aspect of Miller’s life, work, and career.
Thomas Keith teaches acting and theatre at Pace University in New York, and joins us to talk about ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams.
Tim McMullan is one of our most acclaimed and recognisable actors. His career encompasses a number of iconic stage performances in Shakespeare, as well as innumerable other theatre, film and TV roles.
Tom Basden is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian. His hilarious adaptation of Dario Fo’s classic farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist was a smash hit in Sheffield and London.
Tony Marshall is perhaps best known for his role as Noel Garcia in Casualty. Most recently he was on stage in the Old Vic’s 2022 production of Jitney.
Tyrell Williams is the award-winning author of Red Pitch, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in February 2022.
Victoria Hamilton is an award-winning actress of stage, TV and film…
Wil Johnson has an extensive list of stage, TV and film credits, including most recently in the Old Vic’s 2022 production of Jitney.
Winsome Pinnock is an award-winning British playwright of Jamaican heritage…
Index of Guests
Index of Guests
Our Guests
Adam James is one of the most recognised actors working in Britain today, with an extensive list of credits on both stage and screen. His stage appearances include Consent at the National Theatre, Bull at the Young Vic, and King Charles III at the Almeida, the West End, and New York…
Alan Brodie heads his eponymous theatrical agency Alan Brodie Representation Ltd, which works with both contemporary playwrights, and with trusts and estates of some of the greatest names in 20th century drama, including the Noël Coward Estate.
Andy Miller is a reader, editor and author of books, most recently The Year of Reading Dangerously, as well as the co-host of the award-winning literary podcast “Backlisted”.
Sir Christopher Hampton is a renowned playwright and screenwriter whose plays have so far garnered four Tony Awards, three Oliviers, and five Evening Standard awards.
Chrstopher Haydon is the Artistic Director at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, where inn October 2022 he directed the first major London production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle for twenty-five years.
Clare Lizzimore is an acclaimed director and playwright. She directed the 25th anniversary production of Patrick Marber’s Closer at the Lyric Hammersmith in the summer of 2022.
Conor McPherson is from Dublin and began writing plays as a member of the University of Dublin drama society. His early plays include St Nicholas, Shining City, The Seafarer, and The Weir, which opened at the Royal Court before transferring to the West End of London and Broadway, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play for 1999.
Cordelia Lynn’s most recent plays include Sea Creatures, Love and Other Acts of Violence, and One for Sorrow.
Dan Rebellato is a playwright, journalist and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Daniel Bailey is a director, dramaturg and writer, is the Associate Artistic Director at the Bush Theatre, where he directed Tyrell William’s play Red Pitch.
Daniel Raggett is an acclaimed director. His hilarious production of Dario Fo’s classic farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist was a smash hit in Sheffield and London.
David Eldridge is widely regarded as one of the most important playwrighting voices at work today. His play Beginning premiered at the National Theatre in October 2017, before transferring to the West End.
David Ian Rabey is Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Theatre Practice at Aberystwyth University, and the author of The Theatre and Films of Jez Butterworth.
Dominic Cooke is an acclaimed director of stage and screen, including most recently the West End production of C.P. Taylor’s Good with David Tennant.
Douglas Rintoul is the Chief Executive of the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. He was the Artistic Director of the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch from 2015 to 2022.
Eamonn Jordan is Professor in Drama Studies at the School of English, Drama and Film, at University College Dublin.
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Kings College London, where she specialises in ancient Greek literature. She has published no fewer than thirty books, including Introducing the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle’s Way – How ancient wisdom can change your life, and Greek Tragedy – Suffering under the Sun.
Elaine Aston is a Professor at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, acclaimed for her work on theatre research and feminism.
Professor Emma Smith teaches early modern drama at Hertford College, Oxford, with a special focus on Shakespeare. She has written widely on both early modern drama and Shakespeare.
George Spender is the founder of specialist publisher Salamander Street. He previously the Editorial Director at dram specialist Oberon Books.
George Turvey trained as an actor and has appeared on stage and screen in many diverse roles. He co-founded Papatango in 2007 and became the sole Artistic Director in January 2013.
Graham Saunders is the Allardyce Nicoll Professor of Drama at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Love me or Kill me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes, About Kane: the Playwright and the Work, and the editor of Sarah Kane in Context.
Greg Hersov was the Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 1987 to 2014, where he directed more than 50 productions, including plays by Wilde, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Miller, T Williams, Pinter, Mamet, Baldwin, Cartwright, and many more.
Henry Filloux-Bennett is a writer and Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield.
Ivan Wise is a former editor of The Shavian, and he joins us to talk about Shaw’s sparkling comedy Arms and the Man.
James Dacre has been the Artistic Director of the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton since 2013. The Royal & Derngate is one of our outstanding regional theatres, commissioning and co-producing a consistently successful steam of new work that regularly tours and reaches the West End. Recent productions include TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, Alone in Berlin, The Worst Witch, Touching the Void, and The Lovely Bones.
The playwright James Graham is one of our most prolific and popular dramatists, renowned for both his stage plays and TV dramatizations. He has carved out a niche in bringing contemporary political history to life, turning sometimes arcane events into lucid and compelling drama.
Joe Dowling is an acclaimed director who was the youngest Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, before moving to North America and leading the prestigious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis for nearly twenty years.
Joe Penhall is acclaimed as both a playwright and screen writer, having written a dozen plays, including Some Voices, Pale Horse, Dumb Show and Birthday, all for the Royal Court Theatre, as well as more recently Mood Music at the Old Vic and the musical Sunny Afternoon, which he wrote with Ray Davies of the Kinks and which won four Olivier Awards in 2015.
John Mitchinson is a writer and publisher, co-founder of Unbound, the crowdfunding publishing platform for books, and co-host of the award-winning books podcast, Backlisted.
John Tiffany is the winner of two Tony Awards, an Olivier, a Drama Desk and an Obie award as a director, and his productions have earned countless other award nominations and wins. His recent work includes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in both London and New York….
Josie Rourke is an acclaimed theatre and screen director. She is the former Artistic Director of both the Bush and the Donmar theatres in London. Most recently she directed ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ at the National Theatre, and is our guest in episode 63 about the play.
Justin Greene is a director, writer and producer for theatre, television and radio. His writing credits include the musical Spend Spend Spend, which he wrote the book and lyrics for with composer Steve Brown, and also directed. The show won the Evening Standard, Critics Circle and Barclays Theatre awards for Best Musical and was nominated for an Olivier in the same category.
Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German at New College Oxford. She joins us on The Play Podcast to talk about Frank Wedekind’s controversial play Spring Awakening.
Lindsay Posner has directed Michael Frayn’s Noises Off twice, and he joins us to share his unique insights on this comic masterpiece.
Lisa Dwan is an award-winning actress, director, writer and scholar. She is most well known internationally for her performances and adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s work, including multiple performances of Beckett’s Not I over the past 15 years at London’s Battersea Arts Centre , the Southbank Centre, and at the International Beckett Festival in 2012.
Lucy Bailey’s credits as a director range from Shakespeare to modern classics, including a special affinity with the plays of Agatha Christie.
Lucy Kirkwood is a playwirght and screenwriter. Her plays include Chimerica, The Children, Mosquitoes and The Welkin.
Margaret Perry’s latest play Paradise Now!’ received rave reviews during its run at the Bush Theatre in December 2022. Her previous plays include Porcelain and Collapsible.
Mark Taylor-Batty is a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at Leeds University. His key areas of interest include Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and twentieth-century French and British theatre.
Matt Beresford is a director, speaker, trainer and leadership coach. He spent fifteen years working in business, before re-training as a Theatre Director at RADA, followed by an MA at St. Mary’s, University of London.
Matthew McFrederick is a theatre practitioner, historian and academic, and Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Reading, where he completed his PhD investigating the production histories of Samuel Beckett’s drama in London.
Michael Frayn is a bestselling and award-winning novelist, journalist, screen writer and playwright…
Monica Dolan is an Olivier and Bafta award-winning actor, whose work spans television, film and stage. She won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 2019 West End production of All About Eve, a Bafta Award for her unforgettable performance as Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult on ITV in 2011, and a Bafta nomination for Best Supporting Actress in A Very English Scandal alongside Hugh Grant.
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. Her book English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation published in 2020 examines how contemporary drama presents groups and issues that divide our society.
Neil Anthony Docking is as a writer whose work appeared in press, television, radio and film, before he wrote his first play, the funny and devastatingly moving The Revlon Girl.
Nicholas Rowe has appeared on many of London’s stages including in two productions of Mike Bartlett plays at the Almeida, Albion and King Charles III, which also transferred to the West End.
Nick is the founder of Nick Hern Books, the play publishers who have led the UK in championing the best new playwrights for the past 30 years.
Nigel Slater OBE is the presenter of nine BBC television series, and the author of a collection of bestselling books including the classics Appetite two-volumes of Tender, as well as The Kitchen Diaries trilogy.
Nina Raine is both a playwright and a director. Her own plays include Rabbit, Tribes, Consent, Stories and Bach & Sons.
Oliver Kaderbhai is an actor, director and producer. Hwe is the founder of the devising theatre company Delirium.
Oliver Soden is the author of Masquerade – The Lives of Noël Coward, the first new biography of Coward for thirty years.
Patrick Marber is a writer, director, actor and comedian. He is the author of a dozen plays including Dealer’s Choice, Closer, Howard Katz and The Red Lion, as well as adaptations of a number of classics.
Samuel Bailey began writing plays in Bristol and developed work with the Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory Theatres and Theatre West. His play Shook won the 2019 Papatango award.
Simon Stephens is one of the most acclaimed and prolific playwrights of our time whose work has been originated at theatres around in the globe.
Dr Stephen Marino is the founding editor of The Arthur Miller Journal, which features essays on all aspect of Miller’s life, work, and career.
Thomas Keith teaches acting and theatre at Pace University in New York, and joins us to talk about ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ by Tennessee Williams.
Tim McMullan is one of our most acclaimed and recognisable actors. His career encompasses a number of iconic stage performances in Shakespeare, as well as innumerable other theatre, film and TV roles.
Tom Basden is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian. His hilarious adaptation of Dario Fo’s classic farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist was a smash hit in Sheffield and London.
Tony Marshall is perhaps best known for his role as Noel Garcia in Casualty. Most recently he was on stage in the Old Vic’s 2022 production of Jitney.
Tyrell Williams is the award-winning author of Red Pitch, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in February 2022.
Victoria Hamilton is an award-winning actress of stage, TV and film…
Wil Johnson has an extensive list of stage, TV and film credits, including most recently in the Old Vic’s 2022 production of Jitney.
Winsome Pinnock is an award-winning British playwright of Jamaican heritage…
Suggest a play
We’re always open to suggestions about plays to talk about, so if you’d like us to discuss a favourite of yours, please email us at plays@theplaypodcast.com. Let us know why you think we should cover it, and if you know anyone who’d be excited and qualified to talk about it with us (even yourself if modesty permits!).