Clare Lizzimore Archives - The Play Podcast

Clare Lizzimore

by Douglas Schatz | Sep 4, 2022 | Contributor

Clare Lizzimore

Clare Lizzimore is a director and a writer. She was a resident director the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and a staff director at the National Theatre, and she has directed numerous plays as part of the Royal Court Theatre’s international programme.

More recently she has directed plays not only at the Royal Court, but at the Arcola, Theatre 503, Hampstead, the Kiln, the Old Fire Station in Oxford and at the Young Vic, where her production of Mike Bartlett’s play Bull won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.

As a playwright, Clare has written plays for the Royal Court and the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.

Podcast Episode(s)

051 - Closer, by Patrick Marber

Recommended Play(s)

Clare recommended The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

051 – Closer, by Patrick Marber

by Douglas Schatz | Aug 27, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

Sam Troughton as Larry
Noina Toussaint-White as Anna
in Closer at the Lyric Hammersmith 2022
Photo by Marc Brenner

051 – Closer, by Patrick Marber

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Patrick Marber’s play Closer depicts a merry-go-round of metropolitan relationships powered by sex and betrayal, where partners fall in and out of love in constant search of new stimulation and self-worth. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 1997, and its clever and candid dissection of the destructive power of sexual desire hit a contemporary nerve, propelling it on to the West End and Broadway, and winning Olivier and NY Critics Circle Awards. It was also made into a film in 2005, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Natalie Portman.

Now twenty-five years on the play has been revived at the Lyric Hammersmith in a dazzling new production directed by Clare Lizzimore. Clare joins me in this episode to explore how Marber’s portrait of sexual behaviour written in a different social and moral time has aged. Does its unflinching display of basic instincts still offer salutary truths in our #MeToo world?

Clare Lizzimore

As a playwright, Clare has written plays for the Royal Court and the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.

Recommended Play

Clare recommended The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Closer include more on the chronology of the scenes in the play, Marber’s clever manipulation of time and space in the staging, the significance of the Newton’s Cradle prop, and the resonance of the title.

Footnotes for Patrons

BECOME A PATRON!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron.
Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as exclusive access to The Play Review.

For details click here

Thank you very much for listening and for your support.
Douglas

The Texts

If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them from our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s. Not only will you be supporting independent booksellers, we will also earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Click on the cover to buy from our chosen partner. Thank you.

115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.