David Adjmi Archives - The Play Podcast

098 – Stereophonic by David Adjmi

by Douglas Schatz | Jul 11, 2025 | Podcast Episodes

The band in the studio
Stereophonic
Duke of York’s Theatre, London, June 2025
Photo by Marc Brenner

098 – Stereophonic by David Adjmi

It is 1976, and we are in a recording studio in California, where a fictional Anglo-American rock band has just started recording their sophomore LP, when they learn that their first album has unexpectedly climbed back up the charts. Their new-found fame comes with added pressures, from the record company’s inflated budget and the glare of artistic expectations. The creative stress takes its toll, as does the tedium of living together out of a suitcase and the long hours holed up in the studio; a strain appeased, or perhaps exacerbated, by a daily diet of cocaine and alcohol. No wonder there are fractures in the band’s professional and personal relationships.

This is the extraordinary play, Stereophonic, which recreates the band’s struggles to record their album. The play is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall depiction of both the magic and the monotony of collaborative, artistic endeavour, as the cast recreates in real-time the process of making music, and play out the price they pay for their art and fame.

Stereophonic premiered at Playwrights Horizons in New York City in October 2023, before moving to Broadway in April 2024, where it was nominated for 13 Tony awards — more than any other play in Broadway history — and won five, including Best Play. The play was written by David Adjmi, directed by Daniel Aukin, and includes original songs written by Will Butler, formerly of rock band Arcade Fire. As we record this episode the show is on stage at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, with four new British actors joining three of the original cast, all of whom give astounding performances that include singing and playing the instruments as a real live band.

I am thrilled to be joined by the play’s author, David Adjmi, who has enjoyed a whirlwind ride with the success of Stereophonic over the past eighteen months, although it is not true to say that this was an overnight success, as I believe that Stereophonic was ten years in the making. The long gestation could partly be attributed to the fact that Stereophonic is not a conventional play. Nor is it a musical. One might try to label it as a hybrid of the two, a play with songs. But that doesn’t do it justice. It is its own thing.

David Adjmi

David Adjmi is an award-winning American playwright, whose plays include Stereophonic, Stunning, Marie Antoinette, 3C, Elective Affinities and The Evildoers. He is also the author of Lot Six, his critically acclaimed memoir.

Recommended Play

David recommended TopDog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks.

Photo by Will Butler

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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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

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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

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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.