David Eldridge Archives - The Play Podcast

106 – End by David Eldridge

by Douglas Schatz | Jan 13, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves - Marc Brenner

Clive Owen as Alfie and Saskia Reeves as Julie
National Theatre, London, December 2025
Photo by Marc Brenner

106 – End by David Eldridge

David Eldridge’s new play End is the final instalment of what David has described as a “triptych for the theatre”, following Beginning in 2017, and Middle in 2022. Each of the plays in the series presents a snapshot of a couple at a particular time of life: Beginning shows us a moment when a couple first meet; in Middle the couple are reviewing their marriage and lives in middle-age; and now in End we meet a couple who are facing the premature end of their life together. The play is not only an emotionally painful meditation on mortality, but also a testament to the life affirming power of love.

The three plays are not in fact written as sequels – it is a different couple in each play. What they do have in common is their form – all consisting of a two-handed conversation played out in real time – as well as their recurring themes – the need for, and fear of, love; how couples maintain relationships as the years go by; how our class origins define our choices and sense of identity; and finally how we navigate the reality of the finite time we have to live.

As we record this episode End is playing at the National Theatre in London, with Saskia Reeves and Clive Owen as the couple. I was privileged to talk with David about Beginning way back in episode 11 of the podcast, and then Middle in episode 47, so I am delighted to be able complete the trilogy by welcoming David back to talk about End.

011 – Beginning: Listen here
047 – Middle: Listen here

David Eldridge

In addition to the trilogy comprising Beginning (2017), Middle (2022) and End (2025), David Eldridge’s plays include: Under a Blue Sky, Festen, Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, Market Boy, In Basildon, and The Knot of the Heart, as well as adaptations of Ibsen and Strindberg, including The Wild Duck and Miss Julie. David’s most recent play is his adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which premiered at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester in 2024, before transferring to the Soho Place in London’s West End in 2025.

David is also a lecturer in the Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

Recommended Play

David recommended My Mother’s Funeral: The Show by Kelly Jones.

Photo by Johan Persson

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 early 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.

047 – Middle, by David Eldridge

by Douglas Schatz | May 30, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

Claire Rushbrook as Maggie and Daniel Ryan as Gary
National Theatre 2022
Photo: Johan Persson

047 – Middle, by David Eldridge

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It is 4:00am. Maggie can’t sleep. She is heating some milk on the hob.
Gary comes looking for her: “What’s wrong?”.
Silence
“I’m not sure I love you anymore”.

Maggie and Gary are nearing 50, and they have reached a moment of crisis in the middle of their marriage and their lives. As the dawn approaches they finally open up to each other about their separate unhappiness, asking questions about what they have done in their lives so far, what they wished they had done, and what more they now want. Their personal soul-searching encompasses many of the common anxieties of both their time of life and of our age.

This is David Eldridge’s new play Middle, which as we recorded this episode is live on the stage at the National Theatre in London. Middle follows David’s wonderful play Beginning, which ran in the same theatre in 2017 and which I was privileged to talk with David about in episode 11 of the podcast. Middle is not a direct sequel however; it is part of what David is calling a “triptych for the theatre”, in which he captures different epochal moments in the real-time lives of a couple’s relationship. I’m delighted to welcome David back to talk us through this next stage of the important dramatic trilogy he is building.

David Eldridge

David Eldridge is widely regarded as one of the most important playwrighting voices at work today. His most recent play Middle opened at the National Theatre in May 2022. It follows on from Beginning, in what will be a “loose trilogy” of plays. Beginning premiered at the National Theatre in October 2017 before transferring to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End in January 2018.

David’s other plays include Under the Blue Sky, which premiered at the Royal Court in 2000 and was revived in the West End in 2008 with Chris O’Dowd, Catherine Tate and Francesca Annis in the cast; and Festen, an adaptation of the film of the same name that premiered at the Almeida in 2005 before transferring to the West End and Broadway. He has also often written about Essex, where he originally comes from, in plays such as In Basildon which premiered at the Royal Court in 2012, as well as M.A.D. from 2004, and Market Boy in 2006, which were both partly informed by his childhood working on a stall at Romford market. The Knot of the Heart, which was produced by the Almeida Theatre in 2011, powerfully portays the terrible price of addiction wrought on a family.

David has also successfully adapted classics from Ibsen and Strindberg, including The Wild Duck, John Gabriel Borkman and Miss Julie.

David is also a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

Recommended Play

David recommended The Lodger by Robert Holman

David in rehearsal for Middle
Photo by Johan Persson

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Middle include the significance of Crouch End, the sources of our personal life goals, and what the musical selections in the play signal.

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.

David Eldridge

by Douglas Schatz | Mar 3, 2022 | Contributor

David Eldridge

In addition to the trilogy comprising Beginning (2017), Middle (2022) and End (2025), David Eldridge’s plays include: Under a Blue Sky, Festen, Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, Market Boy, In Basildon, and The Knot of the Heart, as well as adaptations of Ibsen and Strindberg, including The Wild Duck and Miss Julie. David’s most recent play is his adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which premiered at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester in 2024, before transferring to the Soho Place in London’s West End in 2025.

David is also a lecturer in the Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

Photo by Johan Persson

Podcast Episode(s)

011 - Beginning, by David Eldridge

106 - End by David Eldridge

047 - Middle, by David Eldridge

Recommended Play(s)

In episode 11 David recommended Across Oka by Robert Holman.
In episode 47 he recommended another Robert Holman play, The Lodger.
In episode 106 he recommendedMy Mother’s Funeral: The Show by Kelly Jones.

011 – Beginning, by David Eldridge

by Douglas Schatz | Aug 18, 2020 | Podcast Episodes

Sam Troughton and Justine Mitchell in Beginning at the National Theatre – Photo Johan Persson

011 – Beginning, by David Eldridge

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Danny is the last guest remaining at Laura’s flat warming party. They have been eyeing each other up from afar all night, and now that they are left alone, Laura makes it clear that she wants Danny to stay. Surprisingly Danny does not immediately seize his chance. His confidence has taken a knock following an unhappy divorce, and the stakes and tension escalate for him when Laura declares that she is ovulating!

This is the simple, but deeply engaging premise of David Eldridge’s play Beginning, which premiered at the National Theatre in October 2017 before transferring to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End in January 2018. Justine Mitchell as Laura and Sam Troughton as Danny rightly received critical acclaim for their performances, as did the play. It is funny, piercingly perceptive and profoundly moving in its portrait of two lonely people’s lives that have not yet turned out as hoped or promised. Perhaps this will be the beginning of something. The play’s author, David Eldridge, joins us to explore the how Danny and Laura came to life, and how their date night unfolds.

David Eldridge

David Eldridge is widely regarded as one of the most important playwrighting voices at work today. His plays include Under the Blue Sky which premiered at the Royal Court in 2000 and was revived in the West End in 2008 with Chris O’Dowd, Catherine Tate and Francesca Annis in the cast; and Festen, an adaptation of the film of the same name that premiered at the Almeida in 2005 before transferring to the West End and Broadway. He has also often written about Essex, where he originally comes from, in plays such as In Basildon which premiered at the Royal Court in 2012, as well as M.A.D. from 2004, and Market Boy in 2006, which were both partly informed by his childhood working on a stall at Romford market. The Knot of the Heart, which was produced by the Almeida Theatre in 2011, powerfully portays the terrible price of addiction wrought on a family. David has also successfully adapted classics from Ibsen and Strindberg, including The Wild Duck, John Gabriel Borkman and Miss Julie. He has also written for TV, including the screenplay for The Scandalous Lady W on BBC, and he lends the experience and expertise he has gained in his impressive career to his role as a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and in his teaching screenwriting for the Arvon Foundation.

Recommended Play

David recommended Across Oka by Robert Holman.

Portrait by Claire McNamee
Lumb Bank, 2019

We have footnotes for this episode …

Our Footnotes to the episode on Beginning include observations on what the epigraphs signal about the play, measuring ourselves on the property ladder, the language of sex, and how standing in your underwear is the ultimate honesty.

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 by following the links below. We will earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. You will also be supporting an independent bookseller. 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.