Douglas Rintoul Archives - The Play Podcast

Douglas Rintoul

by Douglas Schatz | May 12, 2022 | Contributor

Douglas Rintoul

Douglas Rintoul has recently been appointed the Chief Executive of the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. For the past seven years he has been the Artistic Director of the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, during which time the theatre won the London Theatre of the Year Stage Award 2020. He has also been a freelance director, an associate of Complicité, and a founder of the national touring theatre company Transport. His work has received no fewer than 24 Off West End Award nominations.

Selected credits as a director include: As You Like It (QTH and National Theatre); Abigail’s Party (QTH, Salisbury Playhouse, Derby Theatre and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg) Macbeth (QTH and Derby Theatre); The Crucible (QTH, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Selladoor); Made in Dagenham and Rope (QTH and New Wolsey Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing, In Basildon Love Letters, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole The Musical, Misfits, The Hired Man (QTH); The Deep Blue Sea, All My Sons, Of Mice of Men (Watermill Theatre); Touched (Trafalgar Studios); and Elegy (Transport/Theate503).

Podcast Episode(s)

046 - All My Sons, by Arthur Miller

Recommended Play(s)

Douglas recommended Europe by David Greig

046 – All My Sons, by Arthur Miller

by Douglas Schatz | May 12, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

Eve Matheson as Kate and David Hounslow as Joe
Queen’s Theatre, Hornchuch 2022
Photo: Mark Sepple

046 – All My Sons, by Arthur Miller

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It is a sunny Sunday morning in the Summer of 1946. In the garden of Joe and Kate Keller’s home in the outskirts of an all-American town stands the broken trunk of slender apple tree. There has been a storm in the night that has struck the tree, an event that Kate Keller takes as a sign, because the tree was planted as a memorial to their son Larry who was reported missing in action in the war three years ago, and whom Kate wants to believe will yet return home alive. But there is a greater storm brewing that over the course of this long Sunday will destroy the fragile peace of this family.

This is the setting of Arthur Miller’s breakthrough play All My Sons, which Miller started to write during the early 1940s before it premiered on Broadway in January 1947. Despite some who criticized what they deemed the play’s unpatriotic sentiments, it ran for nearly three years, winning the Tony award for best author and earning Miller life-changing amounts of fame and money. Like some of Miller’s other work All My Sons is both a searing family tragedy and an exploration of the moral challenges that he believed were inherent in the American Dream.

Douglas Rintoul recently directed All My Sons at the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, where he has been Artistic Director for the past seven years. Douglas joins me to share his insights on this devastatingly powerful play.

Douglas Rintoul

Recommended Play

Douglas recommended Europe by David Greig

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on All My Sons include Miller’s sources of the story in the play, observations on his critique of the American Dream, and the characters of Ann and George Deever.

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The Texts

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071 – Clyde’s, by Lynn Nottage

Dec 4, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Lynn Nottage’s play Clyde’s is set in a truck-stop diner on the outskirts of Reading, Pennsylvania. This is no ordinary diner though, because the short-order cooks that make the sandwiches that the diner is famous for are all ex-cons. The eponymous proprietor, Clyde, has not offered these characters a second chance out of the softness of her heart, but they discover some unexpected hope for their futures in their communal sufferings and support.

Lynn Nottage has won the Pulitzer Prize for drama twice, and as we record this episode the European premiere of Clyde’s is on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in London. I am delighted to be joined by the show’s director Lynette Linton, who also directed Nottage’s last play Sweat at the same theatre in 2018.

070 – King Lear, by William Shakespeare

Nov 17, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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The poet Percy Shelley called King Lear “the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world”. It is a prodigious play in every sense. There are ten major roles, it has multiple significant plot lines, an elemental stormy setting, intense domestic conflict, and acts of war and violence which roll on with a propulsive tragic energy and conjure a challenging philosophical vision.

As we record this episode a new production directed by and starring Sir Kenneth Branagh arrives in London’s West End.

I am very pleased to be joined in this episode by Paul Prescott, who is an academic, writer and theatre practitioner specialising in Shakespearean drama.

069 – A View from the Bridge, by Arthur Miller

Nov 1, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge tells the tragic story of Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman who works on the docks under Brooklyn Bridge. Eddie lives with his wife Beatrice and 17-year old niece, Catherine, whom they have cared for since she was a child. But Catherine is no longer a child, and her natural desire to pursue her own life will tragically rupture the lives of this family and the close-knit immigrant community of Red Hook.

As we record this episode a new production of A View from the Bridge is touring the UK, and I’m delighted to talk with its director, Holly Race Roughan, about this powerful play.