Lynette Linton Archives - The Play Podcast

Lynette Linton

by Douglas Schatz | Dec 4, 2023 | Contributor

Lynette Linton

Lynette Linton is the Artistic Director of the Bush theatre in London, where she has been leading a ground-breaking program of new work that champions all types of diverse voices. We’ve been lucky enough to cover two of their acclaimed recent productions on the podcast, Tyrell Williams’s Red Pitch and Margaret Perry’s Paradise Now!

Lynette was previously Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar, where in 2018 she directed the UK premiere of Sweat, for which she won the Best Director award at the Black British Theatre Awards. Before that she was Associate Director at the Gate theatre. Her long list of directing credits includes Blues for an Alabama Sky at the National Theatre, for which she won Evening Standard and Critics Circle Awards for Best Director, as well as Richard II at the Globe theatre, which was distinguished for being the first ever company of women of colour on a major UK stage. She has directed or assisted on shows at the Bush, the Donmar, the Gate, the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Royal Court and the West End.

Photo by Bronwen Sharp

Podcast Episode(s)

071 - Clyde's, by Lynn Nottage

Recommended Play(s)

Lynette recommended two plays that are returning to the stage at the Bush theatre in early 2024:
Shifters by Benedict Lombe, and,
The Cord by Bijan Sheiban.

071 – Clyde’s, by Lynn Nottage

by Douglas Schatz | Dec 4, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

The cast of Clyde’s
Donmar Warehouse
November 2023
Photo by Helen Murray

071 – Clyde’s, by Lynn Nottage

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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. But the eponymous proprietor, Clyde, has not offered these ex-cons a second chance out of the softness of her heart. Despite her stern style, the characters who wash up here in Clyde’s discover some unexpected hope for their futures in their communal sufferings and support.

Lynn Nottage is very well known in America, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for Sweat. Clyde’s was first produced on Broadway in November 2021, and according to American Theatre magazine it was the most-produced play in non-profit theatres in America in 2022–2023.

As we record this episode a new production of Clyde’s is on stage at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London, directed by Lynette Linton, who also directed Sweat at the same theatre back in 2018. The stories and characters of both this play and Sweat are based on extensive research Nottage carried out with local people, and the plays certainly have the stamp of lived reality.

I’m delighted to be joined by the director Lynette Linton who, having directed both of these great plays, is the perfect guest to talk us through Clyde’s.

Lynette Linton

Recommended Play

Lynette recommended two plays that are returning to the stage at the Bush theatre in early 2024:
Shifters by Benedict Lombe, and,
The Cord by Bijan Sheiban.

Photo by Bronwen Sharp

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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.