Mark Taylor-Batty Archives - The Play Podcast

Mark Taylor-Batty

by Douglas Schatz | Mar 4, 2022 | Contributor

Mark Taylor-Batty

Mark Taylor-Batty is a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at Leeds University. His key areas of interest include the career of Harold Pinter, the theatricality of Samuel Beckett, and twentieth-century French and British theatre.

He is a co-editor of the Methuen Drama Engage series of books, and most appropriately for our purposes he is the author of two books on Harold Pinter: The Theatre of Harold Pinter (published by Bloomsbury) and About Pinter: The Playwright and The Work (published by Faber and Faber).

He is also a Director of the Harold Pinter Society.

Podcast Episode(s)

006 - Betrayal, by Harold Pinter

Recommended Play(s)

Mark recommended ear for eye by debbie tucker green.

006 – Betrayal, by Harold Pinter

by theplaypodcast | Jun 11, 2020 | Podcast Episodes

006 – Betrayal, by Harold Pinter

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Pinter’s modern classic dissects the dynamics of betrayal in marriage, friendship and work. The ambiguities of the adulterous affair that is the core of the play are made all the more unsettling by the innovative chronology of the narrative: the play famously opens with the end of the affair and works backwards to its inception.

Joining us to mine the depths of Pinter’s compressed masterpiece is Mark Taylor-Batty, senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds and author of The Theatre of Harold Pinter (Bloomsbury 2014).

Dr. Mark Taylor-Batty

Mark is a senior lecturer in Theatre Studies at Leeds University. His key areas of interest include the career of Harold Pinter, the theatricality of Samuel Beckett, and twentieth-century French and British theatre. He is a co-editor of the Methuen Drama Engage series of books, and most appropriately for our purposes he is the author of two books on Harold Pinter: The Theatre of Harold Pinter (published by Bloomsbury) and About Pinter: The Playwright and The Work (published by Faber and Faber). He is also a Director of the Harold Pinter Society.

Recommended Play

Mark recommended ear for eye by debbie tucker green.

We have footnotes for this episode …

The footnotes to accompany our episode on Betrayal include observations on Joan Bakewell’s version of their affair, why the island of Torcello is the perfect choice for their honeymoon visit, and the society of the 1970s the play is set in.

Footnotes for Patrons

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Douglas

The Texts

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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.