Oliver Kaderbhai Archives - The Play Podcast

Oliver Kaderbhai

by Douglas Schatz | Apr 14, 2022 | Contributor

Oliver Kaderbhai

Oliver Kaderbhai is an actor, director and producer. He graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London, in Drama and Theatre Studies, before founding the devising theatre company Delirium.

His credits as a Director include Clybourne Park (Park Theatre), Holes (CSSD), Striking 12 (Union Theatre), Songs of Abdulkarim (59 Productions, Kuwait), Peter Pan (Co-Director, Chichester Festival Theatre), One Minute (The Vaults), The Provoked Wife (Go People), From Where I’m Standing (Pegasus Theatre), Oranges on the Brain (Pegasus Theatre), Go To Your God Like A Soldier (Old Vic Tunnels), and Your Nation Loves You (Old Vic Tunnels).

He was Assistant or Associate Director on Jesus Christ Superstar (Regents Park Open Air Theatre), Running Wild (Regents Park Open Air Theatre and UK tour), Guys and Dolls (Playmakers Rep, USA) and Jack & The Beanstalk (Lyric, Hammersmith).

Acting credits include: The Man in the White Suit (West End), Margot, Dame (The Kings Head), The Best Man (West End), Jumping on my Shadow (Lakeside Arts), Hatch (Polka), One Minute (The Vaults), Ignition (Frantic Assembly), Go To Your God Like A Soldier (Underbelly, Edinburgh).

Podcast Episode(s)

044 - Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris

Recommended Play(s)

Oliver recommended Downstate by Bruce Norris

044 – Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris

by Douglas Schatz | Apr 14, 2022 | Podcast Episodes

044 – Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris

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It is 1959 in Chicago and Russ and Bev are moving out of their three-bedroom bungalow at 406 Clybourne Park. The address of their house is important, because it is about to become the first property in the white middle-class neighbourhood of Clybourne Park to be sold to a black family, much to the consternation of some in the local community. The proposed sale of their house sparks heated debate between neighbours, which continues even 50 years later when we meet the next generation who want to purchase Russ and Bev’s property.

This is Bruce Norris’s provocative play, Clybourne Park, which is based on the real-life story of prejudice and persecution originally told in Lorraine Hansbury’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. Norris’s 2010 play highlights our continuing anxieties and dysfunction over race, our obsession with property ownership, and the challenges of accepting and adapting to changing multi-culturalism in our societies. Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. It received its first UK production at the Royal Court in September 2010, and transferred to the West End in February 2011, winning an Olivier award for Best New Play.

Clybourne Park is currently being revived at the Park Theatre in London in a thought-provoking and corruscatingly funny new production directed by Oliver Kaderbhai. I’m delighted that Oliver has joined me on the podcast to share his insights on this absorbing play.

Oliver Kaderbhai

Oliver Kaderbhai is an actor, director and producer. He graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London, in Drama and Theatre Studies, before founding the devising theatre company Delirium.

Recommended Play

Oliver recommended Downstate by Bruce Norris

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Clybourne Park include listening for the echoes of the first act in the second half of the play, the small things that reveal the characters’ unconscious bias, and how we define the tribes we belong to.

Footnotes for Patrons

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Douglas

The Texts

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063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel

May 24, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.

Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.

062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward

Apr 26, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York in 1930, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.

061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn

Apr 13, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Cordelia Lynn’s play Sea Creatures is a poetic exploration of loss and grief, its setting betwixt the sea and shore rich in metaphoric resonances. As we record this episode, Sea Creatures is playing at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a spellbinding production directed by James Macdonald.

I am delighted to be joined by playwright Cordelia Lynn to talk about her fascinating new play.