Adam Spreadbury-Maher is not one to avoid a challenge. Deciding between the cultural opportunities Australia offered in Melbourne or Sydney, the Canberra-born, opera-trained performer decided on London for a career as theatre director. Because it is, he says, home to the English-language theatre tradition, has more theatres than any other city, and plenty of pubs.

“Just Between Ourselves,,,”, “Man of the Moment…” and “Private Fears in Public Places” – the titles of the Alan Ayckbourn plays being performed this summer in Northampton somehow express the playwright’s diverse worlds: intimate conversation, headline declaration and a sociological thesis-heading. All come, of course, with laughs but they have their darker sides too. As the season reaches its climax Timothy Ramsden meets Laurie Sansom, Artistic Director at Northampton’s Royal & Derngate Theatre and former Ayckbourn associate, who put the season together.

Read on . . .

About to open at The Kings Head, Islington, Geoff Ambler spends a day watching this new production in rehearsals.

It wasn’t hard to estimate the Saturday night stalls crowd at Northampton’s Royal Theatre for the final performance there of Arthur Schnitzler’s Liebelei in a production by Luc Bondy of David Harrower’s English version, called Sweet Nothings.

Playwrights - and what they get up to in private.

I have just finished reviewing David Edgar’s excellent book on How Plays Work. Reviewing this book has focused my thinking on a word - the noun that describes the activity of writing plays.

Rod Dungate explores a linguistic anomaly in the world of writing plays . . .

The Cut Halesworth Suffolk 27 April-10 May 2009.

Hazel Kyte in the USA and Canada.

RSC actor Harriet Walter puts together an intriguing photographic exhibition in the RSC Theatre, Stratford.

Harriet Walter is starring in Antony and Cleopatra with Patrick Stewart - sold out in Stratford and moving to the Novello Theatre, Aldwych in January. Here's information about a photographic exhibition she has put together - celebrating the beauty of the ageing face. It will run from 2 December till February 2007.

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’ Antony and Cleopatra

Rupert Bridgewater takes on the challenge of unnatural selection for the short-term Fringe visitor.

Between 3-6 April fourteen companies came together in the small Northumberland town of Alnwick to present and debate examples of the work they tour, mostly to rural settings. Timothy Ramsden reports.

Northampton expands the repertory with O’Neill’s long journey and Tennessee Williams on the unkindness of families.

Hazel Kyte shows all aboard needn't be bored.

NEW YORK ROUND UP; Spring 2009

Hazel Kyte’s further bites into Big Apple theatre.

Hazel Kyte on and beyond the Great White Way.

Flickering black-and-white images on a small TV screen go back to the dawn of Angel time. The days of schoolboys in caps filing into the converted Islington Temperance Hall building, in early 1961 – before the decade truly became ‘the Sixties’. In they troop politely to watch through a postbox-like slit a bright stage where puppets play-out stories, with a skill and depth that became trademarks of Little Angel Puppet Theatre. (Coyly, the theatre downgrades the word ‘puppet’ in their publicity – the web address is www.littleangeltheatre.com - presumably it’s thought offputting for anyone who hasn’t seen the work itself.)

Music and Lyrics balance in the theatre.

When a theatre does like the Royal in Northampton, and revives a forgotten play, it becomes clear how stiflingly limited is so much of what’s seen on stage these days.

Hazel Kyte rounds up old and new.

Cabaret world.

My principle reason for visiting a Big Apple filled with pre-election buzz and Hallowe’en was the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s l9th annual Cabaret Convention. Taking place over four nights at the Rose Theatre, home of Jazz at Lincoln Centre, this is a superb venue with prices from $25 to $100 per evening, fantastic value for two and a half hours of the best cabaret stars strutting their stuff.

London.

AN INSPECTOR CALLS
by J B Priestley.

Transfer to
Wyndhams Theatre.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed, Thu 2.30pm Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 50min No interval.

TICKETS: 0844 482 5120.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 September at Novello Theatre.

Seemingly imperishable play and production.