Chris Monks on theatre in the round and plans for the SJT
March 30, 2009
In the first part of an extended interview, soon-to-be Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director Chris Monks tells Simon Walker about his time as composer for the Royal Exchange, the future of the SJT and the importance of children’s theatre
“There was a version of Measure for Measure, in which the character of the Duke was into eastern philosophy, so I wanted an eastern flavour to the music,” Chris Monks begins. “The only place you could go to borrow records was the local library, where the librarians used to look at them carefully to check that you hadn’t scratched them and then put them very gently back into their sleeves, and then you’d take them and listen to some amazing music from the other side of the planet collected by an academic. Read more
SJT outlines Summer programme
March 23, 2009
Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre has released details of its Summer programme. The season opens with a production of Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias (30 April – 27 June), led by new SJT artistic director Chris Monks. Long-serving previous artistic director Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s return to his 1969 farce How the Other Half Loves (4 June – 29 August) and Monks’ adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s swashbuckling operetta The Pirates of Penzance (2 July – 22 August), which has been given what the SJT describes as a “Reservoir Dogs twist”, are the other major forthcoming house productions.
Tom Georgeson on When We Are Married and profile of JB Priestley
March 18, 2009
While Tom Georgeson describes acting as a “lovely job” in general, he seems to regard the role of Henry Ormonroyd as a bit of a treat. “Mine is a real bouncy, fun part,” he explains. “He’s the balance in the play – the other voice. It’s been said that he’s JB Priestley’s voice and, to a certain extent, I think that he is, except that he’s pissed throughout the play. I don’t think Priestley would have been pissed, but the fact that Ormonroyd’s drunk enables him to say things that wouldn’t normally be said.”
Tristan Sturrock on Don John
March 15, 2009
“This is really the director Emma (Rice)’s childhood,” Tristan Sturrock explains. “It’s to do with the whole Winter of Discontent. It goes back to a story in which she had a big loss with a mate in 1978 and it had a massive impact on her. She just had a hunch – an inkling – about that time. After talking, she and the designer, Vicki (Mortimer), felt that it was a good setting point, with the disco and rock, that would sit well with the piece. There wasn’t anything political about the choice – it’s just that it seemed right for the world that she wanted to create.”
Review: Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness
March 11, 2009
Date reviewed: 10 March 2009
Venue: West Yorkshire Playhouse
First performed at Plymouth’s Drum Theatre in May 2002 with author Anthony Neilson as director, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness has now been revived by Headlong and Southampton’s Nuffield Theatre, with Steve Marmion as director. The company, which recently produced cricketing comedy The English Game, professes to “aim constantly to push the imaginative boundaries of the stage”, and its decision to produce Edward Gant could hardly be more consistent with this objective. It is a vivid and searching depiction of a Victorian freak show’s last performance under the leadership of the insistently philosophical Gant.