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Hermione Lee is the renowned biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and, most recently, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard died at the end of last year, so Hermione and I talked about the influence of Shaw and Eliot and Coward on his work, the recent production of The Invention of Love, the role of ideas in Stoppard's writing, his writing process, rehearsals, revivals, movies. We also talked about John Carey, Brian Moore, Virginia Woolf as a critic. Hermione is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. Her life of Anita Brookner will be released in September.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today I have the great pleasure of talking to Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Hermione was the first woman to be appointed Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and she is the most renowned and admired living English biographer. She wrote a seminal life of Virginia Woolf. She's written splendid books about people like Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and my own favorite, Penelope Fitzgerald. And most recently she has been the biographer of Tom Stoppard, and I believe this year she has a new book coming out about Anita Brookner. Hermione, welcome.Hermione Lee: Thank you very much.Oliver: We're mostly going to talk about Tom Stoppard because he, sadly, just died. But I might have a few questions about your broader career at the end. So tell me first how Shavian is Stoppard's work?Lee: He would reply “very close Shavian,” when asked that question. I think there are similarities. There are obviously similarities in the delighting forceful intellectual play, and you see that very much in Jumpers where after all the central character is a philosopher, a bit of a bonkers philosopher, but still a very rational one.And you see it in someone like Henry, the playwright in The Real Thing, who always has an answer to every argument. He may be quite wrong, but he is full of the sort of zest of argument, the passion for argument. And I think that kind of delight in making things intellectually clear and the pleasure in argument is very Shavian.Where I think they differ and where I think is really more like Chekov, or more like Beckett or more in his early work, the dialogues in T. S. Elliot, and less like Shaw is in a kind of underlying strangeness or melancholy or sense of fate or sense of mortality that rings through almost all the plays, even the very, very funny ones. And I don't think I find that in Shaw. My prime reading time for Shaw was between 15 and 19, when I thought that Shaw was the most brilliant grownup that one could possibly be listening to, and I think now I feel less impressed by him and a bit more impatient with him.And I also think that Shaw is much more in the business of resolving moral dilemmas. So in something like Arms and the Man or Man and Superman, you will get a kind of resolution, you will get a sort of sense of this is what we're meant to be agreeing with.Whereas I think quite often one of the fascinating things about Stoppard is the way that he will give all sides of the question; he will embody all sides of the question. And I think his alter ego there is not Shaw, but the character of Turgenev in The Coast of Utopia, who is constantly being nagged by his radical political friends to make his mind up and to have a point of view and come down on one side or the other. And Turgenev says, I take every point of view.Oliver: I must confess, I find The Coast of Utopia a little dull compared to Stoppard's other work.Lee: It's long. Yes. I don't find it dull. But I think it may be a play to read possibly more than a play to see now. And you're never going to get it put on again anyway because the cast is too big. And who's going to put on a nine-hour free play, 50 people cast about 19th-century Russian revolutionaries? Nobody, I would think.But I find it very absorbing actually. And partly because I'm so interested in Isaiah Berlin, who is a very strong presence in the anti-utopianism of those plays. But that's a matter of opinion.Oliver: No. I like Berlin. One thing about Stoppard that's un-Shavian is that he says his plays begin as a noise or an image or a scene, and then we think of him as this very thinking writer. But is he really more of an intuitive writer?Lee: I think it's a terribly good question. I think it gets right at the heart of the matter, and I think it's both. Sorry, I sound like Turgenev, not making my mind up. But yes, there is an image or there is an idea, or there are often two ideas, as it were, the birth of quantum physics and 18th-century landscape gardening. Who else but Stoppard would put those two things in one play, Arcadia, and have you think about both at once.But the image and the play may well have been a dance between two periods of time together in one room. So I think he never knew what the next play was going to be until it would come at him, as it were. He often resisted the idea that if he chose a topic and then researched it, a play would come out of it. That wasn't what happened. Something would come at him and then he would start doing a great deal of research usually for every play.Oliver: What sort of influence did T. S. Elliot have on him? Did it change the dialogue or, was it something else?Lee: When I was working with him on my biography, he gave me a number of things. I had extraordinary access, and we can perhaps come back to that interesting fact. And most of these things were loans he gave them to me to work on. Then I gave them back to him.But he gave me as a present one thing, which was a black notebook that he had been keeping at the time he was writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and also his first and only novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, which is little known, which he thought was going to make his career. The book was published in the same week that Rosencrantz came up. He thought the novel was going to make his career and the play was going to sink without trace. Not so. In the notebook there are many quotations from T. S. Elliot, and particularly from Prufrock and the Wasteland, and you can see him working them into the novel and into the play.“I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be.” And that sense of being a disconsolate outsider. Ill at ease with and neurotic about the world that is charging along almost without you, and you are having to hang on to the edge of the world. The person who feels themself to be in internal exile, not at one with the universe. I think that point of view recurs over and over again, right through the work, but also a kind of epigrammatical, slightly mysterious crypticness that Elliot has, certainly in Prufrock and in the Wasteland and in the early poems. He loved that tone.Oliver: Yes. When I read your paper about that I thought about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quite differently. I've always disliked the idea that it's a sort of Beckett imitation play. It seems very Elliotic having read what you described.Lee: There is Beckett in there. You can't get away from it.Oliver: Surface level.Lee: Beckett's there, but I think the sense of people waiting around—Stoppard's favorite description of Rosencrantz was: “It's two journalists on a story that doesn't add up, which is very clever and funny.”Yes. And that sense of, Vladimir going, “What are we supposed to be doing and how are we going to pass the time?” That's profoundly influential on Stoppard. So I don't think it's just a superficial resemblance myself, but I agree that Elliot just fills the tone of that play and other things too.Oliver: In the article you wrote about Stoppard and Elliot, the title is about biographical questing, and you also described Arcadia as a quest. How important is the idea of the quest to the way you work and also to the way you read Stoppard?Lee: I took as the epigraph for my biography of Stoppard a line from Arcadia: “It's wanting to know that makes us matter, otherwise we're going out the way we came in.” So I think that's right at the heart of Stoppard's work, and it's right at the heart of any biographical work, whether or not it's mine or someone else's. If you can't know, in the sense of knowing the person, knowing what the person is like, and also knowing as much as possible about them from different kinds of sources, then you might as well give up.You can't do it through impressions. You've got to do it through knowledge. Of course, a certain amount of intuition may also come into play, though I'm not the kind of biographer that feels you can make things up. Working on a living person, this is the only time I've done that.It was, of course, a very different thing from working on a safely dead author. And I knew Penelope Fitzgerald a little bit, but I had no idea I was going to write her biography when I had conversations with her and she wouldn't have told me anything anyway. She was so wicked and evasive. But it was a set up thing; he asked me to do it. And we had a proper contract and we worked together over several years, during which time he became a friend, which was a wonderful piece of luck for me.I was doing four things, really. One was reading all the material that he produced, everything, and getting to know it as well as I could. And that's obviously the basic task. One was talking to him and listening to him talk about his life. And he was very generous with those interviews. I'm sure there were things he didn't tell me, but that's fine. One was talking to other people about him, which is a very interesting process. And with someone like him who knew everyone in the literary, theatrical, cultural world, you have to draw a halt at some point. You can't talk to a thousand people, or I'd have still been doing it, so you talk to particularly fellow playwrights, directors, actors who've worked with him often, as well as family and friends. And then you start pitting the versions against each other and seeing what stands up and what keeps being said.Repetition's very important in that process because when several people say the same thing to you, then you know that's right. And that quest also involves some actual footsteps, as Richard Holmes would say. Footsteps. Traveling to places he'd lived in and going to Darjeeling where he had been to school before he came to England, that kind of travel.And then the fourth, and to me, in a way, almost the most exciting, was the opportunity to watch him at work in rehearsal. So with the director's permissions, I was allowed to sit in on two or three processes like that, the 50th anniversary production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the Old Vic with David Lavoie. And Patrick Marber's wonderful production of Leopoldstadt and Nick Hytner's production of The Hard Problem at the National. So I was able to witness the very interesting negotiations going on between Tom and the director and the cast.And also the extraordinary fact that even with a play like Rosencrantz, which is on every school syllabus and has been for 50—however many years—he was still changing things in rehearsal. I can't get over that. And in his view, as he often said, theater is an event and not a text, and so one could see that actual process of things changing before one's very eyes, and that for a biographer, it's a pretty amazing privilege.Oliver: How much of the plays were written during rehearsal do you think?Lee: Oh, 99% of the plays were written with much labor, much precision, much correction alone at his desk. The text is there, the text is written, and everything changes when you go into the rehearsal room because you suddenly find that there isn't enough time with that speech for the person to get from the bed to the door. It's physics; you have to put another line in so that someone can make an entrance or an exit, that kind of thing.Or the actors will say quite often, because they were a bit in awe—by the time he became well known—the actors initially would be a bit in awe of the braininess and the brilliance. And quite often the actors will be saying, “I'm sorry, I don't understand. I don't understand this.” You'd often get, “I don't really understand.”And then he would never be dismissive. He would either say, “No, I think you've got to make it work.” I'm putting words into his mouth here. Or he would say, “Okay, let's put another sentence or something like that.”Oliver: Between what he wrote at his desk and the book that's available for purchase now, how much changed? Is it 10%, 50? You know what I mean?Lee: Yes. You should be talking to his editor at Faber, Dinah Wood. So Faber would print a relatively small number for the first edition before the rehearsal process and the final production. And then they would do a second edition, which would have some changes in it. So 2%. Okay. But crucial sometimes.Oliver: No, sure. Very important.Lee: And also some plays like Jumpers went through different additions with different endings, different solutions to plot problems. Travesties, he had a lot of trouble with the Lenins in Travesties because it's the play in which you've got Joyce and you've got Tristan Tzara and you've got the Lenins, and they're all these real people and he makes him talk.But he was a little bit nervous about the Lenin. So what he gave him to say were things that they had really said, that Lenin had really said. As opposed to the Tzara-Joyce stuff, which is all wonderfully made up. The bloody Lenins became a bit of a problem for him. And so that gets changed in later editions you'll find.Oliver: How closely do you think The Real Thing is based on Present Laughter by Noël Coward?Lee: Oh, I think there's a little bit of Coward in there. Yes, sure. I think he liked Coward, he liked Wilde, obviously. He likes brilliant, witty, playful entertainers. He wants to be an entertainer. But I think The Real Thing, he was proud of the fact that The Real Thing was one of the few examples of his plays at that time, which weren't based on something else. They weren't based on Hamlet. They weren't based on The Importance of Being Earnest. It's not based on a real person like Housman. I think The Real Thing came out of himself much more than out of literary models.Oliver: You don't think that Henry is a bit like the actor character in Present Laughter and it's all set in his flat and the couples moving around and the slight element of farce?The cricket bat speech is quite similar to when Gary Essendine—do you remember that very funny young man comes up on the train from Epping or somewhere and lectures him about the social value of art. And Gary Essendine says, “Get a job in a theater rep and write 20 plays. And if you can get one of them put on in a pub, you'll be damn lucky.” It's like a model for him, a loose model.Lee: Yes. Henry, I think you should write an article comparing these two plays.Oliver: Okay. Very good. What does Stoppardian mean?Lee: It means witty. It means brilliant with words. It means fizzing with verbal energy. It means intellectually dazzling. The word dazzling is the one that tends to get used. My own version of Stoppardian is a little bit different from, as it were, those standard received and perfectly acceptable accounts of Stoppardian.My own sense of Stoppardian has more to do with grief and mortality and a sense of not belonging and of puzzlement and bewilderment, within all that I said before, within the dazzling, playful astonishing zest and brio of language and the precision about language.Oliver: Because it's a funny word. It's hard to include Leopoldstadt under the typical use of Stoppardian, because it's an untypical Stoppard.Lee: One of the things about Leopoldstadt that I think is—let's get rid of that trope about Stoppardian—characteristic of him is the remarkable way it deals with time. Here's a play like Arcadia, all set in the same place, all set in the same room, in the same house, and it goes from a big hustling room, late 19th-century family play, just like the beginning of The Coast of Utopia, where you begin with a big family in Russia and then it moves through the '20s and then into the terrible appalling period of the Anschluss and the Holocaust.And then it ends up after the war with an empty room. This room, is like a different kind of theater, an empty room. Three characters, none of whom you know very well, speaking in three different kinds of English, reaching across vast spaces of incomprehension, and you've had these jumps through time.And then at the very end, the original family, all of whom have been destroyed, the original family reappears on the stage. I'm sorry to tell this for anyone who hasn't seen Leopoldstadt. Because when it happens on the stage, it's an absolutely astonishing moment. As if the time has gone round and as if the play, which I think it was for him, was an act of restitution to all those people.Oliver: How often did he use his charm to get his way with actors?Lee: A lot. And not just actors. People he worked with, film people, friends, companions. Charm is such an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we shouldn't deviate, but there's always a slightly sinister aspect to the word charm as in, a magic charm. And one tends to be a bit suspicious of charm. And he knew he had charm and he was physically very magnetic and good looking and very funny and very attentive to people.But I think the charm, in his case, he did use it to get the right results, and he did use it, as he would say, “to look after my plays.” He was always, “I want to look after my plays.” And that's why he went back to rehearsal when there were revivals and so on. But he wasn't always charming. Patrick Marber, who's a friend of his and who directed Leopoldstadt, is very good on how irritable Stoppard could be sometimes in rehearsal. And I've heard that from other directors too—Jack O'Brien, who did the American productions of things like The Invention of Love.If Stoppard felt it wasn't right, he could get quite cross. So this wasn't a sort of oleaginous character at all. It's not smooth, it's not a smooth charm at all. But yes, he knew his power and he used it, and I think in a good way. I think he was a benign character actually. And one of the things that was very fascinating to me, not only when he died and there was this great outpouring of tributes, very heartfelt tributes, I thought. But also when I was working on the biography, I was going around the world trying to find people to say bad things about him, because what I didn't want to do was write a hagiography. You don't want to do that; there would be no point. And it was genuinely quite hard.And I don't know the theater world; it's not my world. I got to know it a little bit then. But I have never necessarily thought of the theater world as being utterly loving and generous about everybody else. I'm sure there are lots of rivalries and spitefulness, as there is in academic life, all the rest of it. But it was very hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about him, even people who'd come up against the steeliness that there is in him.I had an interview with Steven Spielberg about him, with whom he worked a lot, and with whom he did Empire of the Sun. And I would ask my interviewees if they could come up with two or three adjectives or an adjective that would sum him up, that would sum Stoppard up to them. And when I asked Spielberg this question, he had a little think and then he said, intransigent. I thought, great. He must be the only person who ever stood up to him.Oliver: What was his best film script? Did he write a really great film.Lee: That one. I think partly the novel, I don't know if you know the Ballard novel, the Empire of the Sun, it's a marvelous novel. And Ballard was just a magical and amazing writer, a great hero of mine. But I think what Stoppard did with that was really clever and brilliant.I know people like Brazil, the Terry Gilliam sort of surrealist way. And there's some interesting early work. Most of his film work was not one script; it was little bits that he helped with. So there's famously the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he did most of the dialogue for Harrison Ford.But there are others like the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, where I think there's one line, anonymously Stoppardian in there. One of the things about the obituaries that slightly narked me was that there, I felt there was a bit too much about the films. Truly, I don't think the film work was—he wanted it to be right and he wanted to get it right—but it wasn't as close to his heart as the theater work. And indeed the work for radio, which I thought was generally underwritten about when he died. There was some terrific work there.Oliver: Yes. And there aren't that many canonical writers who've been great on the radio.Lee: Absolutely. He did everything. He did film, he did radio. He wrote some opera librettos. He really did everything. And on top of that, there was the great work for the public good, which I think is a very important part of his legacy, his history.Oliver: How much crossover influence is there between the different bits of his career? Does the screenwriting influence the theater writing and the radio and so on? Or is he just compartmentalized and able to do a lot of different things?Lee: That's such an interesting question. I don't think I've thought about it enough. I think there are very cinematic aspects to some of the plays, like Night and Day, for instance, the play about journalism. That could easily have been a film.And perhaps Hapgood as well, although it could be a kind of John le Carré type film thriller, though it's such a set of complicated interlocking boxes that I don't know that it would work as a film. It's not one of my favorite players, I must say. I struggle a little bit with Hapgood. But, yes, I'm sure that they fed into each other. Because he was so busy, he was often doing several things at once. So he was keeping things in boxes and opening the lid of that box. But mentally things must have overlapped, I'm sure.Oliver: He once joked that rather than having read Wittgenstein from cover to cover, he had only read the covers. How true is that? Because I know some people who would say he's very clever in everything, but he's not as clever as he looks. It's obviously not true that he only read the covers.Lee: I think there was a phase, wasn't there, after the early plays when people felt that he was—it's that English phrase, isn't it—too clever by half. Which you would never hear anyone in France saying of someone that they were too clever by half. So he was this kind of jazzy intellectual who put all his ideas out there, and he was this sort of self-educated savant who hadn't been to Oxford.There was quite a lot of that about in the earlier years, I think. And a sense that he was getting away with it, to which I would countermand with the story of the writing of The Invention of Love. So what attracted him to the figure of Housman initially was not the painful, suppressed homosexual love story, but the fact that here was this person who was divided into a very pernickety, savagely critical classical editor of Latin and a romantic lyric poet. In order to work out how to turn this into a play, he probably spent about six years taking Latin lessons, reading everything he could read on the history of classical literature. Obviously reading about Housman, engaging in conversation with classical scholars about Housman's, finer points of editorial precision about certain phrases. And what he used from that was the tip of the iceberg. But the iceberg was real.He really did that work and he often used to say that it was his favorite play because he'd so much enjoyed the work that went into it. I think he took what he needed from someone like Wittgenstein. I know you don't like The Coast of Utopia very much, but if you read his background to Coast of Utopia, what went into it, and if you compare what's in the plays, those three plays, with what's in the writing about those revolutionaries, he read everything. He may have magpied it, but he's certainly knows what he's talking about. So I defend him a bit against that, I think.Oliver: Good, good. Did you see the recent production at the Hamstead Theatre of The Invention of Love?Lee: I did, yes.Oliver: What did you think?Lee: I liked it. I thought it was rather beautifully done. I liked those boats rowing around that clicked together. I thought Simon Russell Beale was extremely good, particularly very moving. And very good in Housman's vindictiveness as a critic. He is not a nice person in that sense. And his scornfulness about the women students in his class, that kind of thing. And so there was a wonderful vitriol and scorn in Russell Beale's performance.I think when you see it now, some of the Oxford context is a little bit clunky, those scenes with Jowett and Pater and so on, it's like a bit of a caricature of the context of cultural life at the time, intellectual life at the time. But I think that the trope of the old and the young Housman meeting each other and talking to each other, which I still think is very moving. I thought it worked tremendously well.Oliver: What are Tom Stoppard's poems like?Lee: You see them in Indian Ink where he invents a poet, Flora Crewe, who is a poet who was died young, turn of the century, bold feminist associated with Bloomsbury and gets picked up much later as a kind of Sylvia Plath-type, HD type heroine. And when you look at Stoppard's manuscripts in the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Austin, in Texas, there is more ink spent on writing and rewriting those poems of Flora Crewe than anything else I saw in the manuscript. He wrote them and rewrote them.Early on he wrote some Elliot—they're very like Elliot—little poems for himself. I think there are probably quite a lot of love poems out there, which I never saw because they belong to the people for whom he wrote them. So I wouldn't know about those.Oliver: How consistently did Stoppard hold to a kind of liberal individualism in his politics?Lee: He was accused of being very right wing in the 1980s really, 1970s, 1980s, when the preponderant tendency for British drama was radicalism, Royal Court, left wing, all of that. And Stoppard seemed an outlier then, because he approved of Thatcher. He was a friend of Thatcher. He didn't like the print union. It was particularly about newspapers because he'd been a newspaper man in his youth. That was his alternative university education, working in Bristol on the newspapers. He had a romance heroic feeling about the value of the journalist to uphold democracy, and he hated the pressure of the print unions to what he thought at the time was stifling that.He changed his mind. I think a lot about that. He had been very idealistic and in love with English liberal values. And I think towards the end of his life he felt that those were being eroded. He voted lots of different ways. He voted conservative, voted green. He voted lib dem. I don't if he ever voted Labour.Oliver: But even though his personal politics shifted and the way he voted shifted, there is something quite continuous from the early plays through to Rock ‘n' Roll. Is there a sort of basic foundation that doesn't change, even though the response to events and the idea about the times changes?Lee: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it can be summed up in what Henry says in The Real Thing about politics, which is a version of what's often said in his plays, which is public postures have the configuration of private derangement. So that there's a deep suspicion of political rhetoric, especially when it tends towards the final solution type, the utopian type, the sense that individual lives can be sacrificed in the interest of an ultimate rationalized greater good.And then, he's worked in the '70s for the victims of Soviet communism. His work alongside in support of Havel and Charter 77. And he wrote on those themes such as Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul. Those are absolutely at the heart of what he felt. And they come back again when he's very modest about this and kept it quiet. But he did an enormous amount of work for the Belarus exile, Belarus Free Theater collective, people in support of those trying to work against the regime in Belarus.And then the profound, heartfelt, intense feeling of horror about what happened to people in Leopoldstadt. That's all part of the same thing. I think he's a believer in individual freedom and in democracy and has a suspicion of political rhetoric.Oliver: How much were some of his great parts written for specific actors? Because I sometimes have a feeling when I watch one of his plays now, if I'd been here when Felicity Kendal was doing this, I would be getting the whole thing, but I'm getting most of it.Lee: I'm sure that's right. And he built up a team around him: Peter Wood, the director and John Wood who's such an extraordinary Henry Carr in in in Travesties. And Michael Hordern as George the philosopher in Jumpers. And he wrote a lot for Kendal, in the process of becoming life companions.But he'd obviously been writing and thinking of her very much, for instance, in Arcadia. And also I think very much, it's very touching now to see the production of Indian Ink that's running at Hampstead Theatre in which Felicity Kendal is playing the older woman, the surviving older sister of the poet Flora Crewe, where of course the part of Flora Crewe was written for her. And there's something very touching about seeing that now. And, in fact, the first night of that production was the day of Stoppard's funeral. And Kendal couldn't be at the funeral, of course, because she was in the first night of his play. That's a very touching thing.Oliver: Why did he think the revivals came too soon?Lee: I don't really know the answer to that. I think he thought a play had to hook up a lot of oxygen and attract a lot of attention. If you were lucky while it was on, people would remember the casting and the direction of that version of it, and it would have a kind of memory. You had to be there.But people who were there would remember it and talk about it. And if you had another production very soon after that, then maybe it would diminish or take away that effect. I think he had a sort of loyalty to first productions often. What do you think about that? I'm not quite sure of the answer to that.Oliver: I don't know. To me it seems to conflict a bit with his idea that it's a living thing and he's always rewriting it in the rehearsal room. But I think probably what you say is right, and he will have got it right in a certain way through all that rehearsing. You then need to wait for a new generation of people to make it fresh again, if you like.Lee: Or not a generation even, but give it five years.Oliver: Everyone new and this theater's working differently now. We can rework it in our own way. Can we have a few questions about your broader career before we finish?Lee: Depends what they are.Oliver: Your former colleague John Carey died at a similar time to Stoppard. What do you think was his best work?Lee: John Carey's best work? Oh. I thought the biography of Golding was pretty good. And I thought he wrote a very good book on Thackery. And I thought his work on Milton was good. I wasn't so keen on The Intellectuals and the Masses. He and I used to have vociferous arguments about that because he had cast Virginia Woolf with all the modernist fascists, as it were. He'd put her in a pile with Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound and so on. And actually, Virginia Woolf was a socialist feminist. And this didn't seem to have struck him because he was so keen to expose her frightful snobbery, which is what people in England reading Woolf, especially middle class blokes, were horrified by.And she is a snob, there's no doubt about it. But she knew that and she lacerated herself for it too. And I think he ignored all the other aspects of her. So I was angry about that. But he was the kind of person you could have a really good argument with. That was one of the really great things about John.Oliver: He seems to be someone else who was amenable and charming, but also very steely.Lee: Yes, I think he probably was I think he probably was. You can see that in his memoir, I think.Oliver: What was Carmen Callil like?Lee: Oh. She was a very important person in my life. It was she who got me involved in writing pieces for Virago. And it was she who asked me to write the life of Virginia Woolf for Chatto. And she was an enormous, inspiring encourager as she was to very many people. And I loved her.But I was also, as many people were, quite daunted by her. She was temperamental, she was angry. She was passionate. She was often quite difficult. Not a word I like to use about women because there's that trope of difficult women, but she could be. And she lost her temper in a very un-English way, which was quite a sight to behold. But I think of her as one of the most creative and influential publishers of the 20th century.Oliver: Will there be a biography of her?Lee: I don't know. Yes, it's a really interesting question, and I've been asking her executors whether they have any thoughts about that. Somebody said to me, oh, who wants a biography of a publisher? But, actually, publishers are really important people often, so I hope there would be. Yes. And it would need to be someone who understood the politics of feminism and who understood about coming from Australia and who understood about the Catholic background and who understood about her passion for France. And there are a whole lot of aspects to that life. It's a rich and complex life. Yes, I hope there will be someday.Oliver: Her papers are sitting there in the British Library.Lee: They are. And in fact—you kindly mentioned this to start with—I've just finished a biography of the art historian and novelist, Anita Brookner, who won the Booker prize in 1984 for a novel called Hotel du Lac.And Carmen and Anita were great buddies, surprisingly actually, because they were very different kinds of characters. And the year before she died, Carmen, who knew I was working on Anita, showed me all her diary entries and all the letters she'd kept from Anita. And that's the kind of generous person that she was.That material is now sitting in the British Library, along with huge reams of correspondence between Carmen and many other people. And it's an exciting archive.Oliver: She seems to have had a capacity to be friends with almost anyone.Lee: Yes, I think there were people she would not have wanted to be friends with. She was very disapproving of a lot of political figures and particularly right-wing figures, and there were people she would've simply spat at if she was in the room with them. But, yes, she an enormous range of friends, and she was, as I said, she was fantastically encouraging to younger women writers.And, also, another aspect of Carmen's life, which I greatly admired and was fascinated by: In Virago she would often be resuscitating the careers of elderly women writers who had been forgotten or neglected, including Antonia White and including Rosamund Lehmann. And part of Carmen's job at Virago, as she felt, was not just to republish these people, some of whom hadn't had a book published for decades, but also to look after them. And they were all quite elderly and often quite eccentric and often quite needy. And Carmen would be there, bringing them out and looking after them and going around to see them. And really marvelous, I think.Oliver: Yes, it is. Tell me about Brian Moore.Lee: Breean, as he called himself.Oliver: Oh, I'm sorry.Lee: No, it's all right. I think Brian became a friend because in the 1980s I had a book program on Channel 4, which was called Book Four. It had a very small audience, but had a wonderful time over several years interviewing lots and lots of writers who had new books out. We didn't have a budget; it was a table and two chairs and not the kind of book program you see on the television anymore. And I got to know Brian through that and through reviewing him a bit and doing interviews with him, and my husband and I would go out and visit him and his wife Jean.And I loved the work. I thought the work was such a brilliant mixture of popular cultural forms, like the thriller and historical novel and so on. And fascinating ideas about authority and religion and how to be free, how to break free of the bonds of what he'd grown up with in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, the bombs of religious autocracy, as it were. And very surreal in some ways as well. And he was also a very charming, funny, gregarious person who could be quite wicked about other writers.And, he was a wonderfully wicked and funny companion. What breaks my heart about Brian Moore is that while he was alive, he was writing a novel maybe every other year or every three years, and people would review them and they were talked about, and I don't think they were on academic syllabuses but they were really popular. And when he died and there were no more books, it just went. You can think of other writers like that who were tremendously well known in their time. And then when there weren't any more books, just went away. You ask people, now you go out and ask people, say, “What about The Temptation of Eileen Hughes or The Doctor's Wife or Black Robe? And they'll go, “Sorry?”Oliver: If anyone listening to this wants to try one of his novels, where do you say they should start?Lee: I think I would start with The Doctor's Wife and The Temptation of Eileen Hughes. And then if one liked those, one would get a taste for him. But there's plenty to choose from.Oliver: What about Catholics?Lee: Yes. Catholics is a wonderful book. Yes. Wonderful book. Bit like Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe, I think.Oliver: How important is religion to Penelope Fitzgerald's work?Lee: She would say that she felt guilty about not having put her religious beliefs more explicitly into her fiction. I'm very glad that she didn't because I think it is deeply important and she believes in miracles and saints and angels and manifestations and providence, but she doesn't spell it out.And so when at the end of The Gate of Angels, for instance, there is a kind of miracle on the last page but it's much better not to have it spelt out as a miracle, in my view. And in The Blue Flower, which is not my favorite of her books, but it's the book of the greatest genius possibly. And I think she was a genius. There is a deep interest in Novalis's romantic philosophical ideas about a spiritual life, beyond the physical life, no more doctrinally than that. And she, of course, believes in that. I think she believed, in an almost Platonic way, that this life was a kind of cave of shadows and that there was something beyond that. And there are some very mysterious moments in her books, which, if they had been explained as religious experiences, I think would've been much less forceful and much less intense.Oliver: What is your favorite of her books?Lee: Oh, The Beginning of Spring. The Beginning of Spring is set in Moscow just before the revolution. And its concerns an Englishman who runs a print and publishing works. And it's based quite a lot on some factual narratives about people in Moscow at the time. And it's about the feeling of that place and that time, but it's also about being in love with two people at the same time.And, yes, and it's about cultural clashes and cultural misunderstanding, and it is an astonishingly evocative book. And when asked about this book, interviewers would say to Penelope, oh, she must have lived in Moscow for ages to know so much about it. And sometimes she would say, “Yes, I lived there for years.” And sometimes she would say, “No, I've never been there in my life.” And the fact was she'd had a week's book tour in Moscow with her daughter. And that was the only time she ever went to Russia, but she read. So it was a wonderful example of how she would be so wicked; she would lie.Oliver: Yes.Lee: Because she couldn't be bothered to tell the truth.Oliver: But wasn't she poking fun at their silly questions?Lee: Yes. It's not such a silly question. I would've asked her that question. It is an astonishing evocation of a place.Oliver: No, I would've asked it too, but I do feel like she had this sense of it's silly to be asked questions at all. It's silly to be interviewed.Lee: I interviewed her about three times—and it was fascinating. And she would deflect. She would deflect, deflect. When you asked her about her own work, she would deflect onto someone else's work or she would tell you a story. But she also got quite irritable.So for instance, there's a poltergeist in a novel called The Bookshop. And the poltergeist is a very frightening apparition and very strong chapter in the book. And I said to her in interview, “Look, lots of people think this is just superstition. There aren't poltergeists.” And she looked at me very crossly and said they just haven't been there. They don't know what they're talking about. Absolutely factual and matter of fact about the reality of a poltergeist.Oliver: What makes Virginia Woolf's literary criticism so good?Lee: Oh, I think it's a kind of empathy actually. That she has an extraordinary ability to try and inhabit the person that she's writing about. So she doesn't write from the point of view of, as it were, a dry, historical appreciation.She's got the facts and she's read the books, but she's trying to intimately evoke what it felt like to be that writer. I don't mean by dressing it up with personal anecdotes, but just she has an extraordinary way of describing what that person's writing is like, often in images by using images and metaphors, which makes you feel you are inside the story somehow.And she loves anecdotes. She's very good at telling anecdotes, I think. And also she's not soft, but she's not harshly judgmental. I think she will try and get the juice out of anything she's writing about. Most of these literary criticism pieces were written for money and against the clock and whilst doing other things.So if you read her on Dorothy Wordsworth or Mary Wollstonecraft or Henry James, there's a wonderful sense of, you feel your knowledge has been expanded. Knowledge in the sense of knowing the person; I don't mean in the sense of hard facts.Oliver: Sure. You've finished your Anita Brookner biography and that's coming this year.Lee: September the 10th this year, here and in the States.Oliver: What will you do next?Lee: Yes. That's a very good question, though a little soon, I feel.Oliver: Is there someone whose life you always wanted to write, but didn't?Lee: No. No, there isn't. Not at the moment. Who knows?Oliver: You are open to it. You are open.Lee: Who knows what will come up.Oliver: Yes. Hermione Lee, this was a real pleasure. Thank you very much.Lee: Thank you very much. It was a treat. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he gave the melancholy Dane two university friends with peculiarly Danish names—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. For many centuries, audiences assumed these were simply fictional creations. Yet history reveals that Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne were real men—Danish noblemen who traveled to England during Shakespeare's lifetime as part of an official embassy from the Danish court.  Their visit took place during a fascinating moment of cultural diplomacy: King James VI of Scotland's marriage alliance with Denmark, his 1589 voyage to meet Anne of Denmark, and the exchanges of royal gifts that linked two kingdoms. This same period saw Tycho Brahe's astronomical fame rise across Europe, the University of Wittenberg flourish as an intellectual hub, and England's awareness of the Dutch Golden Age begin to take shape.  Today we'll explore these threads with our guest, Paul Lockhart, Professor of HIstory and Drage Gould Distinguished Professor of Research at Wright State University. He has published seven single author books including "Denmark, 1513-1660: The Rise and Decline of the Renaissance Monarchy. You can see more of his publications and links to his current work in the show notes for today's episode.   He joins us today to help us explore the story of two real courtiers whose names—and perhaps personalities—live on in one of Shakespeare's most famous plays.   

"Ophelia lived in tragedy." In this preview of our paid subscriber bonus episode, we're diving deeper into Hamlet. We all study it, and love it or hate it, there's something about this particular play that keeps people talking about it. What about Shakespeare's Hamlet, remains so relevant almost 500 years later? We talk briefly about its history, how it's taught, why it's culturally so important, the role of tragedy in theater and in Taylor Swfit's music, amongst other topics related to this incredible play. If you enjoyed this sneak peek and want to hear the full episode plus additional monthly episodes of AP Taylor Swift After School, subscribe at aptaylorswift.substack.com/subscribe.  Stay up to date with all episodes at aptaylorswift.com Mentioned in this episode: The Lion King Thor Thomas Kidd's The Spanish Tragedy Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta De Norum Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard Something Rotten Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell Subscribe to get new episode updates: aptaylorswift.substack.com/subscribe Stay up to date at aptaylorswift.com  ***   Episode Highlights:  [02:00] Introduction to Hamlet and Its Influence [3:10] Hamlet's Influence on Modern Films [4:06] Revenge and Psychological Themes [5:50] Adaptations and Comedic Perspectives [9:04] Literary Connections and References Follow AP Taylor Swift podcast on social!  TikTok → tiktok.com/@APTaylorSwift Instagram → instagram.com/APTaylorSwift YouTube → youtube.com/@APTaylorSwift Link Tree →linktr.ee/aptaylorswift Bookshop.org → bookshop.org/shop/apts Libro.fm →  tinyurl.com/aptslibro Contact us at aptaylorswift@gmail.com  Affiliate Codes:  Krowned Krystals - krownedkrystals.com use code APTS at checkout for 10% off!  Libro.fm - Looking for an audiobook? Check out our Libro.fm playlist and use code APTS30 for 30% off books found here tinyurl.com/aptslibro This podcast is neither related to nor endorsed by Taylor Swift, her companies, or record labels. All opinions are our own. Intro music produced by Scott Zadig aka Scotty Z.

Send us a textThis week we review the season five episode A View from the Gallery.Sarah is ready to sign up for the Gaim newsletter, Mike wonders if the head was still inside the helmet that Byron's polycult was passing around, and Joe explains the minute differences between various kinds of spoo.Music from this episode:"Surf Punk Rock" By absentrealities is licensed under CC-BY 3.0"Please Define The Error" By Delta Centauri is licensed under CC-BY 3.0"The Haunted McMansion" By Megabit Melodies is licensed under CC-BY 3.0

Send us a textThis week we review the season five episode The Paragon of Animals.Joe thinks Patrick Stewart is great, but still not as good as the Hamlet from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Sarah isn't sure what the Pak'ma'ra agricultural colony does, and Mike gives suggestions about the Season 5 Bingo Card.Spoiler-free discussion: 0:00:00 - 1:03:09Spoiler Zone: 1:03:09 - 1:04:24Next Episode and other Shenanigans: 1:04:24Music from this episode:"Surf Punk Rock" By absentrealities is licensed under CC-BY 3.0"Please Define The Error" By Delta Centauri is licensed under CC-BY 3.0"The Haunted McMansion" By Megabit Melodies is licensed under CC-BY 3.0

On this, our 303rd Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss the recommendation to stop vaccinating newborns against Hepatitis B, as just handed down by ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) for the CDC. Why were newborns whose mothers do not have Hep B, being vaccinated against a disease that is contracted through sexual activity and dirty needles? We discuss claims of “safe and effective,” risk stratification, the childhood vaccine schedule, and what “individual-based decision-making” will mean for parents and doctors. Then, new research: tattoo ink induces inflammation in lymph nodes, and changes the immune response to vaccination. Finally: an homage to Tom Stoppard, playwright extraordinaire, author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia, and so much more. RIP.*****Our sponsors:CrowdHealth: Pay for healthcare with crowdfunding instead of insurance. It's way better. Use code DarkHorse at http://JoinCrowdHealth.com to get 1st 3 months for $99/month.ARMRA: Colostrum is our first food and can help restore your health and resilience as an adult. Go to http://www.tryarmra.com/DARKHORSE to get 15% off your first order.Helix: Excellent, sleep-enhancing, American-made mattresses. Go to http://www.HelixSleep.com/DarkHorse to get 27% sitewide.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.com/Heather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AGANGg (commission earned)Check out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:ACIP Hep B recommendation: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/2025-acip-recommends-individual-based-decision-making-for-hepatitis-b-vaccine-for-infants-born-to-women.htmlRetsef Levi on Hep B rec: https://x.com/cdcgov/status/1996967080793358366RFK on vaccines: https://x.com/seckennedy/status/1997104582128754854Capucetti et al 2025. Tattoo ink induces inflammation in the draining lymph node and alters the immune response to vaccination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(48), p.e2510392122: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2510392122Support the show

MERCHANDISE NOW ON SALE THROUGH 12/31 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH 12/31   Tom Stoppard, the acclaimed, prolific playwright behind Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Rock 'n' Roll and so many other plays, along with the screenplays to Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, and Anna Karenina, has died. He leaves behind a staggering, inspiring, often frustrating body of work that will continue to be seen long after we are gone. We are joined today by Abigail Thorn (The Acolyte, House of the Dragon) to look at the corners of his oeuvre that have spoken to us over the years, and discuss what we can learn from him going forward.   Abigail Thorn: Bluesky // Instagram The Prince: A transformative new play that has everything: sword fighting, lesbianism, Hamlet, and disappointed parents. Available on Nebula.   Philosophy Tube: Giving away philosophy degrees for free! Youtube // Nebula // Patreon   Kill James Bond! is a comedy film review/ pop culture commentary podcast about the portrayal of masculinity in cinema. November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon have watched Bond movies, War on Terror movies, Eurospy movies, and now they take on their biggest task yet: Heist Movies. What can Heat, Oceans' 11, and the Fast and Furious movies teach us about how masculinity was imagined by the people who created them? What does that say about Society? Free episodes are released every fortnight on all major podcast platforms and bonus episodes are released for supporters on Patreon on the interstitial weeks. Website / Twitter / Patreon Listen on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcast

Tom Stoppard se n'è andato pochi giorni fa, e con lui sta andando da tempo quella possibilità di scrivere cose di cui il pubblico non sa di avere bisogno. Fonti: video “Rosencratz e Guilderstern sono morti” pubblicato sul canale Youtube Teatro Zig Zag il 27 marzo 2020; video “Rosencrantz e Guildenstern sono morti (film 1990) TRAILER ITALIANO” pubblicato sul canale Youtube HOME CINEMA TRAILER il 16 settembre 2020; video “Welink 2012 - #13 - Lasci o raddoppi? - Rosencrantz e Guildenstern sono morti” pubblicato sul canale Youtube InspireWelink il 22 novembre 2012; video “Shakespeare in Love Wins Best Picture: 1999 Oscars” pubblicato sul canale Youtube Oscars il 14 marzo 2008; video “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 1990” pubblicato sul canale Youtube Rolo Tomasi il 25 febbraio 2021; video “Rosencrantz e Guildenstern Sono Morti - Gioco delle Domande.” pubblicato sul canale Youtube StaggerLee9779 il 27 luglio 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2014, Colin McEnroe and the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard recorded a live conversation at The Study in New Haven. Stoppard, whom Colin considers “quite possibly the most dizzyingly proficient writer of the English tongue (who) did not grow up speaking English,” has died at the age of 88. In appreciation of Stoppard and his work, we’re republishing their conversation with a note from Colin. GUEST: Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born playwright. His most famous works include "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" and "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor." He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1998 Academy Award winning film, "Shakespeare in Love." Over the course of his career he has written for radio, television, film and stage. He' received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards for his work. Betsy Kaplan and Chion Wolf produced the hour. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Podcasts could happen to anyone. David Loehr discusses exits and entrances in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (first performed 1966, published 1967). John McCoy with David J. Loehr.

Podcasts could happen to anyone. David Loehr discusses exits and entrances in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (first performed 1966, published 1967). John McCoy with David J. Loehr.

Episode 194: Last time I left things hanging for Hamlet as, having seen the ghost of his father and resolved on revenge, he had seen his planning go awry as he mistakenly killed the old councillor Polonius while he hid behind a wall hanging. We have seen his daughter Ophelia begin her descent into madness, school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become embroiled in Hamlet's feigned madness and Claudius prompted into a desire to pray, having seen the players perform a piece that replicated his actions in the matter of his brother's murder. That quick summary in no way does the play any sort of justice so please do listen to the previous two episodes on ‘Hamlet', my look at the first half of the play and my conversation with Colin David Reese about the language in the play, if you have not done so already. I'll be here waiting for you when you get back.Continuing a summary of the play picking up from the murder of Polonius, with Hamlet leaving and dragging the body behind him.The Character of GertrudeThe female characters and the players who portrayed themThe rise of boy playing troupes reflected in ‘Hamlet'The political position of Claudius in the Danish nationThe character of Osric and his role in the playThe themes of death and decay The character and actions of HamletHamlet as a tragic heroThe graveyard sceneA brief overview of the performance history of the playSupport the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we're discussing Ch. 4-10 of New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. We are in dire need of a vampire therapist; Bella is still a bad friend; we meet the potential Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the story; and Billy Black is the worst liar. Next time, we will continue with Ch. 11-18.

Episode 192:And so, we come to perhaps the biggest challenge in all of Shakespeare's work, ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark'. Over the next two episodes and a special guest episode I hope I can get close to doing this monumental play justice.The dating of the play and the complication of the ‘ur-Hamlet'The early print history of the play and the three versionsThe possible sources for the playThe opening of the playThe character and significance of FortinbrasThe character of PoloniusThe ghost of Hamlet's father and the responsibility of revengeThe position and character of OpheliaOphelia and the meaning of flowersRosencrantz and Guildenstern – appearances and honestyThe players and their play as an insight to acting genres and techniques of the timeThe success of ‘The Murger of Gonzago'The centrality and irony of Claudius at prayerHamlet, Gertrude and the ghostPart two of this review of ‘Hamlet' will follow as episode 194 (season 6 episode 81) Support the podcast at:www.thehistoryofeuropeantheatre.comwww.patreon.com/thoetpwww.ko-fi.com/thoetp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textPlaywright Stuart Brown streamed into Playwright's Spotlight for a second time after technical difficulties with sound, but I hope delved a little deeper this time around. We discuss the Connecticut Theatre Market, being a critic and a playwright and how the former affected the latter, honesty as a critic, and advice to theatre companies on getting critics in seats. We also explore how being a critic helped his writing when he began to pursue playwriting, keeping your audience engaged, implementing twists and what makes a good one, and what makes a three dimensional character. We wrap things up learning curves and openness to making improvements, the success of the Questions game in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, his approach to Murder Mystery and keeping it simple, and writing a red herring and whether or not there are rules. We close it up discussing his online Broadway radio station - SoundsofBroadway.com. It's a question filled conversation with a plethora of information. Enjoy!Stuart Brown is an award-winning Connecticut playwright whose 10-Minute works have been staged in his home state as well as California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas and via the British podcast, Theatrical Shenanigans. He is a theater critic with the Outer Critics Circle and the Connecticut Critics Circle and also runs the 24/7 online Broadway radio station, SoundsofBroadway.com, featuring the best from Off-Broadway, Broadway, and London stages. Plays included The Suitcase, House Hunted, and his newest play Lady Jigsaw received a staged reading at the Square One Theatre in Stratford, CT on July 10 and will lead the Chestnut Playhouse Theater's 5th annual Playwriting Festival on September 5th. For tickets to Lady Jigsaw at the Chestnut Street Playhouse on Sept. 5, visit -https://www.chestnutstreetplayhouse.org/For tickets to an evening of Stu's nine 10-minute plays at The Arts at Angeloria's on Sept. 12, visit, https://www.theartsatangelorias.com/To watch the video format of this episode, visit - https://youtu.be/R5wJb0RrRO0Websites and Socials for Stuart Brown -http://stuartjbrown.com/IG: @stuartjbrown_authorWebsites and socials for James Elden, Punk Monkey Productions and Playwright's SpotlightPunk Monkey Productions - www.punkmonkeyproductions.comPLAY Noir -www.playnoir.comPLAY Noir Anthology –www.punkmonkeyproductions.com/contact.htmlJames Elden -Twitter - @jameseldensauerIG - @alakardrakeFB - fb.com/jameseldensauerPunk Monkey Productions and PLAY Noir - Twitter - @punkmonkeyprods                  - @playnoirla IG - @punkmonkeyprods       - @playnoir_la FB - fb.com/playnoir        - fb.com/punkmonkeyproductionsPlaywright's Spotlight -Twitter - @wrightlightpod IG - @playwrights_spotlightPlaywriting services through LACPFest - www.lacpfest.comSupport the show

In this episode of the Broad Street Review podcast, host Darnelle Radford welcomes guests Will and Mike to discuss their journey in creating the play 'Dogberry and Verges Are Scared' for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. They explore the collaborative nature of theater, the challenges of producing a new work, and the excitement of engaging with audiences. The conversation highlights the importance of support from the artistic community and the evolution of their script through various readings and workshops. As they prepare for their upcoming performances, they reflect on the creative process and the joy of bringing new stories to life.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Welcome to Season 1001:05 Meet the Guests: Will and Mike02:22 The Journey of Creating a Play05:33 The Importance of Collaboration in Theater11:11 Navigating the Current Climate for Artists14:44 First Performance and Audience Reactions18:55 The Evolution of the Script25:00 The Role of Support and Collaboration27:52 Closing Thoughts and Ticket InformationDogberry and Verges Are Scared is a pants-pissingly funny new comedy that follows everyone's third favorite pair of Shakespearean clowns as they blunder through the events of Much Ado About Nothing and beyond.Their friendship and their wits will be tested as they attempt to foil Don John's evil plot, save Fair Hero's wedding, and hopefully earn a few ducats while they're at it. Borrowing from the rich theatrical history that traces its roots from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to Waiting for Godot to the storied stages of the vaudeville circuit.This rolling world premiere, produced in partnership with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, hopes to shed new light on familiar characters by mixing a modern comedic sensibility and exciting new scenes with a light sprinkling Shakespeare's own words, words, words. It's chock full of easter eggs for people with a season subscription to the Folger and the perfect gateway drug for those who think “iambic pentameter” is a model of Buick. Starring Philadelphia theater legends Scott Greer and Anthony Lawton, Dogberry and Verges Are Scared is bursting with heart, highbrow comedy, vaudevillian gags, and... dancing? Only 10 performances. Do not miss this play!Slippery Trout Productions was formed in 2025 by Michael Doherty and Will Mobley. They are two clowns that have no business running a business.FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://phillyfringe.org/events/dogberry-and-verges-are-scared/

Okay you hosers, so welcome to our podcast. So today we're gonna chug a couple cold ones, put on our tuques and watch as comedy titans Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas take their beloved characters from television and comedy albums to the big screen in The Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew! While it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to do their small screen schtick on the big screen and call it a movie, this ambitious duo instead decided to cast themselves as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern in a brewski-themed remake of… Hamlet? Join Paul, Javier, and the ever sober Producer Brad as they brave the dark corridors of the haunted Elsinore Brewery, where the cyber-ghost of a murdered patriarch cries out for justice from a haunted coin-op video game console as the evil Brewmeister Smith - played by Ingmar Bergman regular Max Von Sydow in prosthetic buck teeth - plots to take over the world using mind-control beer and hockey-playing stormtroopers! Can our hapless duo stop this evil plot? All we can say is that any movie that features a climactic duel between Ming The Merciless and Gold Leader from Star Wars is a beauty way to go, eh!Show Notes:1983 Box OfficeAugust 26, 1983 Weekend Box OfficeStrange Brew Movie Box Office ResultsStrange Brew AFI Catalog EntryRick Moranis' Second City BioDave Thomas' Second City BioCBC Oral History of Kids in the Hall's "Headcrusher"Globe and Mail "Best Canadian Comedies"Follow us!InstagramBlueskyemail: Multiplexoverthruster@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the twenty-third episode of Season 11: The Son of Cult Flicks, Kyle is joined for a one-on-one conversation with fellow podcaster Lee from Spro & Lee Take on the Academy as they discuss the irreverent nature and knowing stupidity of SCTV favorites Bob & Doug McKenzie as they become the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern of an unsuspecting Hamlet tragedy in the sketch turned film adaptation known as Strange Brew (1983).

Happy New Year and welcome back to the 214th episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 214th episode we bring you a very special episode of “The Cup: Editorial” in which we look back on the year that's passed, the plays we loved, and the episodes we produced. Join our Golden Trio (Jillian Robinson, Mackenzie Horner, and Ryan Borochovitz) as they raise their custom-branded mugs and say cheers to 2024! Here's a list of all the episodes from 2024 that we shout out in this episode (in order of first mention). If any of them piqued your interest, give them a watch/listen: Fences (Screened Play): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRoqQwugzIc Summer Dances: A Mixed Bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr3c9aWZkT0 Toronto Fringe Review Roundup 2024 Pt.1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj_wxsX1tGs&t=2241s Toronto Fringe Review Roundup 2024 Pt.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFGOJTtVljI&t=6195s Toronto Fringe Review Roundup 2024 Pt.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKw_MDJLEY&t=8434s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0iuadp8zck&t=1800s Scott Alan Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k4AViQsRMY&t=720s Alicia Richardson Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZnu0OwCtaE Mateo Chavez Lewis Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drnTPBYpjuY Chloë Rose Flowers Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4DqKRzzUiA Hamilton (200th Episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcJ9Lj9-h0&t=5798s The Crucible (NT Live): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lpSFTH1ojk Playing Shylock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKGayi9ONHE&t=526s HRH Anand Rajaram Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzOfGWpy_rc&t=4815s Rear Window: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4GGPWO17VY Dead Elephants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex6zVShCpfM&t=826s The Fixing Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yS-Fsi-kHE Four Minutes Twelve Seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl3vGk_LgpE The Eve of St. George: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrCb8PkxAmg Follow our panelists: Mackenzie Horner (Before the Downbeat: A Musical Podcast) – Instagram/Facebook: BeforetheDownbeat Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3aYbBeN Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sAbjAu Jillian Robinson – Instagram: @jillian.robinson96 // Tommy Rhodes Cast Album – Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/tommy-rhodes-original-studio-cast-recording/1786580779 / Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1t4NtJFUa4TVAJm8mWCIOP?si=_npoj8ptSD-tcYbv7qJiaA&nd=1&dlsi=cf35a53988054372 / YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s02VjtbFH1U&ab_channel=MusicTheatreTheory Ryan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!] Follow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatre If you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.com CHAPTERS: 0:00 – Intro: Crunching Numbers 4:58 – 52 Episodes 6:56 – 94 Reviews 11:33 – 11 Interviews 16:00 – 1 Screened Play 20:01 – 0 Editorials 23:14 – 7 Guest Reviewers 30:26 – Most Popular Episodes of 2024 35:17 – Our Favourite Episodes of 2024 45:23 – Our Favourite Plays of 2024 1:05:37 – Our Most Anticipated Plays of 2025 1:13:32 – Sign Off

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren't dead, they're just holographic actors in a museum on a backwater planet. But six months before The Hoodoo sets out on her mission, a freak “accident” occurs. Find out how two Shakespearean nobodies became sentient holograms battling monsters in space.

In our final week of looking at the scenes of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the group used "Italian run-thrus" (rapid line delivery) and continued to work on the scenes switching roles. The group discussed the benefits and challenges of role-sharing and switching between the language styles of Shakespeare and Stoppard. During the Q&A, a number of artists mentioned their growth in understanding and portrayal of these characters. Subscribe to get notified of our next rehearsal session! Support The Rehearsal Room on Patreon - get early access to sessions (before they go public on YouTube and the podcast), priority with asking questions, and more: https://www.patreon.com/wajpodcast You can also watch the full sessions on YouTube: https://workingactorsjourney.com/youtube  About the Scene Our group is working on sections of Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3, Scene 2 from Shakespeare's Hamlet - AND they will also look at the beginning of Act 2 in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. CREATIVE TEAM DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Wade DRAMATURG: Gideon Rappaport And the PLAYERS: Marcelo Tubert, Nick Cagle and Dan Cordova Hamlet scenes from the Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/2/2/ https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/3/2/ More about this group: https://workingactorsjourney.com/workshop/shakespeare-stoppard-rehearsal-room-june-2024 BOOKS Dr. Gideon Rappaport has written three books on Shakespeare: William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Edited and Annotated: https://amzn.to/3xdt012 Appreciating Shakespeare: https://amzn.to/3XjY6Pe Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline: https://amzn.to/3KEzyZK Thank you to our current patrons Joan, Michele, Christion, Jim, Magdalen, Ivar, Claudia, Clif and Jeff! #workingactor #rehearsal #shakespeare #stoppard #hamlet

This week, the actors practiced delivering lines from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" using a technique that involved looking at the camera when speaking and looking at the screen when listening to capture the feeling of direct engagement. Emphasis was placed on understanding the meaning behind the words, which sometimes led to emotional revelations. They worked on specific lines to bring out operative words and discussed the implications of ambition within the text. The exercise aimed to illuminate nuances of the text by slowing down and emphasizing clarity in delivery. Subscribe to get notified of our next rehearsal session! Support The Rehearsal Room on Patreon - get early access to sessions (before they go public on YouTube and the podcast), priority with asking questions, and more: https://www.patreon.com/wajpodcast Watch the session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MYuYgB7GRFw  About the Scene Our group is working on sections of Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3, Scene 2 from Shakespeare's Hamlet - AND they will also look at the beginning of Act 2 in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. CREATIVE TEAM DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Wade DRAMATURG: Gideon Rappaport And the PLAYERS: Marcelo Tubert, Nick Cagle and Dan Cordova Hamlet scenes from the Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/2/2/ https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/3/2/ More about this group: https://workingactorsjourney.com/workshop/shakespeare-stoppard-rehearsal-room-june-2024 BOOKS Dr. Gideon Rappaport has written three books on Shakespeare: William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Edited and Annotated: https://amzn.to/3xdt012 Appreciating Shakespeare: https://amzn.to/3XjY6Pe Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline: https://amzn.to/3KEzyZK Thank you to our current patrons Joan, Michele, Christion, Jim, Magdalen, Ivar, Claudia, Clif and Jeff! #workingactor #rehearsal #shakespeare #stoppard #hamlet

Subscribe to get notified of our next rehearsal session! Support The Rehearsal Room on Patreon - get early access to sessions (before they go public on YouTube and the podcast), priority with asking questions, and more: https://www.patreon.com/wajpodcast Watch the session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MYuYgB7GRFw  About the Scene Our group is working on sections of Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3, Scene 2 from Shakespeare's Hamlet - AND they will also look at the beginning of Act 2 in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. CREATIVE TEAM DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Wade DRAMATURG: Gideon Rappaport And the PLAYERS: Marcelo Tubert, Nick Cagle and Dan Cordova Hamlet scenes from the Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/2/2/ https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/3/2/ More about this group: https://workingactorsjourney.com/workshop/shakespeare-stoppard-rehearsal-room-june-2024 BOOKS Dr. Gideon Rappaport has written three books on Shakespeare: William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Edited and Annotated: https://amzn.to/3xdt012 Appreciating Shakespeare: https://amzn.to/3XjY6Pe Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline: https://amzn.to/3KEzyZK Thank you to our current patrons Joan, Michele, Christion, Jim, Magdalen, Ivar, Claudia, Clif and Jeff! #workingactor #rehearsal #shakespeare #stoppard #hamlet

Subscribe to get notified of our next rehearsal session! Support The Rehearsal Room on Patreon - get early access to sessions (before they go public on YouTube and the podcast), priority with asking questions, and more: https://www.patreon.com/wajpodcast Watch the session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Lv9Rs26SJRw About the Scene Our group is working on sections of Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 3, Scene 2 from Shakespeare's Hamlet - AND they will also look at the beginning of Act 2 in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. CREATIVE TEAM DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Wade DRAMATURG: Gideon Rappaport And the PLAYERS: Marcelo Tubert, Nick Cagle and Dan Cordova Hamlet scenes from the Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/2/2/ https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/3/2/ More about this group: https://workingactorsjourney.com/workshop/shakespeare-stoppard-rehearsal-room-june-2024 BOOKS Dr. Gideon Rappaport has written three books on Shakespeare: William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Edited and Annotated: https://amzn.to/3xdt012 Appreciating Shakespeare: https://amzn.to/3XjY6Pe Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline: https://amzn.to/3KEzyZK Thank you to our current patrons Joan, Michele, Christion, Jim, Magdalen, Ivar, Claudia, Clif and Jeff! #workingactor #rehearsal

Her solo performance of Hamlet—yes, all the parts (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)—should be accessible to everyone. “Shakespeare is presented to people these days as 'this is good for you.' I've heard the term ‘spinach theater.'” The trick? Avoid vegetables, emphasize history, preserve the beauty of the verse: words, words, words!

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1189, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Bill Clinton 1: Clinton won first chair in this instrument in the Arkansas state band. the saxophone. 2: His birthplace; it's where he lived the first 7 years of his life. Hope, Arkansas. 3: The day before taking office, Clinton prayed at this president's Arlington, Va. grave. John F. Kennedy. 4: Bill Clinton met Hillary Rodham while both were attending this law school. Yale. 5: Clinton got his bachelor's degree at this D.C. school, the only college he applied to. Georgetown. Round 2. Category: Song Of Poets. With Song in quotation marks 1: William Blake published this collection in 1789; "Experience" would come a few years later. Songs of Innocence. 2: Sections of this 1855 poem include "The Peace Pipe", "The White-Man's Foot" and "Blessing the Corn Fields". The Song of Hiawatha. 3: Read during Passover, it's also referred to as the "Canticle of Canticles". Song of Songs. 4: Before the 1881 edition, it was simply titled "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American". "Song of Myself". 5: An insignificant battle between Charlemagne and the Basques at Roncesvalles is the basis for this French epic poem. The Song of Roland. Round 3. Category: Rewriting Hamlet 1: Fair one, thy dad had thee repel my letters and deny me access to thee... but a restraining order? What is uppeth with that?. Ophelia. 2: Zounds! I saw thee not behind that arras! Denmark needeth a new minister to the king! My bad!. Polonius. 3: Though I did say of thee "Frailty, thy name is woman", Mother, I hope thou acceptest my wedding gift from Pottery Barn. Gertrude. 4: 'Tis okay ye killed Dad and wed Mom--thou said thy "offence is rank, it smells to heaven", but I'm a live and let live kind of guy. Claudius. 5: You "two-school-fellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged" ...Aw, I ain't mad atcha! Giveth me hugs!. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Round 4. Category: The 19Th Century 1: Much of the fighting in this war, 1853 to 1856, took place on a peninsula in the Black Sea. the Crimean War. 2: In 1893 this labor leader founded the American Railway Union. (Eugene) Debs. 3: In 1825 patriots crossed the Rio de la Plata from Argentina to fight for this country's freedom from Brazil. Uruguay. 4: King John VI of this country died in 1826 and left his throne to Dom Pedro of Brazil who became Pedro I. Portugal. 5: This family was restored to power in the 1870s when Alfonso XII ascended the Spanish throne. the Bourbons. Round 5. Category: Ad-Jectives 1: In other words this common pair of advertising adjectives could be "novel as well as ameliorated". new and improved. 2: In a slogan almost a century old, Maxwell House coffee is this "to the last drop". "good". 3: In other words, this common pair of adjectives could be "novel as well as ameliorated". new and improved. 4: Taking this adjective literally, the ads say that BMW is the last driving machine that'll be made. ultimate. 5: Since 1975 BMW has been touting its vehicles as this kind of "driving machine". "ultimate". Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

In today's episode, we're discussing The Importance of Being Earnest by the ever-delightful Oscar Wilde. A classic example of British theater, this play is known for its biting social satire and brilliant comedic dialogue. Throughout our conversation, we dive into the play's themes, discuss Wilde's mastery of wordplay, and his ability to write characters that satirize Victorian society in the cleverest ways. As always, we share our complementary pairings, and we hope this episode adds a few books to your TBR pile!  If you love our extra nerdy discussion on the podcast today, we have a hunch that you would also love participating in our Novel Pairings Patreon community. Our Patreon is a great space to take part in public scholarship and talk about books with a smart group of readers. Subscriptions start at just $5 a month, and yearly discounts are available. To learn more about our Patreon, visit patreon.com/novelpairings.   Books Mentioned: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby Nevada by Imogen Binnie Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris The Best of Me by David Sedaris I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett Dr. No by Percival Everett What a Difference a Duke Makes by Lenora Bell On Beauty by Zadie Smith   Also Mentioned: Bonus: 127. An Introduction to The Importance of Being Earnest Hamlet by William Shakespeare Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead R. Eric Thomas  

For his final production as thirty-year artistic director of Chicago's Tony-winning Court Theatre, Charles Newell transforms Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead into an unexpectedly joyful celebration of legacy and theater. Newell reveals his lengthy relationship with not only Stoppard's plays but with the man himself, and shares how he cast two halves of a whole; how he chose to respond instinctively to what was happening in rehearsal rather than adhere to an intricate plan; and how he embraced the counterintuitive and seemingly-oxymoronic phrase “joyful requiem.” (PICTURED: Erik Hellman and Nate Burger as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in the Court Theatre production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Charles Newell. Photo by Michael Brosilow.) (Length 20:20)

This episode has probably been a long time coming, beloved listeners, but to be fair…it look a long time for SOMEONE (Matty) to do their film homework. Now that they have, the Sneople finally able to discuss the topic of this week's ep - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead! Starting off with the 1990 film, the Sneople gush about why it's an incredible stage to screen adaptation, what makes it a compelling piece of media even if you haven't read Hamlet a million times (like they have oops), and why Tim Roth is so devastatingly good looking. Beyond that, also talk about the play itself, and why both the play and the movie speak to them in different ways. Unsurprisingly, the episode does spin off a couple times into just talking about absurdist plays and/or Hamlet but that's to be expected. Please send in your votes now for which Sneople host you would cast in the main three roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (including The Player), you have until the next ep goes up thank you xoxo

You were Romeo, I was a Scarlet Letter. This week we're covering an oldie but goodie–Taylor Swift's “Love Story”, from Fearless (Taylor's Version). In this very narrative-driven song, we get a chance to explore who the protagonists are and what they're trying to say about their love “story.  We explore why Taylor Swift references high school favorites “Romeo and Juliet” and “Scarlet Letter,” and what those metaphors may mean. The “Scarlet Letter” reference makes us look at this song from a whole new lens, forcing us to look at pronouns, verb tenses, and points of view–we promise you'll never hear this song the same way again.    Mentioned in this episode:  Love Story, Fearless (Taylor's Version)  Romeo and Juliet Titanic The Notebook  Tarzan of the Apes Tim McGraw Enchanted Pride and Prejudice  Cinderella How I Met Your Mother Scarlet Letter Easy A I Did Something Bad Jane Eyre Emma & Juliet  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Don't Matter, Akon   Affiliate Codes:  Krowned Krystals - krownedkrystals.com use code APTS at checkout for 10% off!  Libro.fm - Looking for an audiobook? Check out our Libro.fm playlist and use code APTS30 for 30% off books found here tinyurl.com/aptslibro   ***   Episode Highlights:  [1:30] How we do a deep dive [08:19] “You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess” The fairytale references [14:50] “I was a Scarlet Letter” What this reference may mean [20:32] “All that's left to do is run” Where it all takes a turn [28:42] “When I met you on the outside of town” We approach the bridge [41:11] What we think the purpose of “Love Story” really is Subscribe to get new episode updates: aptaylorswift.substack.com/subscribe   Follow us on social!  TikTok → tiktok.com/@APTaylorSwift Instagram → instagram.com/APTaylorSwift YouTube → youtube.com/@APTaylorSwift Link Tree →linktr.ee/aptaylorswift Bookshop.org → bookshop.org/shop/apts Libro.fm → tinyurl.com/aptslibro   This podcast is neither related to nor endorsed by Taylor Swift, her companies, or record labels. All opinions are our own. Intro music produced by Scott Zadig aka Scotty Z.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead 2 by

Welcome back to the 173rd episode of The Cup which is our a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. With the theatres on a come back we offer a mix of both reviews of live shows we've seen and continued reviews of prophet productions! For our 173rd episode we bring you a a Duet Review of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, directed by Jeremy Webb, presented in Toronto as part of the Off-Mirvish season (originally produced by Neptune Theatre), starring Lord of the Rings stars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd as the titular duo. Join Ryan Borochovitz and Andrew Pawarroo, as they discuss the impact of celebrity casting, the legacy of Theatre of the Absurd, and the apparatus of squishy flesh.  Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is still running at the CAA Theatre (651 Yonge St, Toronto, ON) until April 6, 2024. Tickets can be purchased from the following link: https://www.mirvish.com/shows/rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead   This review contains many SPOILERS for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. It will begin with a general non-spoiler review until the [12:03] mark, followed by a more in-depth/anything goes/spoiler-rich discussion. If you intend to see the production, we recommend you stop watching after that point, or at least proceed at your own risk.  Welcome to The Cup, a weekly (give or take, TBD, these are unprecedented times) performing arts talk show presented by Cup of Hemlock Theatre. In episode 173, we bring you a Duet Review of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, directed by Jeremy Webb, presented in Toronto as part of the Off-Mirvish season (originally produced by Neptune Theatre), starring Lord of the Rings stars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd as the titular duo. Join Ryan Borochovitz and Andrew Pawarroo, as they discuss the impact of celebrity casting, the legacy of Theatre of the Absurd, and the apparatus of squishy flesh. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is still running at the CAA Theatre (651 Yonge St, Toronto, ON) until April 6, 2024. Tickets can be purchased from the following link: https://www.mirvish.com/shows/rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead This review contains many SPOILERS for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. It will begin with a general non-spoiler review until the [12:03] mark, followed by a more in-depth/anything goes/spoiler-rich discussion. If you intend to see the production, we recommend you stop watching after that point, or at least proceed at your own risk. Check out Liam Donovan's review of the show, which we discuss at length: https://nextmag.ca/review-mirvishs-rosencrantz-guildenstern-are-dead-hobbles-with-hobbits-to-the-finish-line/ Follow our panelists: Andrew Pawarroo – Instagram: @andrew.s.pawarroo Ryan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!] Follow Cup of Hemlock Theatre on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @cohtheatre If you'd like us to review your upcoming show in Toronto, please send press invites/inquiries to coh.theatre.MM@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cup-of-hemlock-theatre/support

23. Hamlet in Howth - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Act 2 Sc. 2

45. Hamlet in Howth - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

On the Saturday March 16, 2024 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, a.k.a. Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. . They've built upon their famous friendship by working together on podcasts (“The Friendship Onion,” “Moriarty: The Devil's Game”) and TV (Boyd appeared on Monaghan's travel show “Wild Things,” and the two just announced a new reality series “Billy and Dom Eat the World”). But now they're making their stage debut together as a different dynamic duo. The pair will star in a new production of Tom Stoppard's “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” in Mirvish Productions' Off-Mirvish series at Toronto's CAA Theatre until April 6, 2024. Then, best-selling author Dolly Alderton stops by. She's a regular columnist for the Sunday Times Style Magazine, and the author of the phenomenally successful memoir “Everything I Know About Love,” which she's just finished making into a hit BBC TV series; and a bestselling novelist thanks to her barnstorming fiction debut “Ghosts.” Her latest best seller, “Good Material,” a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both. We wrap up with Glass Tiger singer Alan Frew who talks about music, how he keeps his voice in shape and much more.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with John Rubinstein, Iconic Stage, Movie & TV Star About Harvey's guests: Today's guest, John Rubinstein, is a highly acclaimed, multi-award winning actor, composer and director whose illustrious career and body of work have made him a respected and beloved icon.   He made his Broadway debut starring in “Pippin”, for which he won a Theatre World Award, followed by “Children of a Lesser God”, for which he won a whole slew of awards including a Tony and a Drama Desk Award.  He also starred in “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial”, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination, “M. Butterfly”, “Love Letters”, “Ragtime” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.  Off-Broadway, he starred in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” and “Counsellor at Law”, for which he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics' and Drama League Awards.   He's appeared in over 200 movies, TV shows, made-for-TV movies and miniseries.  Some of his most popular feature films are “Getting Straight”, “The Boys From Brazil”, “Someone to Watch Over Me”, “Another Stakeout”, “21 Grams”, “The Candlelight Murders” and “Being the Ricardos”.  On TV you've seen him in dozens of TV shows including “Family”, for which he received an Emmy Award nomination, “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Bureau of Alien Detectors”, “Star Trek Enterprise”, “The Young and the Restless”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Dear White People”, “Claws” and many more.    His TV movies include “The American Clock”, for which he received a Cable Ace Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, “M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers”, “The Gift of the Magi”, “Norma Jean and Marilyn”, and “Liberace”.   And some of his noteworthy miniseries are “The French Atlantic Affair”, “Roots: The Next Generations”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “When we Rise”, “Feud”, and “Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story”.   He's directed many stage productions, including “Les Liaisons Dangeureuses”, “Macbeth”, “Wait Until Dark”, “Brigadoon”, “Guys and Dolls” and many other shows.  Our guest is also a brilliant composer, which comes as no surprise, given that he's the son of the greatest pianist of all time, in my opinion, Arthur Rubinstein.  And he's the grandson of the renowned Polish violinist, conductor and composer Emil Młynarski.   He's written the music scores for a number of movies and TV shows including “Jeremiah Johnson”, “The Candidate”, “Family”, “The Ordeal of Patty Hearst”, “Johnny Belinda”, “China Beach” and “A Walton Wedding”.  And believe me, I'm just scratching the surface of this man's prodigious body of work. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about John Rubinstein and the film, go to: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0748270/https://www.playbill.com/person/john-rubinstein-vault-0000020233 #JohnRubinstein    #harveybrownstoneinterviews

Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan are a creative duo like few others. Their bond formed on the set of “The Lord of the Rings” as two Hobbits, Merry and Pippin, whose on-screen chemistry closely mirrored their real-life friendship. Now, Billy and Dominic are playing another iconic duo in a new production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” They drop by to chat with Tom about the play and their decades-long friendship.

In this week's episode, Patrick and Greg play with some of the basics of probability in the context of some classic, fun, and often counterintuitive examples.  Along the way they also discuss arguments with relatives, a feel for the roulette wheel, Xeroxing your butt, “The coin has spoken.”, Quantitude BooqQlub, the Bellagio Fountains, Clooney and Pitt look-alikes, the Flippier, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Monty Hall, Ferraris and goats, the birthday problem, how to carve an elephant, and pick-6 lotteries. Stay in contact with Quantitude! Twitter: @quantitudepod Web page: quantitudepod.org Merch: redbubble.com

Proclaimers Scale: we would fly 6000 miles to see this again. Fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Hamlet is turned topsy-turvy in this brilliant modern comedic masterpiece that thrusts Shakespeare's two minor characters to the forefront with no rules except one: they are destined to die. Reality and illusion mix as bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are trapped in a universe where their lives are left to chance with the flip of a coin. Can our hapless protagonists triumph in a battle of wits, escape their fate, and make sense of a senseless world? Starring from the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the title roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or perhaps Guildenstern and Rosencrantz?) are Billy Boyd (Pippin) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry) in this unique and stunning new production created by Halifax's Neptune Theatre. Written by Tom Stoppard Directed by Neptune Theatre Artistic Director Jeremy Webb Starring Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan

Behold – the late, great Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean actor whose performances in Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, Cymbeline, and others left him the laughingstock of London theatre critics, is dead.  And yet somehow, someone is knocking off said critics one at a time in truly Shakespearean fashion… albeit with slight alterations to the text.  Shylock may have wanted his pound his flesh – this killer takes the heart.  Joan of Arc might have burned at the stake – this killer fries his victims in a hair salon.  Peregrine Devlin, head of the London Critics Circle, is baffled, as are the police.  And yet – the order of the killings bear a striking resemblance to Lionheart's last repertory season.  What's going on with the Thames-side meths drinkers that have taken up residence in the crumbling Burbage Theatre?  And what might Edward's daughter, Edwina, have to do with everything?  Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend us your ears – for herein lies the tale of the deceased actor who set out to exact revenge, and succeeded, and the rest – is silence. Intro, Debate Society, Hot for Teacher (spoiler-free): 00:00-26:10Honor Roll and Detention (spoiler-heavy): 26:11-1:07:38Superlatives (spoiler-heavier): 1:07:39-1:28:17 Director Douglas HickoxScreenplay Anthony Greville-Bell, based on an idea by Stanley Mann and John KohnFeaturing Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Diana Dors, Jack Hawkins, Ian Hendry, Joan Hickson, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, Milo O'Shea, Dennis Price, Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Eric Sykes Ben Viccellio is an actor, writer and Associate Professor of Drama & Film at Kenyon College. His acting credits include the role of Oedipus in Frank Galati's Oedipus Complex at The Goodman Theatre; Cherry Orchard, Theatrical Essays, and the world premiere of Men of Tortuga at Steppenwolf; the role of Petruchio in Short Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth in Short Shakespeare: Macbeth, and Guildenstern in Hamlet at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.  Ben has also also acted for film and television, as well as in the odd commercial... some of them, he claims, very odd. His writing for the stage has been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Aspen. Our theme music is by Sir Cubworth, with embellishments by Edward Elgar.  Music from Theatre of Blood by Michael J. Lewis. For more information on this film (including why the Professor chose it, on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Our Blog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), the pod, essays from your hosts, and other assorted bric-a-brac, visit our website, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠scareupod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Please subscribe to this podcast via Apple or Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave us a 5-star rating. Join our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ group. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Guest for this Episode is Naveen Kishore, Founder and MD of Seagull Books. Born in Calcutta Naveen Kishore received graduation in English Literature in 1973, and began working as a theatre lighting designer. He established Seagull Books in 1982, a publishing program focusing on drama, film, art and culture studies. Today, it also publishes literature including poetry, fiction non-fiction and English translations from 25 languages.At present, the company has registered divisions in London New York and calcutta. In 1987 Kishore established The Seagull Foundation for the Arts and set up The Seagull School of Publishing in 2012.Kishore is a photographer who has extensively documented female impersonators from Manipuri, Bengali and Punjabi theatre practices. Kishore exhibited his work at Chatterjee & Lal in Bombay in the exhibition Greenroom of the Goddess.Kishore is the recipient of the Goethe Medal, and was awarded the 2021 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.Kishore has had his poems published with Scroll.in, Queen Mob's Tea House, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, RIC Journal, Poetry at Sangam, Sylph Editions, amongst others.Transcription:Harshaneeyam: Welcome to our podcast. So nice of you to agree and come over to our podcast. Thank you very much.Naveen Kishore: Thank you for having me.H: You were interested in theatre initially during your school days and college days. How did it lead to publishing?N: The theatre actually happened at school, everybody does theatre in school, so that was okay, but then I think it was in college that I really tasted blood, as it were, as far as theatre is concerned. But I remember there was a theatre group called the Red Curtain, which was essentially made up of young people from different colleges who had left school, started a theatre group as the school leavers. They started to do amateur theatre, but with great quality, aesthetic, style, production values. When I joined them, I was a backstage person. My first theatre experience was a play called Wait Until Dark, where I used to sit behind a refrigerator with a small cassette recorder. And every time the blind leading lady opened the fridge, I would have to put on the duct to create the sound of the machine and synchronize it with her shutting it. And at one point in this thriller, which was also a good film, this blind woman is trying to smash all the bulbs because she is going to be attacked by these two people. And I have to synchronize the swinging of her sort of stick to the bulbs and simulate a crash in a waste-paper basket with old bulbs and metal brass. This was my first beginning.H: Sounds too complicated.N: It was good fun. You were assisting backstage and then, immediately, you were plunged into the deep end. The next play was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. The Red Curtain was a very democratic set up, so they said: You design the sets and light. I knew nothing about it, but the British Council Library was very useful, so I used to go and study lighting-design books. But at that point, I was playing by the rules, where I was lighting your face as an actor at 45 degrees. But I was frustrated because I couldn't achieve darkness, so that was a disaster.I made a mess of it, I think. But for the next play I designed, Ibsen's Ghosts, I think I threw the rule book out of the window and I started to light the air around the actors. In real...

Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd are well known as Merry and Pippin from Lord of the Rings. But their next project is bringing them to Halifax. They're performing in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at Neptune Theatre.

Hyperion to a Satyr - The Fire and Water Podcast Network's Hamlet Podcast - continues Siskoid's scene-by-scene deep dive into Shakespeare's masterwork, discussing the text, but also performance and staging through the lens of several films, television, comics and even a rock opera. In Act III, Scene 1, Part 1, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern brief the King and Queen, then Ophelia is given instructions for her upcoming meeting with Hamlet. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to Hyperion to a Satyr on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Credits: Theme: "Fanfare" from 1996 Hamlet, by Patrick Doyle, with clips from that film, starring Ray Fearon and Kenneth Branagh; and the 1948 Hamlet, starring Lawrence Olivier. Bonus clips: Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh, starring Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall and Richard Bryers; Hamlet 1980 by Rodney Bennett, starring Geoffrey Bateman and Patrick Stewart; Hamlet 2000 by Michael Almereyda, starring Steve Zahn, Dechen Thurman and Diane Venora ; Hamlet 2007 by Alexander Fodor, starring Lydia Piechowiak; and Hamlet 2009 by Gregory Doran, starring Penny Downie. Leave a comment, I love to read!

THIS WEEK ON THE NERDY VENOMS... is Marvel being tolled or trolling us? We try to answer that question and others. ALSO... movies are too long, should we bring back intermissions? Cancel Club, and the news on this week's Nerdy Venoms!

The panel begins with a brief exercise in parsing Shakespearean prose, followed by a reading of Act II's scenes, with attention to Polonius' ambitious scheming, and Hamlet's feigned (or genuine?) madness with his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.Continue reading

Pete returns to talk a bit about the 2012 mumblecore zombie apocalypse movie, The Battery before (much like the movie) veering off to talk less about zombies and movies, and a bit more about StokerCon

Hyperion to a Satyr - The Fire and Water Podcast Network's Hamlet Podcast - continues Siskoid's scene-by-scene deep dive into Shakespeare's masterwork, discussing the text, but also performance and staging through the lens of several films, television, comics and even a rock opera. In Act II, Scene 2, Part 4, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern finally have a probing chat with Hamlet. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to Hyperion to a Satyr on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Credits: Theme: "Fanfare" from 1996 Hamlet, by Patrick Doyle, with clips from that film, starring Ray Fearon; the 2000 Hamlet, starring Ethan Hawke; and the 1990 Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. Bonus clips: Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh, starring Kenneth Branagh and Timothy Spall; Hamlet 1948 by Laurence Olivier, starring Laurence Olivier; Hamlet 1980 by Rodney Bennett, starring Derek Jacobi and Geoffrey Bateman; Hamlet 1990 by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Mel Gibson and Sean Murray; Hamlet 2000 by Michael Almereyda, starring Ethan Hawke and Steve Zahn; Hamlet 2007 by Alexander Fodor, starring uncredited Rosencrantz performer, Katie Reddin-Clancy and William Belchambers; Hamlet 2009 by Gregory Doran, starring David Tennant and Tom Davey; and "Quel mal te bouffe?" by Johnny Hallyday. Leave a comment, I love to read!

Join hosts, Aleece and Tony for a "PREGUT" trailer review! In this mini episode we look at the trailer for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2009).To watch or not to watch?... THAT is the question!! When we came across this .25 cent DVD we asked ourselves just that. Will this quirky horror-comedy be worthy of Shakespeare's legacy?? OR will it be a HAM-LETDOWN!!

Hyperion to a Satyr - The Fire and Water Podcast Network's Hamlet Podcast - continues Siskoid's scene-by-scene deep dive into Shakespeare's masterwork, discussing the text, but also performance and staging through the lens of several films, television, comics and even a rock opera. In Act II, Scene 2, Part 1, we meet Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and the ambassadors return from Norway. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to Hyperion to a Satyr on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Visit the Fire & Water WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Follow Fire & Water on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our Fire & Water FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Support The Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Credits: Theme: "Fanfare" from 1996 Hamlet, by Patrick Doyle, with clips from that film, starring Ray Fearon; the 2000 Hamlet, starring Ethan Hawke; and the 1990 Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. Bonus clips: Hamlet 1996 by Kenneth Branagh, starring Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie and Don Warrington; Hamlet 1980 by Rodney Bennett, starring Patrick Stewart and Claire Bloom; Hamlet 2007 by Alexander Fodor, starring Di Sherlock; and Hamlet 2009 by Gregory Doran, starring tom Davey, Penny Downie and Patrick Stewart. Leave a comment, I love to read!

Chapters 1 & 2 AGAIN! It's a "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern type situation." This week, TV's Kevin is a child of divorce as he gets his second Christmas with Daddy Host to discuss the first couple chapters all over again, this time from a newbie's perspective. Mostly they talk about Top Gun: Maverick and everyone's favorite Hitchhiker's character: Mr. Prosser. We should be back on track next week! Thanks for your patience, babes! www.patreon.com/tvskevin