Podcasts about Present Laughter

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

Welcome to Season 04 Episode 11 - the "Rainforest" edition - of Notes from the Aisle Seat, the podcast featuring news and information about the arts in  northern Chautauqua County NY, sponsored by the 1891 Fredonia Opera House. Your host is Tom Loughlin, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair Emeritus of Theatre and Dance at SUNY Fredonia. Guests on this episode include: Mr. Craig Johnson on Present Laughter; Mr. Lars Swanson of the Long Point String Band; and Maestro Glen Cortese on Room 221 - A Sherlock Holmes Opera performed by the WNY Chamber Orchestra Notes from the Aisle Seat is available from most of your favorite podcast sites, as well as on the Opera House YouTube Channel. If you enjoy this podcast, please spread the word through your social media feeds, give us a link on your website, and consider becoming a follower by clicking the "Follow" button in the upper right-hand corner of our home page. If you have an arts event you'd like to publicize, hit us up at operahouse@fredopera.org and let us know what you have! Please give us at least one month's notice to facilitate timely scheduling. And don't forget to enter the giveaway for a $25 gift card from Downtown Brew and 2 tickets to the Cinema Series! Entries must be received by April 12th at 12 noon! Listen to the podcast for the question and answer. Then email your answer to operahouse@fredopera.org. Make sure you put the word "Giveaway" in the subject line and include your preferred contact information. Thanks for listening! Time Stamps (Approximate) 03:00  Mr. Craig Johnson/Present Laughter 21:10   Mr. Lars Swanson/Long Point String Band 36:00  Arts Calendar 39:36  Mr. Glen Cortese/Room 221 Media Rhythm of the Rain, John Claude Gummoe, composer; performed by The Cascades, Nov. 1962, Valiant Records Scene from Present Laughter by Nöel Coward, recorded at the National Theatre, London, November 2019. 5 Miles of Ellum Wood, Bruce Green, composer; performed by the Long Point String Band, May 2020. Happy Hollow, Marcus Martin, composer; performed by the Long Point String Band, May 2020. Scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles, from the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; featuring Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), Nigel Bruce (Dr. John Watson), Wendy Barrie (Beryl Stapleton); 20th Century Fox, 1939 Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, performed by B.J. Thomas; from the motion picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, October 1969, Sceptre Records. Artist Links Craig Johnson Lars Swanson/Long Point String Band Glen Cortese Box Office at SUNY Fredonia Lake Shore Center for the Arts Main Street Studios Ticket Website WCVF Fredonia WRFA Jamestown Register Here for the 1891 Run/Walk for the Opera House BECOME AN OPERA HOUSE MEMBER!          

Ian McGuirk's production of Noel Coward's Present Laughter runs at the Everyman this week. It opens on Tuesday night.Mairead went along to rehearsals and spoke to director Mary Curtin and Ian McGuirk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Mike for coffee at night in the studio, and later for a cocktail outside on the patio. Topics this week include a lament on the university building where I had my first college class some years ago being demolished this week in a spectacular Las Vegas-style kind of violence; thoughts on why it's important […]

Andrew Scott won a BAFTA as the evil Moriarty in Sherlock, but is equally loved for a divine television role as the hot priest in Fleabag. A prolific and versatile stage actor, he has starred in many plays by contemporary dramatists, including Port and Birdland by Simon Stevens. He played Hamlet to great critical acclaim and won an Olivier award for his starring role in Noel Coward's Present Laughter. His latest film role is All Of Us Strangers, in which he plays a single gay man haunted by the death of his parents. Andrew Scott talks to John Wilson about his suburban Dublin childhood and the early creative influence of his mother, an art teacher. After landing a debut role in an independent Irish film called Korea, Andrew gave up a university place studying drama to pursue an acting career. He remembers small parts playing American soldiers in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and the television series Band Of Brothers. He discusses his love of Shakespeare and his approach to playing the role of Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2017, and reveals how the music of Pet Shop Boys, and in particular their 1987 album Actually, are a reminder of a formative time of his life.Producer: Edwina Pitman

This is the third part of my interview with Oliver Soden author of the truly extraordinary new book MASQUERADE — THE LIVES OF NOEL COWARD. In this episode we discuss Noel Coward's life and career during the late 1930s including his amazingly provocative play DESIGN FOR LIVING and the bisexual love triangle at the center of it, as well as dazzling series of nine one act plays and musicals that make up TONIGHT AT 8:30 in which Coward and Gertrude Lawrence played a dazzling array of characters, and Oliver especially focusses on the surrealistic SHADOW PLAY. Then Soden recounts Cowards secret and dangerous activities during the Second World War working as a spy for the British government — much of which he has uncovered and revealed in his book for the very first time. During this incredibly active period Coward also created the plays PRESENT LAUGHTER and BLYTHE SPIRIT and the classic films IN WHICH WE SERVE and BRIEF ENCOUNTER.  If you missed the first three episodes you may want to catch up with those before embarking on this one. Oliver Sodon is a writer and broadcaster whose previous books include the critically acclaimed 2019 biography of composer Michael Tippett. Oliver's writing on art, music and literature has appeared in the Guardian, Spectator, London Review of Books, and the Times Literary supplement, and he is a frequent guest speaker on BBC radio and television broadcasts. Coward was without a doubt one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th Century and as you will hear Oliver and I had a great time talking about him. And it will be my pleasure to share that conversation with you over the next several episodes.   Critics have hailed this book and Oliver Soden as “Brilliant,” “Excellent,” “Illuminating,” Captivating,” “Definitive,” “fresh and original…a brilliant young writer,” “and emerging literary star.”  Become a PATRON of Broadway Nation! This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of our Patron Club members. If you would like to help support the work of Broadway Nation I will information at the end of the podcast about how you too can become a Patron. If you are a fan ofBroadway Nation, I invite you too to become a PATRON! For a just $7.00 a month you will receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the discussions that I have with my guests — in fact I often record nearly twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited versions. You will also have access to additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host Albert Evans that have not been featured on the podcast.  All patrons receive special “on-air” shout-outs and acknowledgement of your vital support of this podcast. And if you are very enthusiastic about Broadway Nation there are additional PATRON levels that come with even more benefits. If you would like to support the work of Broadway Nation and receive these exclusive member benefits, please just click on this link: https://broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech/ Thank you in advance for your support!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Career Conversations Q&A with Victor Garber, current star of HELLO DOLLY!, moderated by BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge of "Backstage with Richard Ridge!" VICTOR GARBER originated roles in the Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd, Noises Off, Lend Me a Tenor (Tony Award nomination), Arcadia, and Art. Additional Broadway credits include Deathtrap (Tony nomination), They're Playing Our Song, Little Me (Tony nomination), The Devil's Disciple, Damn Yankees (Tony nomination), and Present Laughter. Off-Broadway: Assassins, Follies (City Center Encores!). Film: Sicario, Self/less, Argo, Milk, Legally Blonde, Titanic, The First Wives Club, and Sleepless in Seattle. Television: Alias (three Emmy Award nominations), Frasier (Emmy nomination), Will & Grace (Emmy nomination), Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (Emmy nomination), Power, The Orville, Deception, Eli Stone, Justice, Web Therapy, The Big C, Nurse Jackie, Damages, Glee, Annie, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, and The Music Man.

Conor Tallon called in to rehearsals for Present Laughter, to chat with the enormous cast about their roles in Noel Coward's hilarious comedy. Since it opened in the Cork Arts Theatre, it's been getting a fantastic reception from audiences, and no wonder, with the stellar cast gathered to create this show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tune in for a second hour of uplifting and positive arts news from Cork, with music this hour from Fiona Kennedy, and a special feature with guest Clare Sands on her new album "Clare Sands". Elmarie also chatted to Tracey O Brien from the Gate Cinema about some fantastic Event Cinema screenings coming up. And Conor called to rehearsals for the highly anticipated production of Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" which opens in the Cork Arts Theatre this week. He had a chat with Director Mary Curtin, and the cast provided some sneak previews of the story! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WHAT a cast! WHAT a director! And WHAT a show this is going to be! Ian McGuirk presents Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" at the Cork Arts Theatre this week, and Conor Tallon went along to rehearsals to chat to Director Mary Curtin, and get a glimpse behind the production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anyone witness to the Australian theatre scene over the past five decades will know and love Geraldine Turner. Her long and distinguished career, most particularly in musical theatre, includes the original Australian productions of A Little Night Music and Chicago, and she's also appeared in productions of Company, Oliver, Anything Goes, and The Mikado, to name just a few. She's been in evergreen shows such as Don's Party and Present Laughter, and is now appearing in the play which holds the record for having the longest West End run in history. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap opened there in 1952, and it's still running, interrupted only by the temporary shutdown caused by the Covid pandemic. It's playing now at the Theatre Royal Sydney for a very limited run before touring the rest of Australia. In this conversation, Geraldine shares some highlights from her incredible career, in particular the original and highly successful Australian run of Chicago, her numerous encounters with the late Stephen Sondheim, and some frank stories from her childhood in Brisbane. Her book, Turner's Turn, A Disarmingly Honest Memoir, was released earlier this year.

We bring you an interview with Adrian Scarborough./An exclusive interview with Adrian Scarborough who, alongside Sophie Thompson stars in The Clothes They Stood Up In, his adaptation of Alan Bennett's novella. He talks about how it felt to take on such a celebrated writer's work , and why we should all be coming to see this play.Adrian has adapted Alan Bennett's novella The Clothes The Stood Up In, which is at the Playhouse Fri 9 Sep – Sat 1 OctGet your tickets hereThe Clothes They Stood Up In“Everything's gone. Furniture, blinds. They even managed to carry off a hot oven and the ‘sticky chicken casserole'. They can't be human.”Starring Olivier Award winning actors Sophie Thompson (Detectorists, Sex Education, Present Laughter, Gosford Park, Eastenders, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and Adrian Scarborough (The Madness of George III, Leopoldstadt, Gavin and Stacey).A night at the opera ends with a shock for mild-mannered couple Maurice and Rosemary Ransome when they open their front door to discover their flat completely empty. From light bulbs to carpets to toilet paper, even their chicken casserole has been stolen.The Ransomes turn detective to try and work out who is behind this outrageous act, and why and how they did it. Along the way, they are forced to examine their lives when stripped bare of the worldly possessions that define us all. Should they rebuild their old life, or begin afresh?A bittersweet exploration of marriage, dreams and lives unlived, Adrian Scarborough's adaptation brings Bennett's hilarious story to the stage for the first time, capturing his trademark observational wit in this gentle and darkly surprising tale.Support the showSupport the show

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Renowned Actor/Writer, Jim Piddock, Author of “Caught With My Pants Down and Other Tales from a Life in Hollywood” About Harvey's guest: Today's special guest is Jim Piddock, a hardworking and popular actor who's instantly recognizable from his performances in such memorable movies as “Independence Day”, “Lethal Weapon 2”, “The Prestige”, “Kill Your Friends”, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”, and “The 5-Year Engagement”.  And who can ever forget him as the straight-laced British commentator working opposite Fred Willard in Christopher Guest's brilliant film, “Best in Show”?  He also starred in several Broadway shows including “Present Laughter”, “Design for Living” and the original production of “Noises Off”.   And he's appeared in dozens of TV shows including “Mad About You”, “The Drew Carey Show”, “Lost”, “Two and a Half Men”, “Friends”, “ER”, “Modern Family”, “Castle”, and so many more.   He was also in the award-winning HBO series “From the Earth to the Moon”, and he starred in the CBS miniseries “The Women of Windsor”.  He's also a highly successful writer and producer, who's created movies and TV shows including “Too Much Sun”, “A Different Loyalty”, “The Man”, “Tooth Fairy”, and he co-wrote and starred in the HBO series “Family Tree” and “Mascots” for Netflix.   If that weren't enough, our guest is a superb and compelling raconteur, who recently released a highly entertaining and refreshingly frank and candid memoir entitled, “Caught With My Pants Down and Other Tales from a Life in Hollywood”.   This insightful, candid, and often hilarious book is an absolute MUST-READ for anyone having an interest in what really goes on in the world of show business. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ https://jimpiddock.com/https://www.facebook.com/jim.piddockhttps://twitter.com/realjimpiddockhttps://www.instagram.com/jimpiddockhttps://linktr.ee/CaughtWithMyPantsDown #JimPiddock  #CaughtWithMyPantsDown   #harveybrownstoneinterviews

Jenny Seagrove is an actress of stage and screen. She starred alongside Rupert Everett in the Academy Award-winning short film A Shocking Accident and other film roles include Nate and Hayes opposite Tommy Lee Jones, Bullseye! with Michael Caine and Roger Moore, A Chorus of Disapproval with Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Irons and Appointment with Death With Peter Ustinov, Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher and John Gielgud. She played Jo Mills in the BBC drama series Judge John Deed and her stage work includes multiple runs in the West End including The Exorcist, Noël Coward's Fallen Angels, Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular, Present Laughter at the Globe Theatre with Tom Conti and Hamlet with Ian McKellen. She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2003 and her partner is the theatrical producer and chairman of Everton F.C., Bill Kenwright. Jenny founded and helps to run Mane Chance Sanctuary, a charity that aims to "provide sanctuary and relief from suffering for horses, while promoting humane behaviour to all animals and mutually beneficial relationships with people who need them". Jenny Seagrove is guest number 190 on My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things she'd like to put in a time capsule; four she'd like to preserve and one she'd like to bury and never have to think about again .For more information on Jenny's charity Mane Chance, visit: manechancesanctuary.orgFollow Jenny Seagrove on Twitter: @springmeisterFollow My Time Capsule on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter: @fentonstevens and Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steve Cooper talks with actor/writer/producer Jim Piddock. As an actor, Jim starred in several Broadway shows in the 1980s, including Present Laughter, Design for Living, and the original production of Noises Off. Since then, he has appeared in numerous movies, such as Independence Day, Lethal Weapon 2, The Prestige, Best in Show, The Five-Year Engagement, A Mighty Wind, Kill Your Friends, and Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. He's also been seen in dozens of TV shows, like Modern Family, Mom, Two and a Half Men, Lost, Monk, Friends, ER, Mad About You, The Drew Carey Show, and Castle. He was also in the award-winning HBO series From the Earth to the Moon and starred in the CBS miniseries The Women of Windsor. In 2007 and 2012, he secured his reputation as one of the UK's most notable comedic exports when he starred on stage in Hollywood with Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Emily Mortimer, Tracey Ullman, and Sophie Winkleman in What About Dick? As a writer/producer, Jim's films include Tooth Fairy, The Man, and A Different Loyalty. With Christopher Guest, he co-wrote and starred in the HBO series Family Tree and Mascots for Netflix.

Jim Piddock is an actor, writer, and producer, who began his career on the stage in England, before emigrating to the U.S. in his early twenties. He made his theatrical debut in the U.S. in “The Boy's Own Story”, a one-man show about a soccer goalkeeper, at the Julian Theatre in San Francisco. The show was an instant success with critics and audiences, winning Jim the Bay Area Critics' Best Actor Award. The show was then produced Off-Broadway and he quickly gained the attention of the New York theatre scene. That same year (1982), he was cast in Noel Coward's “Present Laughter” by George C. Scott, who directed/starred in the revival, which also featured Nathan Lane, Christine Lahti, Dana Ivey, and Kate Burton. The show was a big hit on Broadway and Piddock soon found himself appearing in a string of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, including the original US production of “Noises Off”, “The Knack” at the Roundabout Theatre, and “Make and Break” with Peter Falk at the Kennedy Center. After replacing Frank Langella in “Design For Living” at the Circle-In-The-Square theatre, he moved to Los Angeles and has since appeared in a long succession of tv shows, such as “The Tracey Ullman Show”, “Coach”, “Max Headroom”, “The Twilight Zone”, “Murder She Wrote”, “Mad About You”, “Angel”, “ER”, “Friends”, “Crossing Jordan”, “The Drew Carey Show”, “Lost”, “Monk”, “Without A Trace”, “Dollhouse”, “Party Down”, “Law And Order: LA”, “Castle”, “Two And A Half Men”, “Children's Hospital”, “Mom”, “The Royals”, and “The Grinder”. He has also starred in several notable tv movies and mini-series, like “From The Earth To The Moon”, “A Mom For Christmas”, “She Creature” on HBO, and “The Women Of Windsor”. He appeared in his first movie in the top-grossing film of 1989, “Lethal Weapon 2”, in which one of his lines, “But…you're black” in answer to Danny Glover's request to emigrate to South Africa, became a catchphrase for the film. Other feature film roles soon followed, including notable appearances in “Independence Day”, “Traces Of Red”, “Multiplicity”, “Burn Hollywood Burn”, “Austin Powers 3”, “A Different Loyalty”, “Love For Rent”, “See This Movie”, “Love For Rent”, “The Prestige”, “Epic Movie”, “Who's Your Caddy?”, “The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising”, “Meet The Spartans”, Woody Allen's “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger”, “Get Him To The Greek”, “The Cold Light Of Day”, “The Five Year Engagement”, “1915”, “Think Like A Man Too”, and “Kill Your Friends”. But it is probably his diverse performances in the improvised Christopher Guest comedies “Best In Show” (as the Dog Show commentator with Fred Willard), “A Mighty Wind”, and “For Your Consideration” that he has gained the most attention as a chameleon-like character actor, barely recognizable from role to role. As a voice actor, he is most notable for providing the voice of Major Zero in the English version of the massively popular video game “Metal Gear Solid 3”, Bolero the Bull in the movie “Garfield 2”, and the fictional artistic director of Forever Young Films, Kenneth Loring, doing a hilarious commentary in the directors' cut of the Coen Brothers' “Blood Simple”. His voice work in animated tv series and in video games is extensive and includes “The Lion King”, “Extreme Ghostbusters”, “The New Batman Adventures”, “C-12: Final Resistance”, “Return To Castle Wolfenstein”, “The Lord Of The Rings”, “101 Dalmatians 2”, “The Bard's Tale”, “Dead Space: Downfall”, “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien”, Alfred in “Batman: Under The Red Hood”, “Batman: The Brave And The Bold”, “Skylanders: SWAP Force”, “Turbo FAST”, and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. He currently released his best-selling book, “Caught With My Pants Down and Other Tales From A Life in Hollywood.” We are so grateful to have him as a guest on, “Black Canvas.”

Today I talk to Actor, Writer and Director Jim Piddock about his Tell-all Hollywood memoir. 'Caught With My Pants Down and other tales from a life in Hollywood'. Available on Amazon. https://amzn.to/3iNfZjP Rough times 1min - 4.48 (Intro to Jim & book, speed reading) 5min - 10 (Farting stories) 10min - 15mins (Costumes, Mascots working with Christopher Guest) 15min - 16.30 (writing with costumes in mind) 16min - 19.42 (Dustin Hoffman inspiration and oscar speech) 20min - 23.30 (rescued by firemen) 24mins 27.21 (that facebook status and reputations) About Jim As an actor, Jim starred in several Broadway shows in the 1980s, including Present Laughter, Design For Living, and the original production of Noises Off. Since then, he has appeared in numerous movies, such as Independence Day, Lethal Weapon 2, The Prestige, Best in Show, The Five-Year Engagement, A Mighty Wind, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Kill Your Friends, Epic Movie, Multiplicity, and Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. He's also been seen in dozens of TV shows, like Modern Family, Mom, Two and a Half Men, Lost, Monk, Friends, ER, Mad About You, The Haunting Of Bly Manor, The Drew Carey Show, Designated Survivor, Murder She Wrote, Get Shorty, Law and Order, Party Down, Dollhouse, and Castle. He was also in the award-winning HBO series From the Earth to the Moon and starred in the CBS miniseries The Women of Windsor. In 2007 and 2012, Jim secured his reputation as one of the UK's most notable comedic exports when he starred on stage in Hollywood with Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Emily Mortimer, Tracey Ullman, and Sophie Winkleman in What About Dick? As a writer/producer, Jim's films include Tooth Fairy, The Man, and A Different Loyalty. With Christopher Guest, he co-wrote and starred in the HBO series Family Tree and Mascots for Netflix. Production on his film Frankel is due to start in 2022 in the UK. Credits Outro Music by: John Pickup More podcasts episodes available here: https://fromtailorswithlove.co.uk/podcasts Also available on YouTube

This week, Paul goes behind the curtain with James Earl Jones, II, star of “Come from Away” which returns to Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre from February 22nd – March 6th. The show is about 9/11 but as James makes clear, it's really about 9/12 and the wonderful people of Gander, New Foundland who took […]

Victor Garber is a four- time, Tony Award nominated actor who originated roles in the Broadway productions of Deathtrap, Sweeney Todd, Noises Off, Lend Me a Tenor, Arcadia, and Art. Additional Broadway credits include: They're Playing Our Song, Damn Yankees, Present Laughter, and most recently, as Horace Vandergelder in the hit Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! opposite Bernadette Peters. He also originated the role of John Wilkes Booth in the seminal, off- Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman's Assassins.  Film credits include: the Academy Award winning best pictures, Titanic and Argo, as well as, Sicario, The Town, Milk, Legally Blonde, The First Wives Club and Sleepless in Seattle. Television credits include: Alias (three Emmy Award nominations), Frasier (Emmy nomination), Will & Grace (Emmy nomination), Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (Emmy nomination), Damages, Glee, The Orville, Web Therapy, Schitt's Creek, Family Law, and many, many others

In this episode Rachel chats with Tedra Millan, one of New York's most celebrated young talents! Teddi originated the role of #46 in Sarah Delappe's The Wolves that world premiered at Playwrights Realm, and went on to Lincoln Centre production (that was made available for streaming earlier this year). Teddi has also been on Broadway in the revival of Noel Coward's Present Laughter (starring Kevin Kline), as well as the New York premiere of On the Shore of the Wide World by Simon Stephens at the Atlantic, and Happy Talk by Jesse Eisenberg produced by the New Group.These old friends catch up about:where it all startedhow everything changed for Teddi after grad schooland what's up next for this busy actorBut really...these two just shoot the shit for a little while.The movie she is currently shooting is a thriller called The Lot . You can catch her next in LA at the Geffen Playhouse in the west coast premiere of Power of Sail with Bryan Cranston and Amy Brenneman. Thanks for tuning in!------Intro music by David HilowitzSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/upstageleft)

Today in the ArtZany Radio studio Paula Granquist welcomes guests Julianna Skluzacek, Tania Larson Legvold, and Dean Lamp from the Merlin Players production of Noël Coward's Present Laughter performed at the Paradise Center for the Arts. themerlinplayers.org paradisecenterforthearts.org

Julianna Skluzacek, Artistic Director for the Merlin Players, discusses the play "Present Laughter" which will debut on Friday night at the Paradise Center for the Arts.

Julianna Skluzacek, Artistic Director for the Merlin Players, discusses the play “Present Laughter” which will debut on Friday night at the Paradise Center for the Arts. 

Helen's started her career with a work placement at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester and since then she has gone on to work full-time in the professions.She has had a long working relationship with Cameron Mackintosh supervising the hair and make up for My Fair Lady, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera in the UK and internationally, including productions in the USA, Korea and Spain.She has also been part of Mary Poppins for over 10 years with productions in the UK, Vienna, Stuttgart and now Japan. Worked on Broadway on numerous occasions and has spent a lot of time at The Old Vic in London.Theatre work credits include: Company, Oliver, Girl from the North Country, Groundhog Day, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Cats, Starlight Express, Guys and Dolls, We Will Rock You, Hairspray, Matilda, Wicked, Only Fools and Horses, La Cage aux Folles, Merrily We Roll Along, a Christmas Carol, Present Laughter, Long Days Journey Into Night, The Glass Menagerie, Hallelujah, Blithe Spirit and Breakfast at Tiffanys.

Welcome back to the 42nd 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. The theatres may be closed, but art finds a way to survive! For the time being on this podcast we are rereleasing our past reviews, interviews, roundtables, and duet reviews in remastered audio only versions so you can take your CoH content on the go! For our 42nd episode we continue to branch out our review series beyond the Stratford Festival and onto other productions. In this episode we discussed the 2017 Broadway production of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, and starring Kline in the lead role of Garry Essendine, with How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders as Joanna Lyppiatt. Cup of Hemlock Theatre is a Toronto-based performing arts collective dedicated to staging works that examine the moral quandaries of the human experience. With an inquisitive compass, we aim to provide audiences the space to retrace their personal stories and navigate their individual ideologies. Follow us on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: cohtheatre 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 Meagan Gove – Instagram: @magovelit Talia Rivers – Personal Instagram @talia.rivers // Art Instagram: @riversofpaint // Her Cat's Instagram: @anya.grandduchess Ryan Borochovitz – [Just send all that love to CoH instead; he won't mind!] --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cup-of-hemlock-theatre/support

Episode 027: Present Laughter by Noël Coward Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Alan Brodie Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We'll discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. Garry Essendine is a star of the London stage with an ego and celebrity lifestyle to match. But as he passes forty his excesses threaten to bring down the entire structure of his professional and personal life. Essendine is the thinly disguised alter-ego of playwright and performer Noël Coward, whose tussle with his own fame is the subject of his classic 3-act, 4-door farce Present Laughter. First performed in 1942 with Coward himself as the lead, the play has since attracted a glittering list of stars who could not resist the flamboyant turn, including most recently Andrew Scott in an Olivier award-winning performance at the Old Vic in 2019. Joining me to reexamine Coward's ‘light comedy' in the 21st century is theatrical agent and Coward afficionado, Alan Brodie.

Kate Burton is best known for her Tony nominated work on Broadway (where she last appeared in Present Laughter with Kevin Kline) and for her Emmy nominated work in Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. On film, she was most recently seen in Where’d You Go, Bernadette! She can also  be seen on television in Inventing Anna, Prodigal Son, Charmed and Supergirl. She is a professor at USC and lives in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dedicated to telling the story of The Rehearsal Club, to preserving its legacy, and to inspire and support future generations of aspiring young artists. CYNTHIA DARLOW : TRC resident 73, Board of Directors, Advisory Board, Governance Committee, Admissions Committee. Broadway: Billy Elliot, Old Acquaintance, Rabbit Hole, Present Laughter, Prelude to a Kiss, Rumors, Grease (orig. prod.) Off-Broadway: Home, The Runner Stumbles, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed, Juno and the Paycock, Cider House Rules Television: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Madam Secretary, Blue Bloods, The Last O.G., The Sopranos, Law and Order, and Square One T.V. - Children’s Television Workshop - 5 seasons, Film: The Savages, 25th Hour, & The Thomas Crown Affair, I Smile Back. President of The Rehearsal Club, Gale Patron is currently spearheading the revival of the legendary brownstone residence in a new midtown location, to once again provide affordable housing, board, mentoring and other personal support to young talented women aspiring to careers in the performing arts in NYC. Gale has spent her adult life working in many facets of the theatre in New York, the Cayman islands and Puerto Rico. The TRC Revival is one of Gale’s happiest projects in recent years. TRC, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, will create a sanctuary to nurture the future of greatly talented and deserving young women in the performance arts.  https://www.rehearsalclubnyc.com/history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Darlow https://www.rehearsalclubnyc.com/gale-patron

Today I am joined by the "crown prince of New York cabaret," the one and only Steve Ross. Tune in to hear him talk about performing in Present Laughter on Broadway, reopening the Algonquin hotel, trying to impress Ethel Merman, and more!

Career Q&A with Allison Janney on October 7, 2014. Moderated by Debra Birnbaum, Variety. In addition to starring in MOM, Emmy Award winner Allison Janney recently guest starred in the cable series "Masters of Sex." Her recent film credits include "Get on Up," "The Way, Way Back," "Touchy Feely," "Trust Me" and "Bad Words." She lent her voice to the animated film "Mr. Peabody & Sherman." Janney co-starred in the Academy Award-nominated film "The Help," for which the cast won ensemble awards from the Screen Actors Guild, National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics. Janney appeared in the Oscar-winning ensemble hit "Juno," and in the movie version of the Tony Award-winning play "Hairspray." For her role in "Life During Wartime," she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Spirit Awards. She also appeared in "Away We Go," "Strangers with Candy," and was heard as the voice of "Gladys" in the animated film "Over the Hedge," as well as "Peach" in "Finding Nemo." Janney received another Spirit Award nomination for her work in the independent feature "Our Very Own," and starred opposite Meryl Streep in "The Hours," which received a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture. Other feature credits include the Academy Award-winning film "American Beauty" (for which she won a SAG Award for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture), "Nurse Betty," "How to Deal," "Drop Dead Gorgeous," "10 Things I Hate About You," "Primary Colors," "The Ice Storm," "Six Days Seven Nights," "The Object of My Affection" and "Big Night." Janney is perhaps best known for her starring role as White House Press Secretary CJ Cregg in the television series "The West Wing," for which she won four Emmy Awards and four SAG Awards. While she was a freshman studying acting at Kenyon College in Ohio, Janney auditioned for Paul Newman. Soon after, Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward suggested she study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She followed their advice and went on to make her Broadway debut in Noel Coward's "Present Laughter," for which she earned the Outer Critics Circle Award and Clarence Derwent Award. Also, she appeared in Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge," receiving her first Tony Award nomination and winning the Outer Critics Circle Award. Janney was last seen on Broadway in the musical "9 to 5," for which she earned a Tony Award nomination and won the Drama Desk Award.

In this episode, Artistic Director Gabriel Stelian-Shanks sits down with Tony-nominated director Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who discusses his approach, inspirations, and work, including the recent Broadway productions of BERNHARDT/HAMLET, PRESENT LAUGHTER and HAND TO GOD. IN CONVERSATION, The Drama League's acclaimed series of discussions with the directors changing the face of theater, television, and film, is now online! The process of creating art is revealed in these intimate, surprising, and wide-ranging conversations with award-winning creators from around the world. The artists in this video have donated their time and fees to help provide much-needed aid, relief, and programs for stage directors affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. You can help! Donate here: dramaleague.org/ghostlight If you're a director needing assistance, visit our COVID-19 resources and emergency relief programs here: dramaleague.org/covidresources/covid19resources Learn more about Moritz von Stuelpnagel: moritzvs.com Learn more about The Drama League: dramaleague.org/ Watch the video: https://vimeo.com/402569480/8e81a8ee2a Video Editing Services provided by @catalinmedia

Allie and Chrissie had an *absolutely marvelous* time seeing the NT Live screening of Present Laughter, and now they're ready to dive into the Good Book we all know as Fleabag: The Scriptures. But first they take a moment to appreciate the newly crowned best comedy in Britain, Mrs. Brown's Boys.

We chat about Loserville. Bare. West End Eurovision. Pink Mist. Unicorn’s Almost. Laines. Jersey Boys. Mamma Mia. Present Laughter. Old Vic. Central. Army At the Fringe. Bristol Old Vic. Homos or Everyone In America. Ashley Luke Lloyd. Duncan Leighton. Robbie Boyle. Dale Evans. Michael Vincent. Ross William Wilde. Owen Sheers. John Retallack. Tyrone Huntley. Harry McEntire. Josh Seymour.

Rob & Al have another amazing roundup of what's going 'daaan' in the West End. This week - news about Falsetto's, two events in The Vaults, Fleabag, Judi Dench and numerous stories about Jamie Lloyd. They also talk about Present Laughter, Mr Gum and two dreadful shows that in their opinion were pretty terrible. Rob also boasts about a trip to Broadway. Enjoy!

Let's talk about pissing-yourself-laughing theatre. The Old Vic presents, a Noël Coward play, directed by Matthew Warchus. Led by Andrew Scott as Garry Essendine, with Indira Varma, Suzie Toase, Sophie Thompson, Luke Thallon, Nada Sharp, Liza Sadovy, Abdul Salis, Tom Peters, Dan Krikler, Joshua Hill, Enzo Cilenti, Kitty Archer and Nicole Agada. http://go.otwp.uk/s01e45-present-laughter This production is in progress, until the 10th of August 2019. https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2019/present-laughter All thoughts and opinions expressed on this show are solely those of the individual expressing them at the time of recording, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of The Good, the Bad and the Just Plain Standard, Milk In A Wineglass & Hicks Entertainment. I, Yann Sicamois - sound in body and mind - shall never apologize to an angry mob under any circumstances. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/on-the-wooden-path/message

In episode 40 we review The Old Vic's new production of Noel Coward's Present Laughter staring Andrew Scott, Iris Theatre's promenade production of Hamlet, Arthur Pita's dark dance piece, The Mother staring ballet superstar Natalia Osipova, and the classic comedy farce Noises Off which returns to The Lyric Hammersmith nearly 40 years since it premiered there in 1982. - Opening/Closing Music: Little Lily Swing by Tri-Tachyonis: licensed under a CC Attribution License

Vicki and James try to see the funny side as they go to see Noel Cowards 'Present Laughter' at the Old Vic.  But did it tickle their funny bones of was it an unwanted gift?  Download the podcast to find out... If you would like us to come and review your production, you can contact us via our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter.  If you like what you hear please remember to rate and review us on ITunes.. Thanks for listening!

For this week's Chops, Hannah went to London's Old Vic to meet actor, author and scene-stealer extraordinaire, Sophie Thompson, to chat about her latest play Present Laughter, the perils of fame and talking to herons. They also chatted her books for kids, Zoo Boy, and Detectorists, Because of course they did. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Featuring: Bianca Del Rio. ‪Faye Tozer. ‬SingEasy. ‪Wicked. ‬Matthew Croke. The Ida Girls. With Andrew Keates. Drew Baker. Steph Parry. Megan Jobling. Charlie McCullagh. Ben Papworth. Lois Morgan Gay‪. Chrissie Perkins. Birdcage. Paul Branch‬. Scott Sutcliffe. Jonathan Dudley. Aimee Fisher. Sam Robinson. Genevieve Taylor. Rhidian Marc. Carl Man. Chiarina Woodall. Hannah Ducharme. Michel Webborn. Actor Awareness LGBTQ+ New writing night. ‪Dark Sublime. Confessions. The Other Palace‬. One Act Festival 2019. Stockwell Playhouse. Present Laughter. The ‪Old Vic. ‬The Globe Midnight Matinee. Twelfth Night. West End Live. Lucie Devine. Jordan Haugh. Russell Haugh. Amy Lovatt. Lewis Snell. Perry O’Bree. The Legs Eleven Gang Show. Miss Moppe. Vinegar Strokes. Jamie Campbell. Courtney Bowman. ‪Sejal Keshwala. Divalution.‬

Anita Waxman, co-founder and director of Ceras Health, has been involved with healthcare technology and the development of new modalities that have changed the course of medicine over the past thirty-five years. In 1975, Anita founded and served as CEO and Chairman of Howe-Lewis International, a management consulting and executive search firm. Howe-Lewis serves the biotechnology, medical electronics, and healthcare communities. It is dedicated to healthcare and not-for-profit communities and is retained by its clients to recruit the entire range of executive-level talent. From its founding, Howe-Lewis has demonstrated its commitment to partnering with both major, established institutions and with emerging, growing organizations to identify and attract the very best leaders.    In 1977, Anita was the co-founder of Diasonics Inc., the company that introduced both diagnostic ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to market. Diasonics was at the forefront in changing the way that medical imaging could diagnose disease. In 1984, Anita along with Dr. Nicholas Cummings founded American Biodyne Inc. She served on the board of directors through its growth and sale to Medco Containment Services (later acquired by Merck). Along with KKR, Merck Behavioral went through a leveraged buyout and as a freestanding company (known as Merit Behavioral) its revenues grew to over $800 million. The company was later sold to Magellan Behavioral Care. Ms. Waxman served on the Board of Directors of SOS International, a worldwide medical service company that, working in some of the most inhospitable places on earth, offered international standards of medical care where it was otherwise not available, or where cultural or language barriers prevented its proper implementation. Through her involvement with SOS International, Ms. Waxman became a Director and Co-Founder of International Medical Care, Ltd., which is a rapidly growing Geneva based company that staffs and operates family practice outpatient clinics and provides emergency room health services throughout the world. Currently, Anita is a cofounder, director, and consultant to Ceras Health, which is dedicated to reducing the cost of healthcare. Ceras Health, Inc.TM (Ceras Health) has developed a patent pending SaaS platform, I'M HOME!®, that supports patients' adherence to pre-and post-discharge care plans, provides patients and care team members with the ability to measure and track patient health data, and enables individuals to get better and stay better by providing access to condition specific health information.   In addition to her work in the healthcare industry, Anita has spent many years following her passion in the world of live theater. Anita Waxman is a multiple Tony Award-winning producer. As CEO of Alexis Productions, she has garnered seventy-one Tony nominations and sixteen Tony awards. Anita is currently working with Jimmy Buffett, Frank Marshall, and Grove Entertainment to bring Escape To Margaritaville, a musical based on the music of Jimmy Buffett, to the world's stage. Anita is also producing Little Dancer, a musical based on the story of Edward Degas. Through Alexis Productions, Anita produced and won multiple Tonys for The Real Thing written by Sir Tom Stoppard, and the successful revival of Cabaret starring Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming. Other productions include Jesus Christ Superstar, Becoming Chaplin, Rocky, the Tony Award winning Best Revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Music Man, A Moon for the Misbegotten starring Gabriel Byrne, The Wild Party, The Waverly Gallery, Electra, A Night in November, A Little Night Music, Enron, American Idiot, Love Never Dies, Present Laughter starring Frank Langella, Mrs. Klein starring Uta Hagen, Wild Honey starring Sir Ian McKellen, The Vertical Hour, Bombay Dreams, Gypsy, the West End productions of Ragtime, the Broadway revival of Rodger and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song, the hit revival of Noises Off, The Elephant Man starring Billy Crudup, and many more. Two of her shows have won Pulitzer prizes: The Young Man from Atlanta and Top Dog/Underdog. She is a member of the Broadway League. Ms. Waxman founded two theatrical investment funds, Alexis Fund I and Alexis Fund II. Some investments include Kinky Boots (NYC, London & Tour), Escape to Margaritaville, Hello Dolly, The Front Page, Glass Menagerie, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Jersey Boys (AUS), Book of Mormon (AUS), Verso Truth in Deception, and Joan of Arc. She is currently producing Little Dancer, a new musical by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens staring Tiler Peck and Terrence Mann, and Directed by Susan Stroman. Other upcoming projects include a new musical based on the music of Diane Warren, The Library, Terra Firma and more. She has served on the boards of the Donmar Warehouse in London, 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, The Magic Theatre in San Francisco, The Roundabout Theatre Company New York City, the Human Rights watch, SOS International, and American Biodyne.   Anita Waxman has also worked with orphanages around the world. Through her foundation NOAH'S ARK, she established a home for orphaned children in Russia: the Passin-Waxman Center for Children, which is known today as Anita's Kids, which has helped to educate and care for several hundred children in the past eighteen years. 

In this episode Ilana sat down with her friend and the producer of the first play Ilana ever did in New York, Tony Award winner - Daryl Roth. Roth is an award-winning theatre producer and President of Daryl Roth Productions. She is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing seven Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee’sThree Tall Women; and Wit. The proud recipient of ten Tony Awards and London’s Olivier Award, highlights of her over 100 award winning productions both on and off Broadway include: The Tony and Olivier Award winning musical Kinky Boots (Broadway, U.S. Tour, London, Toronto, Australia, Korea, Japan); Bea Arthur on Broadway; Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Caroline, or Change; Closer Than Ever; Curtains; Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002 Tony Award); The Humans (2016 Tony Award); Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (2011 Tony Award); A Raisin in the Sun (2014 Tony Award); Shuffle Along; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; A View from the Bridge (2016 Tony); War Horse (2011 Tony Award); Wiesenthal; The Year of Magical Thinking; and De La Guarda, which ran for 7 years as the inaugural production at the Daryl Roth Theatre, a landmark building in Manhattan’s Union Square. Upcoming Broadway productions include Paula Vogel’s Indecent; Groundhog Day; Hello, Dolly starring Bette Midler; Present Laughter starring Kevin Kline; and Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close. Film credits include My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story a documentary exploring the relationships of well-known New Yorkers and their dogs.  Ms. Roth is a newly appointed member of the New York City Police Foundation Board of Trustees, a member of the Mayor’s Theater Subdistrict Council, an Honorary Trustee for Lincoln Center Theatre, and was twice included in Crain’s “100 MostInfluential Women in Business.” Recent honors include: The Order of the Golden Sphinx award from The Harvard Hasty Pudding Institute; New York Living Landmarks award; Humanitarian Award from the Women's Division and Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Broadway Association Visionary Leader Award; Family Equality Council Family Award; Live Out Loud Humanitarian Award; and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. She enjoys supporting a diverse group of charitable and cultural institutions, and is active in LGBTQ rights causes, animal rights, and support for the arts.  Ms. Roth is married to real estate developer Steven Roth.

Rufus Hound in conversation with Sean Foley, all about their production of Noël Cowards Present Laughter, which opens Festival 2018 and plays from 20 April - 12 May. Recorded at St.Mary Abbots. Music by Ted Hayes

Fine Music Radio — There’s a wonderful Noel Coward play opening at the Theatre on the Bay next week to celebrate 30 years of world class entertainment at this popular venue. The play is called PRESENT LAUGHTER and features an all-star South African cast led by the distinguished West End star PATRICK RYECART who has appeared in many films – such as The King’s Speech and A Bridge Too Far – as well as television series like Poldark and currently The Crown. Rodney Trudgeon invited Patrick Ryecart into the People of Note studio to find out more about his long career and the Noel Coward play in which he plays the leading role. People of Note is broadcast on Sunday evenings just after the 6pm news with a repeat on Thursday just after the 1pm news.

Kate Burton is a USC School of Dramatic Arts professor and master artist. She has directed Chekhov’s Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull for USC’s MFA Rep, as well as two evenings of Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky for Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The daughter of two Shakespearean actors, she has played Viola, Juliet, Desdemona, Isabella, The Princess of France, Hermione and Queen/ Belarius in Cymbeline (2015 NYSF). A three-time Tony and Emmy nominee, she was seen last on Broadway opposite Kevin Kline in Present Laughter. On television, she is best known for her work in Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. She will soon be seen in Where Did You Go, Bernadette, starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Richard Linklater. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama.

Jordan Roth, the Tony Award winning President of Jujamcyn Theaters, is responsible for bringing "Spring Awakening," "Clybourne Park," "Kinky Boots," "Springsteen on Broadway," "Falsettos," "Mean Girls," "Frozen," "Angels In America" and many other hits to Broadway. The youngest president ever of a theater dynasty, Jordan has quickly become one of the most respected producers in the American theater. On this episode of "Little Known Facts" Jordan talks with Ilana about his desire to bring theater to Broadway that inspires and changes lives; indeed, Jordan's gift for bringing together other creatives and cultivating talent has allowed him to bring some of the most powerful game changing plays to the Broadway stage. Jordan shares intimate details about his childhood and what led him to a career focused on  creativity and community. Jordan is a tireless activist for political causes that support people in need from all walks of life -- often working with organizations that support the LGBTQI community. This is a rare look into the life of one of the most powerful members of the theater community.  Jordan Roth is widely recognized as a theatrical innovator, championing new shows that push the boundaries of Broadway and creating unique experiences for audiences. As President of Jujamcyn Theaters, he oversees five Broadway theatres, presenting some of the most influential and successful musicals and plays on Broadway today. Current productions include the Tony Award-winning Best Musicals "The Book of Mormon" and "Kinky Boots," "Springsteen on Broadway" and the upcoming "Frozen" and "Mean Girls." Jordan recently produced "Present Laughter" starring Kevin Kline in his Tony Award-winning performance as well the Tony-nominated revival of "Falsettos" with Lincoln Center Theater. Previous producing credits include the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Best Play "Clybourne Park" and his first production, the long-running "The Donkey Show" Off-Broadway. This spring, Jordan is joining with the National Theatre to bring to Broadway the eagerly anticipated production of "Angels in America" starring Nathan Lane and Andrew Garfield.  Combining his love of theatre with his passion for making a difference in our community, Jordan created Givenik.com, a unique service allowing theatergoers to buy discounted tickets and give 5% of their ticket price to the charity of their choice. Givenik.com currently supports over 750 charitable organizations, including God's Love We Deliver. Jordan writes a regular column on Deadline Hollywood with Jeremy Gerard debating issues of the day in theatre and culture. His new online cultural commentary comedy series "The Birds" and the BS with Jordan Roth launches soon.  In a relatively short period of time, Jordan has generated much interest in his vision and accomplishments.  He was honored to be included in Fast Company's "Most Creative People in Business 1000," Crain's "Forty Under 40," Variety's "50 Creatives to Watch," The Daily News' "50 New Yorkers to Watch," Time Out New York's "42 Reasons to Applaud New York Theatre," Paper Magazine's "Beautiful People Issue," and Out Magazine's "Out 100" three times. Recently, Jordan was recognized as a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.  Jordan graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with degrees in philosophy and theatre, and received his MBA from Columbia Business School. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, The Broadway League, Times Square Alliance and the Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation.  Jordan and his husband Richie Jackson live in New York City with their two sons Jackson and Levi.

Allison Janney, a seven-time Primetime Emmy Award winner, had dreams of becoming an Olympic figure skater. That dream ended when, at age 17, she ran through a sliding glass window. The injury was serious, and, suddenly Allison's future goals shifted. She found herself at Kenyon College and she became a theater major. While at Kenyon Allison was discovered by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward who had come to the college to direct a play at their alma mater. They encouraged Janney to go to NYC and pursue a career in acting professionally. What happened after that is the subject of this funny and intimate conversation with host Ilana Levine, a dear friend of Allison's. The two met and became fast friends when Ilana was starring in the HBO series "Tanner 88" with a mutual friend. Allison walks us through her audition for "The West Wing" and opens up about why the recent loss of her brother makes starring on the CBS hit show "Mom" all the more important for her during this emotional time. The incredibly versatile Allison Janney has taken her place among a select group of actors who combine a leading lady’s profile with a character actor’s art of performance. Currently starring alongside Anna Faris in the CBS/Chuck Lorre sitcom, “Mom,” Janney also received rave reviews for her turn as ‘Margaret Scully’ on Showtime’s groundbreaking drama “Masters of Sex.” Janney won Emmys for both roles in the same year; a rare feat in Emmy history. She won a second Emmy for “Mom” the following year, bringing her total number of ATAS statues to seven. She was also recently honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In addition, Janney has continually taken on movie roles during her hiatus weeks from the sitcom. She’s completed filming “I, Tonya” with Margot Robbie for Miramax Films. Janney also appeared in two of the previous summer’s biggest box office titles: the adorably animated “Minions” and “Spy” with Melissa McCarthy. Prior feature work includes “The Duff,” Jason Bateman’s directorial debut “Bad Words,” the Dreamworks’ animated film “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” and “The Way, Way Back” with Steve Carell and Toni Collette. Additionally she co-starred in the much anticipated feature film "The Help" based on the best-selling novel of the same name, winning the Ensemble awards from the Screen Actors Guild, National Board of Review and the Broadcast Film Critics. For her role in Todd Solondz's film "Life During Wartime" she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Spirit Awards. She received another Spirit Award nomination for her work in the independent feature “Our Very Own,” and starred opposite Meryl Streep in “The Hours,” which received a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture. Other feature credits include the Academy Award winning film “American Beauty” (for which she won a SAG Award for Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture) as well as “Nurse Betty,” “How to Deal,” “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Primary Colors,” “The Ice Storm,” “Six Days Seven Nights,” “The Object of My Affection,” and “Big Night.” On TV, she is renowned for her starring role in the acclaimed NBC series "The West Wing," where she won a remarkable four Emmy Awards and four SAG Awards for her portrayal of White House Press Secretary ‘CJ Cregg.’ She made her Broadway debut in Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter” for which she earned the Outer Critics Circle Award and Clarence Derwent Award. She also appeared in Arthur Miller’s "A View from the Bridge," receiving her first Tony Award nomination and winning the Outer Critics Circle Award as well as the musical "9 to 5," Janney made her return to Broadway earlier this year in the revival of John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation."

Scott Elliott is an artistic director and the founder of The New Group, a non-profit company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater. He has directed shows such as Avenue Q, Present Laughter, The Three Sisters, Barefoot in the Park, and The Threepenny Opera. His company has produced shows such as Hurlyburly, This Is Our Youth, Buried Child, Rasheeda Speaking, and more. Scott and I chatted about where he got his “I’ll just figure it out” attitude on this week’s podcast, as well as: Why The New Group doesn’t want a Broadway Theater. What happened to commercial Off Broadway. Why you can’t be afraid of “no” when you’re raising money. Thinking about starting a theater company?  Here’s his shocking opinion. The reaction he hates from audiences. Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway www.theproducersperspective.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Sarah’s birthday we were able to head to New York for the weekend to check out a few Broadway shows including War Paint; Kinky Boots; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812; Hello, Dolly! and Present Laughter. You can check out the Tony performances of Hello Dolly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-3SEz7QFGA War Paint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_5Jz0ug7uo Great Comet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRkREhyFHz8

Derek McLane is a set designer for theatre, opera, and television.  McLane has designed more than 300 productions at theatres throughout the United States and around the world, for Broadway, Off-Broadway and major live television. McLane won an Emmy and an Art Directors Guild Award for his design for the 2014 Oscars. Broadway credits include: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, 33 Variations (Tony Award, Best Scenic Design 2009), Grease, The Pajama Game (2006 Tony Nomination), I Am My Own Wife (Tony Award, Best Play), The Women, Present Laughter, London Assurance, Holiday, Honour, Summer and Smoke, and Three Sisters. Off-Broadway credits include: Buried Child, Into the Woods, Posterity, The Scene, The Voysey Inheritance, Two Trains Running, and Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. For television, McLane designed the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Academy Awards, as well as the live television productions of The Sound of Music Live!, Peter Pan Live! and The Wiz Live!.   We talked about everything design related and more including: Why a fish tank led to his career in design. The one piece of advice that got him accepted into the Yale School of Drama. How you can get him to design one of your shows. The big part of a designer’s job that people don’t know about. How projections will influence design in the future . . . or how they won’t? Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway www.theproducersperspective.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a workpack for Howard Davies' 2007 production of Present Laughter by Noel Coward.

Kraig Swartz is an amazing and versatile actor whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and watching this summer at Peterborough Players, in Peterborough NH. Peterborough Players is a professional summer stock theater company established in 1933. This summer Kraig is in 4 shows on a rotating schedule at the Peterborough Players--currently in Present Laughter as Roland and upcoming as Michael in Rounding Third. Kraig has performed all over Off-Broadway at venues such as the Lucille Lortel, The Mint, The Pearl, and regionally with Philadelphia Theater company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and The Guthrie--just to name a few! He is a professional actor with wit and inspiration for all of us. So Listen in on this radio show where we learn more about Kraig, his passion, his career, and ask him his advice on how to follow your heart and live your dreams!

Kraig Swartz is an amazing and versatile actor whom I have had the pleasure of meeting and watching this summer at Peterborough Players, in Peterborough NH. Peterborough Players is a professional summer stock theater company established in 1933. This summer Kraig is in 4 shows on a rotating schedule at the Peterborough Players--currently in Present Laughter as Roland and upcoming as Michael in Rounding Third. Kraig has performed all over Off-Broadway at venues such as the Lucille Lortel, The Mint, The Pearl, and regionally with Philadelphia Theater company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and The Guthrie--just to name a few! He is a professional actor with wit and inspiration for all of us. So Listen in on this radio show where we learn more about Kraig, his passion, his career, and ask him his advice on how to follow your heart and live your dreams!

Month Upon a Time, Episode #3 (August): How does one find words to describe the force of nature that is Brooks Ashmanskas? "Funny," "outrageous," "fearless" - they just don't seem to do him justice. Brooks and I crossed like ships in the night 15 years ago, when he made his Broadway debut taking over the role of Bud Frump from me in the last (first) Broadway revival of How to Succeed.... That marked the start of a truly impressive Broadway career that has included such plays and musicals as Dream, Little Me, the Bernadette Peters Gypsy, The Producers, The Ritz, Present Laughter, Promises Promises, and of course his Tony-nominated turn in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. Add to that a bunch of Off Broadway and regional productions and wonderful recordings (Songs for a New World, It's Only Life) and you start to get a sense of how versatile and accomplished and BUSY a guy he is! Big thanks to Dan Adler, who put forward this month's song idea and is about to participate in his fourth consecutive Burning Man! If you don't know what Burning Man is, you should definitely check it out. It seems like an amazing event.... And special thanks to the wonderful composer Debra Barsha for her great song idea, which isn't the central idea for this song but is woven in nonetheless. This episode was recorded August 19, 2011.

One of "God of Carnage"'s current combatants on Broadway, Christine Lahti, talks about playing the range of emotions that consume her character over the course of the play's mere 80 minutes, and how the new ensemble developed the rapport for such a physical and intimate work. She also discusses her college years, including the dual lures of social activism and theatre performance; her experience understudying Madeline Kahn and Sigourney Weaver in the premiere of John Guare's "Marco Polo Sings a Solo"; her early Broadway work in plays by Michael Weller and Steve Tesich; being directed by and co-starring with the legendary George C. Scott in "Present Laughter", along with Broadway newbies Nathan Lane and Kate Burton; how studying with another iconic figure, Uta Hagen, taught her how to be "director-proof"; her multiple appearances in Jon Robin Baitz's monologue-driven "Three Hotels"; and her great affinity for the work of Wendy Wasserstein, evidenced by her performances in "The Heidi Chronicles" (on Broadway), "Third" (at the Geffen Playhouse) and "An American Daughter" (for television). Original air date - February 10, 2010.

One of "God of Carnage"'s current combatants on Broadway, Christine Lahti, talks about playing the range of emotions that consume her character over the course of the play's mere 80 minutes, and how the new ensemble developed the rapport for such a physical and intimate work. She also discusses her college years, including the dual lures of social activism and theatre performance; her experience understudying Madeline Kahn and Sigourney Weaver in the premiere of John Guare's "Marco Polo Sings a Solo"; her early Broadway work in plays by Michael Weller and Steve Tesich; being directed by and co-starring with the legendary George C. Scott in "Present Laughter", along with Broadway newbies Nathan Lane and Kate Burton; how studying with another iconic figure, Uta Hagen, taught her how to be "director-proof"; her multiple appearances in Jon Robin Baitz's monologue-driven "Three Hotels"; and her great affinity for the work of Wendy Wasserstein, evidenced by her performances in "The Heidi Chronicles" (on Broadway), "Third" (at the Geffen Playhouse) and "An American Daughter" (for television). Original air date - February 10, 2010.

"9 to 5" star Allison Janney talks about her transformation into a musical comedy performer, and why the dancing didn't worry her but the singing did. She also discusses her theatrical education at Kenyon College, the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts; what it was like to be directed in her very first college show by Paul Newman and her subsequent tutelage under mentor Joanne Woodward; her challenge in finding an agent; what an aptitude test said she was most suited for professionally; how the movie "Hoosiers" helped her conquer her fear of making her Broadway debut opposite Frank Langella in "Present Laughter"; why she's not a Shakespeare aficionado in general and why we'll never again see her performing in Central Park, where she starred in "The Taming of the Shrew"; how "The West Wing"'s "walk and talk" sequences reminded her of theatre; and "the truth" about how she scarred Anthony LaPaglia for life when they appeared on Broadway in "A View from the Bridge". Original air date - August 17, 2009.

"9 to 5" star Allison Janney talks about her transformation into a musical comedy performer, and why the dancing didn't worry her but the singing did. She also discusses her theatrical education at Kenyon College, the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts; what it was like to be directed in her very first college show by Paul Newman and her subsequent tutelage under mentor Joanne Woodward; her challenge in finding an agent; what an aptitude test said she was most suited for professionally; how the movie "Hoosiers" helped her conquer her fear of making her Broadway debut opposite Frank Langella in "Present Laughter"; why she's not a Shakespeare aficionado in general and why we'll never again see her performing in Central Park, where she starred in "The Taming of the Shrew"; how "The West Wing"'s "walk and talk" sequences reminded her of theatre; and "the truth" about how she scarred Anthony LaPaglia for life when they appeared on Broadway in "A View from the Bridge". Original air date - August 17, 2009.

In November of 1986, legendary acting coach Ada Brown Mather sat down with Roderick Cook at Westside Arts Theatre to discuss his affinity for acting, directing and presenting the words and work of Noël Coward. During this interview Cook covers his relationship with Coward the man, the unlikely circumstance under which Cook's hit "Oh Coward!" was developed and then revived, and the experience of directing Coward shows on and off-Broadway with entertainment giants like Peter O'Toole in his American debut in "Present Laughter".

Tony Award-winning actor Nathan Lane charts the course of his career, from touring New Jersey schools in the historical musical "Jerz" to starring on Broadway as the President of the United States in David Mamet's comedy "November". Along the way, he recalls losing out on the leading role in the original "Little Shop Of Horrors" and making his Broadway debut in George C. Scott's production of "Present Laughter"; discusses a few of the quirks of his next big show, the musical "Merlin"; considers his longstanding partnerships with both playwright Terrence McNally (revealing the only play that McNally specifically wrote for him) and director Jerry Zaks; chronicles his challenging and charmed experience as Max Bialystock in the musical "The Producers" on Broadway and in London; and reflects on the impact of "Butley" -- first when he saw it as a teenager, and later when he took on the title role in the play's Broadway revival. Original air date - February 22, 2008.

Tony Award-winning actor Nathan Lane (for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Producers) charts the course of his career, from touring New Jersey schools in the historical musical Jerz to starring on Broadway as the President of the United States in David Mamet's comedy November. Along the way, he recalls losing out on the leading role in the original Little Shop Of Horrors and making his Broadway debut in George C. Scott's production of Present Laughter; discusses a few of the quirks of his next big show, the musical Merlin; considers his longstanding partnerships with both playwright Terrence McNally (revealing the only play that McNally specifically wrote for him) and director Jerry Zaks; chronicles his challenging and charmed experience as Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers on Broadway and in London; and reflects on the impact of Butley -- first when he saw it as a teenager, and later when he took on the title role in the play's Broadway revival.

Tony Award-winning actor Nathan Lane charts the course of his career, from touring New Jersey schools in the historical musical "Jerz" to starring on Broadway as the President of the United States in David Mamet's comedy "November". Along the way, he recalls losing out on the leading role in the original "Little Shop Of Horrors" and making his Broadway debut in George C. Scott's production of "Present Laughter"; discusses a few of the quirks of his next big show, the musical "Merlin"; considers his longstanding partnerships with both playwright Terrence McNally (revealing the only play that McNally specifically wrote for him) and director Jerry Zaks; chronicles his challenging and charmed experience as Max Bialystock in the musical "The Producers" on Broadway and in London; and reflects on the impact of "Butley" -- first when he saw it as a teenager, and later when he took on the title role in the play's Broadway revival. Original air date - February 22, 2008.