Podcast appearances and mentions of Simon Russell Beale

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

"The Choral" is a British historical drama film co-produced and directed by Nicholas Hytner and written by Alan Bennett. Set in 1916, during World War I, in the fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, the film follows the members of the local choral society, which recruits a group of teenage boys and girls for a performance of Edward Elgar's "The Dream of Gerontius," a work chosen because a German did not write it. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Robert Emms, and Simon Russell Beale. The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it received positive reviews for its feel-good story and performances. Hytner and Fiennes were both kind enough to spend some time speaking with us about their work and experiences making the film, which you can listen to below. Please be sure to check out the film, which is now playing in theaters from Sony Pictures Classics. Thank you, and enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined today by screenwriter, TV and radio dramatist and science fiction/fantasy novelist Philip Palmer.  Philip has a background as a script editor and writes extensively for radio as well as television, scripting five seasons of the Radio Four Hungarian crime drama Keeping The Wolf Out. Other radio plays include The King's Coinerstarring Iain McDiarmid and The Faerie Queene starring Simon Russell Beale. His feature film The Ballad of Billy McCrae, which he wrote and co-produced, was released on more than 20 UK screens in September 2021.  Philip's books include Version 43 and Hell Ship, the horror/crime novel Hell On Earth, Morpho, and the horror novella Murder of the Heart. He also has extensive experience working with new and emerging writers.   Find out more about Philip:   BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b07ldlnq   Author Page https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B001IU2P86/about   Feature Film The Ballad of Billy McRae: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B09KG756VM/ref=atv_sr_fle_c_srce7a38_1_1_1?sr=1-1&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B09KGC6FND&qid=1747666407190   Agent Page https://mbalit.co.uk/client/philip-palmer/     Join the Writers' Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com   Get in touch with us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com     Writing Workout based on Philip's interview   “Without realizing it… architecture, history, other lives, glimpsed lives…These are all things that are in me and I didn't have to put them there, they were there. I just needed a frame in which to express those ideas.” Philip Palmer   Warm-up: Pick a place you love. Think on the page about who is in it, what they want, what they fear, what could be changing for them. No criticising your ideas: just notice them and get them down.    Exercise 1: Read your warm-up like you've never seen it before. Whose story does it seem to be? What is it about them that speaks to you?   “I like to explore and experiment. My favourite way of writing, usually I have to plan but my favourite way is improvising, like if I could play piano it would be the equivalent of improvising on the piano. Having the freedom to explore and go in different directions is a joy. But you have to train the unconscious. A lot of what I've done in my career is working as a script editor and a teacher, working with techniques like writing beat sheets and synopses and scene by scene breakdowns. And you have to do those things because the more you do them, the more you don't need to do them. You rely on them and then suddenly you can catch free. If you begin with a complete blank slate and complete freedom and complete spontaneity, nothing will happen. You have to have those techniques to do upon as well but the aim is to kind of use the ladder and then fly.” Philip Palmer   Exercise 2:   Pretend you have a deadline for a first draft of your idea to hand in to your script editor. What would you pick for:   A working title? A question the story is asking? A problem your character has?

Called “the finest actor of his generation,” Sir Simon Russell Beale has played just about everyone in Shakespeare's canon—Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff, Malvolio, Iago—and most recently, Titus Andronicus, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In this episode, Beale reflects on the Shakespearean roles that have shaped his career and how his approach to them has evolved over time. He shares what drew him to Titus, and how he found surprising tenderness in Shakespeare's brutal tragedy. The actor revisits past performances, exploring grief in Hamlet, aging and dementia in King Lear, and how time has deepened his connection to the plays and the characters. Beale's memoir, A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories, is a moving and often humorous reflection on acting, Shakespeare, and the power of performance to reveal something essential about being human. Sir Simon Russell Beale studied at Cambridge before joining the RSC. Described by the Daily Telegraph as “the finest actor of his generation,” he has been lauded for both his stage and TV work, winning many awards including the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Evening Standard Best Actor Award, and the BAFTA Best Actor Award. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published June 17, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Send us a textAfter premiering in the Ustiniv Studio at Theatre Royal Bath in 2022, SHOWMANISM is making its London premiere at Hampstead Theatre. The show has been described as  a kaleidoscopic journey through theatre and its history, and will also mark Dickie Beau's fourth venture into Hampstead Theatre, a place which he describes fondly as his latest show prepares to open. Indeed, it was only earlier this year when he was starring opposite Simon Russell Beale in an acclaimed revival of 'The Invention of Love'. In this way, it seems that there will likely be an ongoing partnership between him and the theatre, with Hampstead's audiences continuing to be blown away by his performances.In this brand new interview with Dickie Beau, he tells us about the origins of SHOWMANISM and how he began by thinking of theatres as sacred, communal spaces. We talked about his unique process of using technology in his shows as he transforms himself into various esteemed actors including Sir Ian McKellen and Fiona Shaw. Over the course of our conversation, Dickie opens up about his love for actors and for live theatre before discussing his hopes for how audiences will come away from the show having had a fundamentally human experience.SHOWMANISM opens at Hampstead Theatre on 18 June and runs till 12 July 2025.Support the show

Actor Sir Simon Russell Beale is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest actors of his generation. He has played many leading roles at National Theatre and RSC, including Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. He is currently starring in Titus Andronicus at the RSC. His awards include three Olivier Awards, two BAFTAs, and a Tony Award in 2022 for his leading role in The Lehman Trilogy, which had transferred from London. Simon Russell Beale was knighted in 2019 for services to drama. Simon tells John Wilson about his childhood and his visits to his family in the boarding school holidays at their home in Penang and Singapore. Trained as a chorister from an early age, he reveals how J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion evokes the thrill of singing at his choir school. Simon very nearly embarked on a career in music before switching to drama and tells John about the significance of the Macbeth soliloquy that began a lifetime love of Shakespeare. He also reveals the central role that pubs play in the learning of his lines.Producer: Edwina Pitman

After passing off the reins of Veep, Armando Iannucci returned to movie screens with another political satire. Based on the graphic novel, The Death of Stalin farcically recounts the last days of the dictator and the scramble for power in the days after. With stars like Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, and Simon Russell Beale, the film received … Continue reading "338 – The Death of Stalin"

Ian and Michael from Lord Of Adders Black: A Black mo baadder Podcast return to Flixwatcher to review Ian's choice The Death of Stalin. The Death of Stalin (2017) is a satirical black comedy written and directed by Armando (The Thick of It) Iannucci. In the wake of the death of Joseph Stalin, the remaining members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union bicker and fight over who will succeed him. Its ensemble cast includes Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Dermot Crowley, Paul Chahidi, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor. The Death of Stalin attempts to condense a very complex period of what was then the Soviet Union into 1 hour and 47 minutes with added satirical comedy. Its sheer number of key players adds to its denseness. It's tricky balance of humour and people being shot in the head won't be for everyone and the recommendability scores reflected this. The Death of Stalin scores 4.23 overall. [supsystic-tables id=387]     Episode #373 Crew Links Thanks to the Episode # 373 crew of Ian and Michael from Lord Of Adders Black: A Blackadder Podcast You can find their website here https://x.com/LeAdderNoire?t=vhI2Je65p1IUANUmQItJXw&s=09 Please make sure you give them some love   More about The Death of Stalin For more info on The Death of Stalin can visit The Death of Stalin IMDB page here The Death of Stalin Tomatoes page here. Final Plug! Subscribe, Share and Review us on iTunes If you enjoyed this episode of Flixwatcher Podcast you probably know other people who will like it too! Please share it with your friends and family, review us, and join us across ALL of the Social Media links below. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The actor Simon Russell Beale speaks about playing the poet and scholar A. E. Housman in Tom Stoppard's play 'The Invention of Love', as well as discussing his memoir.The singer, songwriter and composer Rufus Wainwright was inspired to write a Requiem by his love of the composer Giuseppe Verdi and the loss of his dog, named Puccini. He speaks about the project and the involvement of Meryl Streep.And Kate Garner performs songs from the music halls, alongside the historian and writer Oskar Jensen discussing the stories behind the songs.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ruth Watts

On this episode, we were joined by the legendary British actor, Sir Simon Russell Beale CBE, to discuss his first memoir from a life on the stage, A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories. Often described as the "best stage actor of his generation," Simon shares insights into the whopping 18 Shakespeare characters he has played throughout his career with the RSC and the National Theatre. He generously invites us into his process as an actor and explains why the personal and working relationships he has formed with collaborators like Sam Mendes and Nicholas Hytner are essential to his extraordinary success. Lastly, we discuss encounters with performing legends such as Stephen Sondheim and Lauren Bacall and an example of what it means to recieve a "bad note" from a director. 

Julian Clover speaks to Olivier Award-winning actor Sir Simon Russell Beale as he delves into his life and career at Cambridge Arts Theatre on Sunday.  

Joining us this episode to discuss the highs and lows of parenting (and life) is the brilliant actor and comedian - Nick Mohammed. Nick has portrayed his character Mr. Swallow across both stage and television for over a decade. He is also the creator of the Sky One comedy series Intelligence. Mohammed portrayed the character of Nathan Shelley in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso, for which he was nominated in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series category at the 73rd and 74th Primetime Emmy Awards. Douglas is Cancelled, a four-part comedy drama centered around cancel culture from Primetime Emmy and BAFTA award-winning screenwriter Steven Moffat, starring Hugh Bonneville, Karen Gillan, Ben Miles, Alex Kingston, Nick Mohammed and Simon Russell-Beale.  The drama is set to air late June on ITV1 and ITVX.  Parenting Hell is a Spotify Podcast, available everywhere every Tuesday and Friday. Please leave a rating and review you filthy street dogs... xxx If you want to get in touch with the show here's how: EMAIL: Hello@lockdownparenting.co.uk INSTAGRAM: @parentinghell MAILING LIST: parentinghellpodcast.mailchimpsites.com  A 'Keep It Light Media' Production  Sales, advertising, and general enquiries: hello@keepitlightmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No episódio, um conflito entre os Brackens e os Blackwoods se transforma na mortal Batalha do Moinho Ardente. Daemon visita Harrenhal , garantindo apoio para Rhaenyra de seu castelão Sor Simon Strong. Enquanto isso, Rhaenyra , disfarçada de septã, entra furtivamente em Porto Real para se encontrar secretamente com Alicent.   "The Burning Mill" introduziu vários novos membros do elenco , incluindo Freddie Fox como Sor Gwayne Hightower, Gayle Rankin como Alys Rivers e Simon Russell Beale como Sor Simon Strong.   Angélica Hellish, Marcos Noriega, Samir Saif Tomaz e a nossa convidada do Team Daenerys Brasil, Vanessa de Aviz conversam sobre o episódio, tiram suas dúvidas e fazem conjecturas do que vem a seguir! Tudo com muito bom humor e interação com os espectadores.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWd0F2eiuJ0&t=425s APOIE A GENTE, NOSSO PIX apoiomasmorra@gmail.com MEU PROJETO NOVO – TRUE CRIME! (SE INSCREVA NO CANAL DO YOUTUBE) https://www.youtube.com/@voltaaomundonocrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ JÁ SE INSCREVA E DEIXE SEU LIKE ACESSE CINECLUBE DA MASMORRA: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/6XO2tljzo8XHlFCe3exzCn⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Se quiser se inscrever e dar estrelas no podcast lá no Spotify, ⁠clique aqui⁠: https://linktr.ee/masmorracine LIVES TODAS AS QUARTAS 21H NO ⁠⁠⁠⁠YOUTUBE⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠TWICH⁠⁠⁠⁠ E ⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠ Procure e inscreva-se nos aplicativos de PODCAST e também no SPOTIFY, AMAZON MUSIC, APPLE PODCASTS! – Só procurar MASMORRACINE

No episódio, um conflito entre os Brackens e os Blackwoods se transforma na mortal Batalha do Moinho Ardente. Daemon visita Harrenhal , garantindo apoio para Rhaenyra de seu castelão Sor Simon Strong. Enquanto isso, Rhaenyra , disfarçada de septã, entra furtivamente em Porto Real para se encontrar secretamente com Alicent.   "The Burning Mill" introduziu vários novos membros do elenco , incluindo Freddie Fox como Sor Gwayne Hightower, Gayle Rankin como Alys Rivers e Simon Russell Beale como Sor Simon Strong.   Angélica Hellish, Marcos Noriega, Samir Saif Tomaz e a nossa convidada do Team Daenerys Brasil, Vanessa de Aviz conversam sobre o episódio, tiram suas dúvidas e fazem conjecturas do que vem a seguir! Tudo com muito bom humor e interação com os espectadores.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWd0F2eiuJ0&t=425s APOIE A GENTE, NOSSO PIX apoiomasmorra@gmail.com MEU PROJETO NOVO – TRUE CRIME! (SE INSCREVA NO CANAL DO YOUTUBE) https://www.youtube.com/@voltaaomundonocrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ JÁ SE INSCREVA E DEIXE SEU LIKE ACESSE CINECLUBE DA MASMORRA: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/6XO2tljzo8XHlFCe3exzCn⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Se quiser se inscrever e dar estrelas no podcast lá no Spotify, ⁠clique aqui⁠: https://linktr.ee/masmorracine LIVES TODAS AS QUARTAS 21H NO ⁠⁠⁠⁠YOUTUBE⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠TWICH⁠⁠⁠⁠ E ⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠ Procure e inscreva-se nos aplicativos de PODCAST e também no SPOTIFY, AMAZON MUSIC, APPLE PODCASTS! – Só procurar MASMORRACINE

Here's another episode of the TV BINGEBOX podcast to tide you over in the absence of the TV BLACKBOX podcast.-----SURPRISE! Again... Well, it's no real surprise, is it? But the reviews of the shows might be! Here we go again, friends. Molk delivers four reviews (buckle up!), 5 Up/DownMolk suggestions, and a there's a bunch of great recommendations from the TV BINGEBOX community. Surely your list is as long as Molk's now. Shows covered in this episode:• After The Party (6 eps), starring Robyn Malcom, Peter Mullan, Tara Canton, Elz Carrad, Ian Blackburn, Dean O'Gorman, and Tanea Heke - streaming right now, all eps available, on ABC iview.• House of the Dragon S02 (10 eps), starring returning cast including Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D'Arcy, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, and Rhys Ifans, with new cast mates including Abubakar Salim, Gayle Rankin, Freddie Fox, Simon Russell Beale, Clinton Liberty, Jamie Kenna, and Tom Taylor - streaming right now (first ep available now), dropping every Monday, on BINGE.• Exposure (6 eps), starringAlice Englert, Mia Artemis, Essie Davis, Thomas Weatherall, George Mason, Sean Keenan, and Ewan Leslie - premieres Thursday 20 June 7am, all eps dropping at once, on Stan.• Taskmaster Australia S02 (10 eps), starring Tom Gleeson, Tom Cashman, Anne Edmonds, Jenny Tian, Lloyd Langford, Josh Thomas, and Wil Anderson - currently airing Thursdays 7:30pm, weekly, on Channel 10 and 10Play.Join us every* Tuesday 8pm AEST on any number of places (mainly the TV Blackbox ⁠Facebook page⁠, ⁠YouTube channel⁠, and ⁠Insta live⁠...plus a few others), and keep in touch with the TV Bingebox show & host Steve Molk at ⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/SteveMolk⁠⁠⁠.Thanks for tuning in! (All content used for review purposes only; all media included under fair use policy. All copyright is retained by respective owners.)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/tv-blackbox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Candida is an MD (musical director), composer and arranger whose world across the globe on musicals and plays. Her work includes: As composer: The Little Prince at the Taunton Brewhouse The Tempest and The Hostage at the Southwark Playhouse Buckets at the Orange Tree Theatre As an MD: Woyzech, Old Vic with John Bodega King Lear, Duke of York's Playhouse with Ian McKellen To Kill A Mockingbird, Gielgud Theatre with Matthew Modine and Race Spall A Strange Loop, West End and Barbican, the show received 11 Tony Nominations The Hills of California, Harold Pinter Theatre, directed by Sam Mendes The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre, West End, Broadway and International Tour Candida talks about her recent involvement in The Lehman Trilogy, both in the UK and Internationally. A show portraying the 163-year journey of the Lehman brothers, from Henry Lehman arriving from Ellis Island all the way to its dissolution during the 2008 financial crisis.  Candida was the live pianist playing the score that accompanied the brilliant performances of the actors as they took the audience on a pulsating ride through the financial world.  She discusses how the show evolved from the first day, putting the score together, working with Sam Mendes, Nick Powell and the original cast (Ben Miles, Simon Russell Beale and Adam Godley) on creating one of the most spectacular shows of all time.  If you get the chance to see this show in the future I implore you to see it! Thank you Candida! Stay tuned to for part 2! Oliver Gower Spotlight Link: https://www.spotlight.com/9097-9058-5261 Instagram: @goweroliver For enquiries and requests: olliegower10@gmail.com Please Like, Download and Subscribe! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uncensored-critic/message

this week's episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo goes back in time to realize not much has changed with the film, “Firebrand.” Directed by Karim Ainouz (“Invisible Life,” “Futuro Beach”), the film follows Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), the sixth wife of Henry VIII (Jude Law), who finds herself fighting for survival when the paranoid king grows more suspicious of her actions. The film also stars Eddie Marsan, Simon Russell Beale, Erin Doherty, and more.  READ MORE: ‘Firebrand' Review: Karim Aïnouz Paints A Dull Version Of History In Handsome Period Drama [Cannes] During the interview, Law and Vikander discussed their parts being filled with “so many colors to play” that the roles were almost irresistible and so many other aspects of their career. Not only did they discuss "Firebrand," but Vikander's time on the 'Tomb Raider' franchise, Jude Law's tenure on Marvel and the upcoming 'Star Wars' project 'Skeleton Key,' but also almost appearing as Superman in a version of the film with Colin Farrell and Brett Ratner from almost 20 years ago. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theplaylist/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theplaylist/support

País Reino Unido Dirección Terence Davies Guion Terence Davies Reparto Jack Lowden, Simon Russell Beale, Peter Capaldi Música Benjamin Woodgates Fotografía Nicola Daley Sinopsis Siegfried Sassoon fue un hombre complejo que sobrevivió a los terrores de combatir en la I Guerra Mundial y fue condecorado por su valentía, pero a su regreso se convirtió en un firme crítico de la continuación de la guerra por parte de su gobierno. Su poesía se inspiró en sus experiencias en el frente occidental y terminó siendo uno de los principales poetas de guerra de la época. Idolatrado por aristócratas y estrellas del mundo literario y escénico londinense, mantuvo relaciones con varios hombres mientras intentaba aceptar su homosexualidad. Al mismo tiempo, roto por el terror de la guerra, hizo de su viaje vital una búsqueda de la salvación, tratando de hallarla en la conformidad del matrimonio y la religión.

This week Jonny sees you “the coolest power couple in British theatre” (Jez Butterworth and Laura Donnelly, S3, E8) and raises you one “coolest power couple in British culture”, theatre and film powerhouse Sam Mendes and one of the world's greatest classical and jazz trumpeters, Alison Balsom. In the first interview they've ever given as a couple, they treat SDJ Live at Jermyn Street Theatre to a voyage round their remarkable life and times: what is was for them both to be prodigies and whether they miss their younger selves; Alison's calling to play the trumpet and not feeling like a soloist until she'd played the Last Night of the Proms; not feeling like a real film director until Sam directed his first Bond; where doubt exists differently in theatre and in classical music; the search for the perfect chord in art; Alison's recording of her greatest mistake, never being able to duck the hardest challenge and why Simon Russell Beale as Uncle Vanya suddenly couldn't stand up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monocle Radio's Meet the Writers special season, A Word in Your Ear, begins with an excerpt from Naomi Alderman's third novel, ‘The Liars' Gospel', a bold retelling of biblical narratives around the life of Jesus. She was mentored by Margaret Atwood (pictured on left with Alderman) after the two authors were paired together for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Reading the text is BAFTA-winning actor Simon Russell Beale.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jonny rounds off the summer season in style: the first SDJ live show at Jermyn Street Theatre in the heart of London's West End - and two masters to talk to. Sir Nick Hytner and Sir Simon Russell Beale tell Jonny about the two decades and nine plays of their collaboration. It's a fascinating insight into the dynamics of one of the great director-actor partnerships of our times. Who is the lover and whom the beloved in this relationship? How does Simon know when Nick thinks it isn't working? Nick's thoughts on change in the theatre and in life, how he directs actors, Paul Scofield, Daniel Day-Lewis and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

House of the Dragon, HBO's hit spin-off to Game of Thrones has announced new additions to its cast for season two. Gayle Rankin, best known for her role in Glow has been cast as Alys Rivers, a woman with mystical powers who forms a relationship with Aemond Targaryen. Simon Russell Beale will essay the role of Ser Simon Strong, the Castellan of Harrenhal, Freddie Fox will play Otto Hightower's son and Queen Alicent's brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower, and Abubakar Salim will play the role of Alyn of Hull, a sailor in the Velaryon fleet. Showrunner Ryan Condal will return to helm the second sequel.

Ken Rea's Outstanding Actor Masterclass About Ken: Professor Ken Rea is a theatre director, internationally acclaimed acting teacher, and author of the bestselling book, The Outstanding Actor, Seven Keys to Success Starting out in New Zealand, he worked with the country's leading theatres and in television drama. In 1973 he formed the Living Theatre Troupe, one of New Zealand's most important experimental companies. He went on to study theatre in China, Japan, and India, then moved to Europe, where he studied with leading European teachers. As Professor of Theatre at the renowned Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Ken has trained some of Britain's top actors and film stars, including EWAN MCGREGOR, LILY JAMES, JOSEPH FIENNES, DOMINIC WEST, JODIE WHITTAKER, DAMIAN LEWIS, HAYLEY ATWELL, RHYS IFANS, MICHELLE DOCKERY, FREDDIE FOX, SIMON RUSSELL BEALE, ORLANDO BLOOM, PAAPA ESSIEDU, and DANIEL CRAIG. Ken is in regular demand internationally and has previously taught at the national drama academies of China, India, New Zealand, and Italy, and he has given courses in the UK, Canada, Indonesia, Germany, USA, and Singapore. As a journalist, he has been a regular feature writer for The Times and was for 15 years a theatre critic for The Guardian. As a public speaker, Ken has given many large-scale presentations in the worlds of business and the arts. He also trains top executives throughout Europe in presentation skills and personal impact. He is about to launch his major online course: Ken Rea Teaches Acting.  How do I get better work? And it's a really interesting question so you don't feel stuck in your career. Ask yourself what would that next level look like for you. Let's think about the acting itself. What would that look like? And so that immediately gives you a target. I want to be like this. So you know where you're going. So the next question to ask yourself is, where do you feel you are now? Which then shows you the gap between now where you are and there where you want to be. Then the next question you could ask yourself is, what would you like to have more of in your work?  You know, for example, would you like to have more personality in your acting, more sense of danger in your acting, more gravitas, more presence, more charisma, more twinkle in the eye, more playfulness? And that immediately is going to take you out of your comfort zone. Progress happens not inside that comfort zone, but just outside it. That's the life of an actor, to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And that's your life as an actor, constantly taking risks, working outside that comfort zone.  How can you be out of your comfort zone and still enjoy that, you know, and love performing? If you want to be more playful, more twinkle in the eye, more dangerous, what is stopping you from bringing that into the work that's stopping you from being out of your comfort zone? And what can you do about that? It takes a certain amount of comfortability in being yourself to know that you can go emotionally to a specific place and also know and play there, and it is out of your comfort zone and in a danger zone and in a scary zone, a risk zone, as you put it, but also always knowing that you have that anchor in yourself that you are able to handle it. Am I going to be good enough? Will I be found out? And I think as you get older, you make it about them, not about you. I find what works for me is, is to get the right mindset. It's about them, the energy going outward and forward with the focus on them, on what I can bring to them. Prepare meticulously. Outstanding Actor So I think the preparation is important and the mindset.  You know, you can coach yourself a lot these days just by trying things out on your laptop, on your phone, recording, and playing it back. Start to experiment with things. Be very specific in your choices.  Using contrary action as an actor. And it helps get that kind of volcano principle, you know, just the rumbling underneath the volcano before it erupts. Before it explodes, which creates, as you mentioned before, a sense of danger.  Danger, I tend to think of that as you set up a tension between yourself, the actor, and the audience, thinking, "Oh, wow, where's she going with this? What's going to happen next?" Because audiences love to be thrilled and surprised, don't they? We lose that sense of playfulness that is the source of our charm, our creativity, and our imagination in adult life. And so a lot of the journey of the actor is to go back the wheel turns full circle back to that, to find at the adult age. I think that it's more fun to play the game if you know that you are capable and can handle whatever circumstance comes your way in life.  Knowing you are capable, I think, is such an important part of being a good actor because you need to feel safe. So a good question to ask yourself then is okay, if there is fear, what is the source of the fear? Ken's New Exercise  Ken's Secret Weapon Exercise And I think a lot is about paring away the clutter. I use that phrase a lot, you know, just to find a simplicity and an energy that comes from a calm center but is fully concentrated. As the actor, you play with the other actor, but you're also playing with the audience and have to make sure they're enjoying being there.

Join us for another week of laughter, TV shows, streaming, movies and all things entertainment. THIS WEEK WE'RE TALKING Movies Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (2023) Emily the Criminal (2022) The Outfit (2022) TV Shows Without Sin (Mini-series) Happy Valley (S3) MOVIE OF THE WEEK & PEAK PERFORMANCE The Outfit. Staring; Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn, Johnathan McClain, Simon Russell Beale, Alan Mehdizadeh & Nikki Amuka-Bird. Directed by Graham Moore. And finally our Peak Performance nominations are in for Sigourney Weaver. EPISODE TITLE This weeks episode title is dedicated to the cast and crew of Happy Valley. With a very special shoutout to Sarah Lancashire who plays the one and only Police Officer I want on the case - Catherine Cawood. RUNNING ORDER 01m45s | What we've been watching 19m20s | Happy Valley S3 Review (Final Season) 32m55s | Movie of the week: The Outfit 45m45s | News & Mailbag 01h01m27s | Peak Performance: Sigourney Weaver GET IN TOUCH Support us on Patreon Follow us on Instagram Tweet us @HalfMeasuresPod Chat with us on Discord Follow us on Facebook Buy our merch on TeeSpring Visit our website halfmeasurespodcast.com This episode of the Half Measures Podcast is brought to you by our Patreon Producers: Samara Whiting-King, Diana Knauer, Tricia Brady & Michael Chalmers.

There are no second acts in American lives but there are in Stage Door Jonny. In the last act of conversation for this series of the podcast, Sir Simon Russell Beale tells Jonny about playing Hamlet for his mum and the challenge of grieving onstage, who he fixates on in his audience about once every couple of months, the actor he thinks is the top dog of his generation, improvising Ibsen and the bastard who invented the matinee. He also manages to beautifully articulate what might actually be the manifesto for this podcast: an actor onstage at a particular high water mark of feeling and an audience who understands in the same moment that they are that character too. Simon definitely says it better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enter the Ur-Guest, the man who's performance in Lehman Trilogy made Jonny fall back in love with theatre, the OG inspiration for Stage Door Jonny and one of the undisputed greats of the modern stage- Sir Simon Russell Beale. It feels entirely fitting to end this inaugural series of SDJ with a chat with SRB, an actor who has performed more great roles than even Wikipedia can count. If you want to know how palatial his dressing room at The Bridge theatre was while he was playing the title role in John Gabriel Borkman, whether he has sacrificed love for his career, who made his very first costume, the role of sniffing in his famous collaborations with Sam Mendes, how many pints can get him to bed before most of the audience and how certain parts get him to a magical place beyond caring, this is the episode for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have our first 'TWO Part' @EchoChamberFP https://www.instagram.com/echochamberfp/ of 2023, and we've got a fire selection for you! Signature Entertainment, XYZ Films start things off with a new indie horror. Focus Features then bring us a period drama / thriller, and we close 'Part One' with Babe Nation Films & Lionsgate's new physiological drama, which is hitting the cinema! Today we have: The Harbinger Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/-hGFcHQ3ECQ 71st Berlin International Film Festival: 1st March 2021 Theatrical Release Date: 10th September 2021 Digital Release Date: 23rd January 2023 Director: Andy Mitton Cast: Gabby Beans, Emily Davis, Raymond Anthony Thomas, Myles Walker, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Cody Braverman, Laura Heisler, Jay Dunn, Qiana Watson, Mwape Sokoni Running Time: 87 min Cert: 18 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/FsLqZXX2TGA Rent or Buy via iTunes: Here. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/the-harbinger/id1660643445 Rent or Buy via Prime Video: Here. https://www.amazon.com/Harbinger-Gabby-Beans/dp/B0B5ZKVR9X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22BTB2BQ1Y28H&keywords=the+harbinger&qid=1669906527&s=instant-video&sprefix=the+harbinger%2Cinstant-video%2C93&sr=1-1 Website: Here. https://www.signature-entertainment.co.uk/film/the-harbinger/ Twitter: @HarbingerMovie https://twitter.com/HarbingerMovie Instagram: @theharbingerfilm https://www.instagram.com/theharbingerfilm/ ------------ The Outfit Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/HmWq4B3JniU 72nd Berlin International Film Festival: 14th February 2022 Theatrical Release Date: 18th March 2022 Digital Release Date: 18th November 2022 Director: Graham Moore Cast: Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Simon Russell Beale, Alan Mehdizadeh, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Chiedu Agborh, Michael Addo Running Time: 106 min Cert: 18 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/3UgJL23HxyU Rent or Buy via AppleTV+: Here. https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-outfit/umc.cmc.63kcri5ub4i3cze314rpep3h3 Rent or Buy via Prime Video: Here. https://www.primevideo.com/detail/The-Outfit-2022/0LKSROCI3Z76LMN4DD6EYKOC8A Rent or Buy via Prime Video UK: Here. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Outfit-Mark-Rylance/dp/B09X3GRRHS Website: Here. https://www.uphe.com/movies/the-outfit-2022 Twitter: @TheOutfitMovie https://twitter.com/TheOutfitMovie Facebook: Here. https://www.facebook.com/theoutfitmovie/ Instagram: @theoutfitmovie https://www.instagram.com/theoutfitmovie/ ------------ Alice, Darling Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/-A4Yq9lPb9Q Toronto International Film Festival: 11th September 2022 USA Theatrical Release Date: 30th December 2022 UK Theatrical Release Date: 20th January 2023 Director: Mary Nighy Cast: Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Charlie Carrick, Wunmi Mosaku, Mark Winnick Running Time: 89 min Cert: 18 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/2D2ZRfqKUD4 Website: Here. https://www.lionsgate.com/movies/alice-darling Twitter: @AliceDarling https://twitter.com/AliceDarling Facebook: Here. https://www.facebook.com/AliceDarlingMovie ------------ *(Music) 'Broken' by Little Simz - 2022 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/eftv/message

“If theatre holds a mirror up to nature, and you don't see yourself reflected in that mirror, then why should you engage with it?”  This week on Speak The Speech, we are joined by “one of the great Shakespeareans of his generation” [Sunday Times], Artistic Director Emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company Gregory Doran. Gregory talks about his extensive and acclaimed body of work with the RSC, his long personal and professional partnership with Sir Antony Sher, and his commitment to diversity of voices in creating Shakespeare for everyone.   Gregory Doran has spent 35 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the last 10 as Artistic Director. His directing highlights include King Lear, starring Antony Sher, The Tempest starring Simon Russell Beale, and his world-renowned production of Julius Caesar for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2021 he directed the Henry VI Part 1 Open Rehearsal Project, which for the first time invited audiences to observe the RSC's full rehearsal process. In 2016 he took the company to mainland China for the first time, with the Henry IV plays and Henry V. In 2012 he directed David Tennant in Richard II, the first RSC production to be broadcast live in cinemas. He's won an Olivier award, a Sam Wanamaker Award from Shakespeare's Globe, and received numerous honorary doctorates. In 2023, as Artistic Director Emeritus, he will direct Cymbeline, his 50th production for the RSC. 

Terence Davies dramatizes the remarkable life of the World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon, weaving back and forth in time to show how much he and others like him lost because of war. For many modern historians, the First World War, from 1914-18, has a special significance, as the point at which an older version of civilization fell apart. In British thought and memory it sometimes has the character of an unhealed wound. Almost 900 thousand young British soldiers died, about 6% of the adult male population. It was as if the flower of English youth had been cut off. In the writings of the poets who fought in that war we still read passionate urgency. Siegfried Sassoon was one of those poets. His father was of Iraqi Jewish descent, his mother a Christian. He was not of German ancestry; his mother chose the name Siegfried because of her love of the music of Richard Wagner. English director Terence Davies has largely focused in his films on exploring and recovering personal and cultural legacies. In his latest film, Benediction, he tells the story of Siegfried Sassoon, not in a straightforward or linear fashion, but as a weaving back and forth in time, a recapturing of Sassoon's experience that takes into account his loves and strengths, but also his mistakes and failures. Incredibly courageous, loved and trusted by the men who served with him, Sassoon, played beautifully as a young man by Jack Lowden, was decorated for bravery and recommended for the Victoria Cross. But when we meet him in the film, he's caused a sensation by publishing an open letter, what he called “a soldier's declaration,” denouncing the conduct of the war and saying he would no longer fight. Instead of being court-martialed he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. In an early scene, he argues with a close friend, the prominent critic Robbie Ross, played by Simon Russell Beale, because Ross had pulled some strings to prevent Sassoon possibly being shot. Sassoon wanted to put his life on the line to oppose the war, but Ross simply wanted his friend to survive. In the hospital, Sassoon meets Wilfred Owen, another poet, and the impact Owen has on his life, both as a poet and as a gay man, is decisive. Wilfred Owen went back to his unit after being pronounced cured by psychiatrists, and he died only a week before the Armistice. The film covers Sassoon's tumultuous life after the war, as a member of the London artistic scene in the 1920s, intercut with scenes of him as an older man, now played by Peter Capaldi, still bitter about the war and about his personal failures, and ultimately turning to the Catholic Church in search of some kind of meaning. In the 1920s, gay life in the London art scene was barely closeted—it was quite evident to anyone who could see, yet no one talked about it publicly. Davies presents us with the sometimes very funny, but also painful, episodes of backbiting and cutting wit on the part of Sassoon and his lovers, including the musician and actor Ivor Novello, with a malicious personality, and the decadent aristocrat Stephen Tennant, self-centered to the point of abuse. Terence Davies is openly gay himself, and here he succeeds in presenting an historical portrait of gay relationships in a specific English time and place, without holding back. Sassoon got married eventually and had a son, but in the scenes with him as an old man, we can sense that there's still an emptiness inside that may never be filled. Why is that? At film's end, in a sequence of almost unbearable poignance, we find out. I cried at the end of Benediction, a film in which personal and historical tragedy embrace.

This week we review The Outfit! Starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn, and Simon Russell Beale. 

The individual versus the masses is at the heart of Enemy of the People. A bank manager speculating with his customers' money is the story told in John Gabriel Borkman. Lucinda Coxon and Steve Waters have written new versions of these Ibsen plays. They join Norwegian actor and director Kåre Conradi, theatre critic and writer Mark Lawson and presenter Anne McElvoy to explore the ways in which Ibsen's characters and dramas resonate now. John Gabriel Borkman starring Simon Russell Beale, Lia Williams and Clare Higgins runs at the Bridge Theatre, London September 24th to November 26th. Drama on 3 scripted by Steve Waters will be on air early in 2023. Kåre Conradi has established The Norwegian Ibsen Company which has brought productions to the Print Room at the Coronet Theatre in London. Conradi is an actor and a lifetime employee at The National Theatre of Norway. Mark Lawson is theatre critic for The Tablet and has written many radio dramas for BBC Radio 4. Producer: Ruth Watts On BBC Sounds and the Free Thinking programme website you can find previous discussions about Adapting Molière https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00138km John McGrath's Scottish drama https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tzt Shakespeare https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm Lorraine Hansbery https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tpdh3 and other key thinkers and writers on morality like Hannah Arendt/ Iris Murdoch/ Thomas Mann in our landmarks collection https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Follow us on Patreon at patreon.com/andalmoststarring   On this week's show, we're looking at everyone who almost starred in the film adaptation of Sondheim's classic musical Into the Woods! How amazing is the cast for the early-90s version Rob Reiner was set to direct? Which Lord of the Rings actor was set to play a role? And why couldn't we get Debbie Jellinsky as a murderous giantess? Also – Amy Jo tells the tale of the disastrous production of Into the Woods she was in featuring a live falcon and a show cow named Thriller!   Into the Woods stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Chris Pine, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huttlestone, Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch, Tammy Blanchard, Tracey Ullman, Lilla Crawford, Simon Russell Beale, Johnny Depp, Billy Magnussen, Mackenzie Mauzy, and Frances de la Tour; directed by Rob Marshall   On Instagram: @andalmoststarring  Have a film you'd love for us to cover? E-mail us at andalmoststarring@gmail.com   www.andalmoststarring.com   

The Outfit is a 2022 American crime drama film directed by Graham Moore in his directorial debut from a screenplay by Moore and Johnathan McClain. The film stars an ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale. The plot centers around an English tailor, or, as he prefers to be called, a "cutter", (Rylance) in Chicago whose primary customers are a family of vicious gangsters. The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2022, and was released in the United States on March 18, 2022, by Focus Features. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tradepaperbacks/message --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rangerryan/message

The Outfit is a 2022 American crime drama film directed by Graham Moore in his directorial debut from a screenplay by Moore and Johnathan McClain. The film stars an ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale. The plot centers around an English tailor, or, as he prefers to be called, a "cutter", (Rylance) in Chicago whose primary customers are a family of vicious gangsters. The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2022, and was released in the United States on March 18, 2022, by Focus Features. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.

@EchoChamberFP https://www.instagram.com/echochamberfp/ is back with more highlights from this year's BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival'. Today, on 'Day 3', we look at a film about a poet struggling with sexuality and the horrors of the war. Plus a couple of Shorts. Today we have: Benediction Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/txvctJm_0Ck Toronto International Film Festival Date: 12th September 2021 BFI Flare 2022 Date: 17th March 2022 Bodies: Film Strand Theatrical USA Release Date: 13th May 2022 Director: Terence Davies Cast: Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Kate Phillips, Gemma Jones, Ben Daniels Credit: Vertigo Releasing, EMU Films, BBC Films, British Film Institute (BFI), M.Y.R.A. Entertainment, Lipsync Productions, Creative England Genre: Biography, Drama, War Running Time: 137 min Cert: 15 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/6L38k6l9DFQ ------------------------- Fever Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/esqv2WOuCNk BFI Flare 2022 Date: 18th March 2022 Strength in Vulnerability: UK Shorts Programme Director: Angele Cooper Cast: David J. Cork, Jeremy Feight, Janet Hubert, Alice Ripley, Terence Archie, Danea Osseni, Iroko Anyogu, Arthur L. Braddy III, Justin Mortelliti Credit: SheStrikes Genre: Short, Thriller Running Time: 20 min Cert: 15 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/3jJjwMWbTxw Website: Here. https://www.angelecooper.com/filmography Instagram: @fevershortfilm https://www.instagram.com/fevershortfilm/ ----------------------------- For Love Watch Review: Here. https://youtu.be/-5qevYW2KXE BFI Flare 2022 Date: 19th March 2022 Out Here Livin': UK Shorts Programme Director: Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor Cast: Ann Akinjirin, Marcy Dolapo Oni, Diana Yekinni, Damola Adelaja Credit: Joi Productions, Quiddity Films Genre: Drama, Short Running Time: 13 min Cert: 15 Trailer: Here. https://youtu.be/nBBBxTEXT5g Website: Here. https://www.joiproductions.co.uk/ ---------------------------- *(Music) 'Turn The Beat Around' by Gloria Estefan - 1994 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/eftv/message

It is often said of King Lear that if an actor has the stamina to play the titular role, they don't have the age, but if they have the age, they don't have the stamina.  With this in mind, we are taking a look at Early Modern perceptions and beliefs surrounding aging and old age, how aging and old age is represented in the text of King Lear, and how it has been portrayed on stage.  Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Korey Leigh Smith and Elyse Sharp. Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander. Additional sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com You can support the podcast at patreon.com/shakespeareanyone. This month, Patreon patrons receive an extended version of our conversation on Gallatea with Dr. Simone Chess! Works referenced: Martin, Christopher. Constituting Old Age in Early Modern English Literature, from Queen Elizabeth to King Lear. University of Massachusetts Press, 2013. Performance by Simon Russell Beale, and Simon Lovestone, Shakespeare and Old Age: Simon Russell Beale, National Theatre, 19 Apr. 2016, https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/file/shakespeare-and-old-age-simon-russell-beale. Accessed 26 Apr. 2022.   Snyder, Susan. “King Lear and the Psychology of Dying.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, 1982, pp. 449–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/2870125. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.

This week on the episode we discuss The Outfit! What a movie. Incredible work by the greatest living English speaking actor, Mark Rylance, and his ridiculous supporting cast, let by Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Simon Russell Beale, and Dylan O'Brien. Graham Moore, amazing effort. Thanks to our Queensland, Australia listeners! And Hawaii!  Find all of our Socials at: https://linktr.ee/theloveofcinema Music: soundcloud.com/dasein-artist Beer: @cbarrozo.beer Edited and produced by Dave Green. Hosts: Dave Green, Jeff Ostermueller, John Say. Twitter: @theloveofcinema, Twitch/Facebook/Instagram: @theloveofcinemapod, YouTube: The Love of Cinema Podcast.

Graham Moore is a name you may remember from 2014 when he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Imitation Game." Now, he's back, and this time he's writing and stepping behind the camera for the first time with his directorial debut "The Outfit," starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird & Simon Russell Beale. A sophisticated single location crime thriller with more than enough twists to fill ten movies, the film opens in theaters from Focus Features this weekend. Graham was kind enough to spend some time talking with me about the screenplay, the twists and turns it takes, working with Mark Rylance, and more. Click below to take a listen and enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/nextbestpicturepodcast iTunes Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture

On this episode Matt & Eric review Graham Moore's The Outfit starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale.Matt's Rating: 3/5 Eric's Rating: 3/5

The Outfit – Movie Review 105 Minutes, Rated R Written and Directed by Graham Moore **NOTE: this post has been updated now that we actually got the chance to talk […]

A Jewish boy kills a Nazi by the Polish ghetto. He must escape the Third Reich at all costs. The captivating true story of one boy's flight across Europe to escape the Nazis. A tale of extraordinary courage, incredible adventure and the relentless pursuit of life in the face of impossible challenges. In early 1940 Chaim Herzsman was locked in to the Lódz Ghetto in Poland. Hungry, fearless and determined, he goes on scavenging missions outside the wire limits, until he is forced to kill a Nazi guard. That moment changes the course of his life and sets him on an unbelievable adventure across enemy lines. Chaim avoids grenades and rifle fire on the Russian border, shelters with a German family in the Rhineland, falls in love in occupied France, is captured on a mountain pass in Spain, gets interrogated as a potential Nazi spy in Britain and eventually fights for everything he believes in as part of the British Army. He protects his life by posing as an Aryan boy with a crucifix around his neck and fights for his life through terrible and astonishing circumstances. Escape from the Ghetto is about a normal boy who faced extermination by the Nazis in the ghetto or a Nazi deathcamp and the extraordinary life he led in avoiding that fate. It's a bittersweet story about epic hope, beauty amidst horror and the triumph of the human spirit. John Carr is Henry Carr's eldest son, and in Escape from the Ghetto he has re-created his father's incredible adventure through recordings and transcribed conversations in later life. For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Saboteur of Auschwitz and The Volunteer, this is the incredible true story of escape from the Nazis during World War II.

Back in March of 2020, theaters shut down across the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than closing up shop, actor Rob Myles formed a Shakespeare reading group over Zoom — a group which quickly transformed into an online theater company, The Show Must Go Online. Since then, TSMGO has performed the entire Shakespeare canon, premiering a new production every week throughout the pandemic. They've involved actors and theater makers from across the world, and every performance included guest speakers, with luminaries like Ben Crystal and Simon Russell Beale joining in on the fun. All of the performances are still up on YouTube, and have garnered tens of thousands of views across the globe. Rob Myles joins us from his home in Glasgow. He is an actor, author, director, stage fighter, and creator of the Shakespeare Deck, which aims to make Shakespeare simple on the go. Today he'll be joining us to talk about how The Show Must Go Online developed, the process and challenges of creating Zoom theater so quickly and at such a high level, and his views on how we can make Shakespeare and theater in general more inclusive and accessible going forward. Rob is interviewed by host Emily Jackoway. To learn more about NoSweatShakespeare, check out our site at nosweatshakespeare.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to follow or subscribe and give us a five-star rating. Thanks for listening in!

This week we discuss the hilarious historical black comedy The Death Of Stalin (2017) from writer director Armando Iannucci and starring Steve Buscemi, Michael Palin, Paul Whitehouse, Jason Isaacs, Jeffrey Tambor and Simon Russell Beale (among others). After evil dictator Joseph Stalin  (Adrain McLoughlin) dies, he leaves behind a power vacuum  that his closest allies are quick to fill. This absolute comedy gem highlights the race to the top between the vile sadist Beriya (Beale) and the seemingly hapless Khrushchev (Buscemi) with the skulduggery and backstabbing that only the creator of the Thick of It can do justice! If you enjoy this podcast, then please leave us a rating or share us, and check out Hagfilms on YouTube for more exclusive film related content including Trev's new series "Films I own that I Havent watched Yet", where... you guessed it.... Trev watches films that he owns but hasn't watched yet. You can also drop comments on our podcast there too, or  you can get over  to Facebook and drop a comment there too. www.facebook.com/weneedtotalkaboutmoviespodcastAnd we now also have an Instagram account too - https://www.instagram.com/weneedtotalkmoviespodcast/Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wnmovietalk)

Welcome to Them Thorntons' Hard Out: Cinephiliacs! In this episode Chris and Jay discuss Armando Iannucci's THE DEATH OF STALIN, starring Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Paul Whitehouse, and Jeffrey Tambor. You can check out this wickedly funny, subversive film currently streaming on Netflix—and we suggest you do! Originally aired on YouTube on February 16, 2021.

The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre is an epic new play directed by Sam Mendes, which tells the story of the American banking dynasty from its humble beginnings in Alabama to its bankruptcy in the 2008 crash. John talks to Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles, who play the founding Lehman brothers and many other characters too. As the 100th Now That's What I Call Music album is released, John discusses the extraordinary success of the hits compilation series and examines its cultural impact with Now curator Pete Duckworth and music critic Katie Puckrik. Poet Zaffar Kunial's father is Kashmiri, his mother's ancestors lived in Orkney, and he was born in Birmingham, and, as he tells John Wilson, his poetry bridges these worlds and their languages. Zaffar's debut collection Us is published by Faber & Faber, which he describes as like being signed by Manchester United. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy ProsserMain image - (L-R) Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in The Lehman Trilogy. Photo by Mark Douet.

Simon Russell Beale and Don Warrington talk to us about playing one of the greatest roles of all time, to help us unpick the complex relationship between acting and ageing. Plus, we talk to theatre company Improbable about teaching actors in their 80s to improvise for the first time. Please note this episode contains strong language.

Former Children's Laureate, Malorie Blackman takes a twist on Othello into the future and outer space in her new book for young adults, Chasing the Stars. She tells Kirsty why she chose sci-fi to explore contemporary issues such as immigration and prejudice.Idris Elba plays a lone wolf CIA operative in the new Paris-based thriller Bastille Day, who enlists the assistance of a reluctant American played by Richard Madden from Game of Thrones. Antonia Quirke reviews the film whose release was postponed after the Paris attacks.The Flick is a Pulitzer Prize winning play about the staff at a run-down cinema in Massachusetts. Kirsty talks to its director Sam Gold as it starts its run at the National Theatre this week.As part of our Shakespeare's People series, Simon Russell Beale chooses Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing.Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

The actor Simon Russell Beale discusses playing the role of King Lear. Derek Jarman is the subject of a season at the BFI and an exhibition Pandemonium - at the Cultural Institute at King's College London. Composer Simon Fisher Turner, artist Tacita Dean, writer Jon Savage and Director of Film at the British Council Briony Hanson appraise his career. Plus New Generation Thinkers Philip Roscoe and Jonathan Healey reflect on attitudes to the deserving poor, benefits culture and the Channel 4 series Benefits Street.

Sarah Montague speaks to Sir John Tavener, one of Britain's most celebrated composers. He says his music is for God - even referring to it as a form of divine dictation. Forty years ago, his work was sometimes dismissed as bland, populist, new age. But over time he has defied the critics - the Protecting Veil was one of the biggest selling classical albums ever, and his Song for Athene was played at the funeral of Princess Diana. Having been ill for much of his life, he says that everything changed after he nearly died from a heart attack six years ago. How did this experience affect his view of life, his music, and his faith?(Image:Sir John Tavener (left) and Simon Russell Beale. Credit: BBC)

Anne McElvoy applies herself to the crisis of modern banking, the plight of buildings in Moscow and a masterpiece of British theatre. She talks to Simon Russell Beale and John Simm about the latter, Pinter's early tragicomdedy, The Hothouse, before sharing notes on bankers with the academic economist, Anat Admati and then enlisting the views of the conservationist, Clem Cecil about the Melnikov House - one of the jewels in Russia's modernist crown. She's also joined by Karen Leeder and Catherine Merridale to discuss the power that Hitler and Stalin still exert over writers in Germany and Russia.