The London Theatre Review

This week Nick, Nick and Nancy head to the National Theatre's Dorfman for Pride, Steven Beresford and Matthew Warchus's musical adaptation of the beloved 2014 film about the unlikely alliance between gay activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 strike. Then it's off to the Noël Coward for the RSC's transfer of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Adrian Lester in glorious form and Susannah Fielding turning Roxanne into something the gang have never seen before - hear her interview in episode three of this season. Nick Curtis talks to Anna Zavelson, the 22-year-old Texan who had never left North America before landing the role of Christine in Phantom of the Opera at His Majesty's Theatre. And Henry Lewis from Mischief Theatre answers our Five Questions ahead of The Comedy About Spies returning to the West End.

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For this special bonus episode of the pod, Nancy went to talk to writer/performer Jordan Luke Gage and director Paul Foster about the new musical Redcliffe running at Southwark Playhouse. Jordan has spent the last three years writing the show, and he also stars in it - musical theatre fans will have seen his amazing performances in Bonnie and Clyde, Heathers, &Juliet and Titanique.

Set against the backdrop of 18th Century England, the musical is based on the true story of William Critchard and Richard Arnold who met in Redcliffe, Bristol. It's an epic, funny and moving tale of forbidden love during the persecution people faced for hundreds of years.

Plus you can hear Jordan sing one of the beautiful songs from the show, Void of Love.

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This week is French translation week as Nick, Nancy and Tim took refuge in the blissful air conditioning of London's theatres to review The Misanthrope at the National — Martin Crimp's rhyming-couplet update of the Molière play with Sandra Oh on ferocious form — and The Truth at the Apollo, Florian Zeller's gleefully French sex comedy starring Stephen Mangan, Janie Dee, Ardal O'Hanlan and Sarah Hadland. Plus Nick spoke to playwright Rajiv Joseph about Archduke at the Royal Court and working with Robin Williams. And Desmonda Cathabel answered our five questions ahead of playing Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar.

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We have a pretty special guest interview this week: somehow we got Willem Dafoe on the phone from Venice, where he's now in his second year as artistic director of the Biennale Theatre Festival. Long before Spider-Man villains and Wes Anderson ensembles, Dafoe was a downtown New York theatre kid, spending four decades with the experimental Wooster Group, and he is as brilliant on the subject of live performance as you'd hope. He also tells Nick Curtis why he's 'very turned on right now'...

In reviews, the Old Vic's all-female Glengarry Glen Ross gives us plenty to chew over — is gender-swapping David Mamet's toxic-masculinity classic illuminating or just a clever exercise? — while A Fine Idea at the Arcola tackles the murky world of international aid with righteous research.

The delightful and ridiculously versatile Paul Chahidi talks about playing opposite Sandra Oh in Martin Crimp's reimagined The Misanthrope at the National.

And we dig into a stacked week of theatre news: a new James Graham play about Keynes (John Maynard, not Milton), the Shaftesbury Theatre's renaming in honour of Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen's much-anticipated return to the stage at The Yard.

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A mixed bag of horror, comedy and drama this week...First up, Martina Laird's debut play Driftwood arrives at the Kiln: set in a Port of Spain gentleman's club on the eve of Trinidad's independence, it's bursting with ideas, a stellar cast, and a second act that gets quite mad. Then the gang reviews Under the Shadow at the Almeida. Leila Farzad is magnetic as a woman trapped in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, stalked by something that may or may not be a jinn (and may or may not have rubber fingers).

Producer Tim Bano sits down with Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris to discuss how War Horse, one of the most successful pieces of theatre ever made, came into being almost 20 years ago. It went very wrong before it went very right...

And Patricia Allison, Sex Education's Maeve, is at the Orange Tree in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy. She answers our Five Questions.

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