The Play Podcast

• The Play Podcast - 097 - Giant, by Mark Rosenblatt

  Episode 097: Giant by Mark Rosenblatt Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Mark Rosenblatt Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. It is 1983, and the famous children’s author Roald Dahl’s life is in some turmoil. He has just divorced his wife of 30 years, and his new fiancée has just moved into the family home and has initiated disruptive renovations to the house, disturbing his very particular writing routines. Dahl also now finds himself the target of publlic outrage for the antisemitism contained in his recent published criticism of Israel’s violent attack on Lebanon. Representatives from his British and American publishers have arrived to try to persuade Dahl to issue some conciliatory response, but Dahl is characteristically disinclined to retreat from his deeply-felt opinions. This is the premise for Mark Rosenblatt’s award-winning first play Giant, which is currently earning five-star reviews in London’s West End. I am delighted to be joined by the play’s author, Mark Rosenblatt, to explore his electrifying play.

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• The Play Podcast - 096 - Dealer's Choice, by Patrick Marber

  Episode 096: Dealer's Choice by Patrick Marber Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Matthew Dunster Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. A poker game in the basement of a London restaurant is the setting for six men to play out their dreams and disappointments in Patrick Marber’s first play, Dealer’s Choice. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 1995, and thirty years on a cracking new production is on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in London. I’m delighted to be joined by its director, Matthew Dunster, to explore Marber’s perceptive portrait of male conflict and compulsion.

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• The Play Podcast - 095 - Rhinoceros, by Eugène Ionesco

  Episode 095: Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Omar Elerian Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. A rhinoceros charges through the square of a small French village, and soon all of its inhabitants are being transformed into rhinoceros themselves. Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist satire, Rhinoceros, was conceived as a metaphor for support for the rise of Fascism in Europe between the world wars, and for conformism more generally. As we record this episode an imaginative new adaptation of the play is playing at the Almeida theatre in London, and I’m delighted to be joined by the show’s translator and director, Omar Elerian.

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• The Play Podcast - 094 - Oedipus the King, by Sophocles

  Episode 094: Oedipus the King by Sophocles Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Professor Edith Hall Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. Sophocles’ tragic drama of the myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, not only directly inspired Freud’s notorious dream theory, but has itself survived as a masterpiece of theatrical invention and power. Written nearly two and a half thousand years ago, Oedipus the King has endured because of the dramatic trauma of Oedipus’s personal story, and also as an allegory of authoritarian political rule. The play has proved remarkably adaptable to modern social and political times, which is attested by the fact that not one, but two major productions of the play have been staged in London this year. I’m delighted to review Sophocles’ shattering classic with the esteemed Classics professor, Edith Hall.

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• The Play Podcast - 093 - Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov

  Episode 093: Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Rory Mullarkey Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We’ll discuss the play’s origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing. Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, the third of the quartet of great plays that he wrote in the last years of his short life, is a symphonic study of the search for purpose and love. Three Sisters premiered in January 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where his previous two major plays, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull had debuted. As we record this episode a spellbinding new production is on stage at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. The text for that production is translated by playwright Rory Mullarkey, who joins us to explore Chekhov’s masterpiece.

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