The London Theatre Review

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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War Horse is back...After nearly two decades, the show that transformed theatre has returned to the National Theatre. Nick, Nick and Nancy discuss whether it still hits, and why it might matter even more right now. Plus young critic Dash returns to the pod to give his verdict from the stalls of the Olivier.

We also review Cole Porter musical High Society at the Barbican, starring Helen George as Tracy Lord, a role made famous by both Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn, alongside Felicity Kendal, Freddie Fox and Nigel Lindsay.

Isis Hainsworth — who lit up the Old Vic's Arcadia and just won the Ian Charleson Award — joins Nancy for a conversation about imposter syndrome and Tom Stoppard's terrifying cleverness. And Martina Laird answers our five questions ahead of her play Driftwood at the Kiln.

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After becoming one of Broadway's biggest sleeper hits and an absolute social media phenomenon, Beetlejuice the Musical has landed at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End. Nancy, Nick and producer Tim ventured to the Netherworld to see what all the fuss is about. The gang also headed Stratford East for The Harder They Come, the reggae-soaked, infectious, bass-rattlingly loud stage version of the 1972 Jamaican film classic. Spoiler: one of them didn't quite make it to the end, for reasons entirely beyond their control...

Nick Curtis interviews the wonderful Susannah Fielding — you'll know her from This Time with Alan Partridge, from stealing every scene she's in on Tom Jones, or from making Daddy Issues compulsively watchable — and she's about to open opposite Adrian Lester in the RSC's Cyrano de Bergerac at the Noël Coward. And comedian and playwright Rosie Holt answers our Five Questions ahead of Churchill's Urinal, her new play about a sentient toilet possessed by the spirit of Winston Churchill. As you do.

Plus, the gang get obsessed with Sting, Shaggy and the real Cyrano de Bergerac...

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This week Nick, Nick and Nancy review Alexander Zeldin's Care at the Young Vic - a compassionate, unflinching look at life in an elderly care facility, starring the magnificent Linda Bassett - and the RSC's new musical The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind @sohoplace, the extraordinary true story of a 13-year-old who built a windmill to save his Malawian village from famine. Plus Nancy talks to the brilliant Leila Farzad about her role in Under the Shadow at the Almeida, a supernatural thriller set during the Iran-Iraq War. And Liv Hill, one of the lead trio in 1536, answers our Five Questions.

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