Office Suite, Theatre Royal, Bath 10th to 27th March
Alan Bennett’s pairing of two of his own 1978 television plays evokes office upheavals as a retired manager is visited by a former colleague, an uninvited harbinger of bad news—the computers are taking over in A Visit from Miss Prothero. Meanwhile, a new broom threatens the chatty, unhurried pen-pushing, and perhaps the job security, of two colleagues in Green Forms.
Angela, www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com; www.lyceum.org.uk March to October
Brokered by a new audio-digital platform, Sound Stage, the collaboration between the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum offers an online booking system for all eight productions of new plays for a particular date and time. Angela by Mark Ravenhill sees the celebrated playwright recall a conversation with his late mother about his childhood obsessions with ballet dancing and Beatrix Potter. You can mingle in a virtual bar before the show and join the actors in post-show discussion after it. Plays to follow are by Roy Williams, Timberlake Wertenbaker and John Byrne.
Phèdre, National Theatre at Home
Belatedly, in this drawn-out pandemic era, the National launches a streaming subscription service with highlights from the production archive, starting with the first live transmission in 2009 of Helen Mirren as Racine’s Phèdre, translated by Ted Hughes. Mirren is tragically subsumed in passion for her stepson Hippolytus (Dominic Cooper). Other performances available include Adrian Lester as Othello, Helen McCrory as Medea and Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus, in a Donmar Warehouse production by Josie Rourke.
Alan Bennett’s pairing of two of his own 1978 television plays evokes office upheavals as a retired manager is visited by a former colleague, an uninvited harbinger of bad news—the computers are taking over in A Visit from Miss Prothero. Meanwhile, a new broom threatens the chatty, unhurried pen-pushing, and perhaps the job security, of two colleagues in Green Forms.
Angela, www.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com; www.lyceum.org.uk March to October
Brokered by a new audio-digital platform, Sound Stage, the collaboration between the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum offers an online booking system for all eight productions of new plays for a particular date and time. Angela by Mark Ravenhill sees the celebrated playwright recall a conversation with his late mother about his childhood obsessions with ballet dancing and Beatrix Potter. You can mingle in a virtual bar before the show and join the actors in post-show discussion after it. Plays to follow are by Roy Williams, Timberlake Wertenbaker and John Byrne.
Phèdre, National Theatre at Home
Belatedly, in this drawn-out pandemic era, the National launches a streaming subscription service with highlights from the production archive, starting with the first live transmission in 2009 of Helen Mirren as Racine’s Phèdre, translated by Ted Hughes. Mirren is tragically subsumed in passion for her stepson Hippolytus (Dominic Cooper). Other performances available include Adrian Lester as Othello, Helen McCrory as Medea and Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus, in a Donmar Warehouse production by Josie Rourke.
