378 stories by "Nick Smurthwaite"
"A deep-voiced prima donna who drove authors and managers to despair," was how John Gielgud described his friend Mrs Patrick Campbell after
It doesn't seem long ago that the 18-year-old Jessie Buckley was confidently strutting her stuff on Saturday night TV in the talent
Even before Les Mis stiffened the global sinews, Cats was purring and prowling its way round the world in the early 1980s,
The working conditions are, shall we say, cosy. Four floors up, the cluttered two-room costume department and laundry room at the Queen's
At 21, Cathy Tyson had the world at her feet. She'd been plucked from obscurity by director Neil Jordan to star in
It all began with a letter in the Manchester Guardian, as it then was, on July 11 1907, announcing that Miss AEF
A beaming Marcia Warren greets me effusively as I enter the foyer of the Coronet, Notting Hill, the latest addition to London's
It was the year in which the American Civil War ended and Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In Nottingham, 1865
If you had to guess what Will Tuckett did for a living, ballet dancer probably wouldn't be top of your list. He
There was no tradition of reading books in the seaside town of Buncrana, Donegal, where he grew up, so the innately bookish
Jessica Swale can hardly remember a time when she didn't want to work in the theatre. Growing up in Berkshire with a
One of the most luminous stars of the silent era, Louise Brooks has been all but erased from cinema history. Only a
So gobsmacking is the magic of War Horse and The Lion King that the time, effort and expertise that goes into making
No theatre is recession-proof but Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud, 50 years old this year, does appear to be peculiarly blessed when it comes
For the first time in the competition's 50-year history, the Young Magician of the Year is a female performer this year. The
Few jobs require people skills to the same extent as a theatrical agent. As well as having to reassure anxious clients on
The primacy of Ambassador Theatre Group brings with it, among other things, a lot of employment. Within the theatre operator's 38 UK
The paradox of the older jobbing actor is that, while he or she may be happy to carry on working into extreme
It is tempting to ask Craig Revel Horwood, scourge of the Strictly also-rans, to rate my interview technique from one to 10,
Think of an end-of-the-pier show and most of us think of something from another age, such as the pierrot-costumed troupe acting out
From TV's Sunday Night at the London Palladium to the long-running end-of-the-pier show in Cromer, Ian Westbrook's career as a set designer
It is 20 years since she left the mad world of Craggy Island behind her, but you feel it wouldn't take a
Ironically it was a flop that led to Ron Moody being cast as Fagin in the landmark 1960 production of Lionel Bart's
The scene is a cramped interview room adjacent to the National Theatre press office. Enter Peter Wight, bearing a plate of fish
The fear, as expressed by former National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner and others, that filmed theatre would look like a lot of
