378 stories by "Nick Smurthwaite"
The baby boomer generation is one of regional theatre's biggest demographics so it made perfect sense for writer Michael Aitkens to adapt
Just when you thought every permutation of staging Shakespeare had been tried, along comes another freshly minted Hamlet to confound our expectations.
Michelle Collins was turned down by half a dozen drama schools when she started out. "I've always felt untrained," she admits as
Find out what you're good at and then become the best you can. This simple piece of careers advice could certainly be
Any theatre buff or practitioner who was around in the 1950s and 1960s was in thrall to the critic Kenneth Tynan, whose
Soon after she took over the running of the Liverpool Everyman in the 1980s, Glen Walford invited local hairdresser-turned-playwright Willy Russell to
In a feature that appeared in The Stage in January under the headline 'young designers to watch in 2017', Matt Trueman cited,
What young actor hasn't dreamed of seeing their name in lights in the West End, or having a lead role in a
Playwrights dwell on posterity. Will their work live on after they are dead? Will anyone have heard of them in 100 years'
London's theatre lovers, amateur and professional, are soon to lose the iconic French's Theatre Bookshop, off London's Tottenham Court Road, which is
It seemed like a good idea at the time. A people's palace of entertainments needed a properly designated theatre where opera, ballet,
Broadway welcomes a new kid on the block this week " the Hudson Theatre. Well, not new exactly, since the building has
In a very real sense, designer Robert Jones has been living with The Calendar Girls for 10 years. He was drafted in
In the right hands, even working in the lowliest of jobs can yield favourable results. The legendary Scottish playwright and artist John
It has been quite a homecoming for Josette Bushell-Mingo. Not only has she returned (temporarily) to the UK from Stockholm, where she
It was partly to do with his physical appearance " a grinning giant topped by a bright red Egyptian fez " and
It's not just that Simon Callow likes to keep busy. When you look at what he has achieved as an actor, director,
For a theatre company whose speciality is things going wrong, Mischief Theatre has an uncanny knack of stacking up success after success.
The 22-year collaboration between choreographer Matthew Bourne and designer Lez Brotherston has produced a string of internationally acclaimed shows " the all-male
One hundred and fifty years ago, in April 1866, Charles Dickens visited the majestic St George's Hall in Liverpool to give one
Norfolk is not a county you normally associate with seasonal glamour and excess, yet it plays host to two of the UK's
One way of breaking through the traditional class, ethnic and gender-specific parameters of backstage disciplines is by apprenticeships, and few organisations have
Magic has been around since the dawn of man, but it wasn't until the latter half of the 19th century that it
Ten years ago, Jonathan Suffolk was an electrician's mate on a building site in Monmouth. Today, he is technical director of the
Legend has it that Ibsen kept a portrait of Strindberg, his junior by 21 years, over his desk wherever he worked. "I
