News

Rosamund Pike gives a scorching central performance in the world premiere of Inter Alia at the National Theatre, playwright Suzie Miller’s follow-up to Prima Facie, which won Tony and Olivier Award glory for Jodie Comer. Now, there’s a race to lure the Saltburn star into the West End.

Pike gives off heat as Jessica Parks, a fictional crown court judge who becomes embroiled in a potent issue of masculinity and motherhood that threatens both her family and professional life. The first night crowd in the National’s Lyttelton Theatre roared their approval when the actress took her solo bow, having dominated the stage for the duration of the 100-minute play directed by Justin Martin, who also directed Prima Facie in London and on Broadway.

Also involved are the judge’s husband and son, played by Jamie Glover (The Crown) and Jasper Talbot, a recent...

Exclusive: Nt Live will begin its next broadcast season in September with a series of buzzy plays, including The Fifth Step, the latest stage work from David Ireland, which stars Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit).

The production follows James (Freeman), who, after years in Alcoholics Anonymous, becomes a sponsor to newcomer Luka (Lowden). As Luka nears step five, a confession threatens the fragile friendship between them. Directed by Finn den Hertog and originally presented in Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow in 2024 by National Theatre of Scotland, the play was captured live from its sold-out London West End transfer at the @sohoplace. The play will be released in cinemas from November 27, presented by Neal Street Productions, Playful Productions, and National Theatre of Scotland in association with Nica Burns.

On 23 October, Nt Live will hand a cinema release to Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Bernard Shaw’s classic starring Imelda Staunton...

Exclusive: Doctor Who and Barbie’s Ncuti Gatwa and A Discovery of Witches and Killing Eve’s Edward Bluemel are headed straight into London’s West End for the European premiere of Liz Duffy Adams’ “cheeky, witty and flirty” play Born With Teeth, about an imagined meeting between bad-boy playwright Christopher Marlowe and a then-up-and-coming William Shakespeare.

The two hotshot Elizabethans were like the rock ‘n’ roll stars of their day. The jewel box Wyndham’s Theatre, the much sought after prestigious playhouse smack in the middle of the W.End, may never recover from the combined firepower of Gatwa and Bluemel, who both graduated with honors from Netflix’s Sex Education, which has of late become something of a finishing school for future stars.

Adams’ play is being directed, fittingly, by Royal Shakespeare Company co-artistic director Daniel Evans, who, as it happens, just completed a run playing Marlowe’s...

Wyoming is headed to West End. Brokeback Mountain — Annie Proulx’s short story made popular by the 2005 film — is getting a stage adaptation set to premiere in London, starring Lucas Hedges and Mike Faist as closeted cowboys Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist. It marks both actors’ West End debuts.

Variety reports that the West End adaptation of Brokeback Mountain is slated to premiere at the venue @sohoplace, and will play from May 10th through August 12th, 2023. Although there’s no Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in this go around, Proulx said in a statement that the “script is fresh and deeply moving, opening sight lines not visible in the original nor successive treatments,” which seems like a promising co-sign.

The play Brokeback Mountain was written by Ashley Robinson, with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells. Jonathan Butterell directs, and it’s produced by Nica Burns with Adam Blanshay Productions, Lambert Jackson Productions...

“Brokeback Mountain” is set as a stage production.

Almost two decades since the acclaimed 2005 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger debuted, “Brokeback Mountain” is confirmed as a West End play. Oscar-nominated star Lucas Hedges (“Manchester on the Sea”) will play the part of Ennis Del Mar, with BAFTA-nominated “West Side Story” breakout Mike Faist cast as Jack Twist.

“Brokeback Mountain” is based on the New Yorker short story by Annie Proulx. Producer Nica Burns stated that the play is inspired solely from the 1997 short story and not Ang Lee’s film, according to Deadline. Production will be a play with music and debut at the Sohoplace Theatre in the West End for a 12-week season starting May 10.

“Brokeback Mountain” centers on two cowboys who fall in love in Wyoming. Ashley Robinson adapted the script, with “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” director Jonathan Butterell helming the play with collaborator Dan Gillespie Sells...

BAFTA-nominated Mike Faist and Oscar-nominated actor Lucas Hedges will star in a London stage adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain.

The production is described as a play with music and will run at the Sohoplace Theatre in the West End for a 12-week season beginning May 10.

Theater owner and producer Nica Burns stressed that the play is based on Proulx’s short story originally published in the New Yorker in 1997 and not on Ang Lee’s acclaimed 2005 film that starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Faist, who landed a BAFTA nom for West Side Story, will play the part of Jack Twist. Hedges, whose Oscar nom was for Manchester By the Sea in 2016, will play Ennis Del Mar.

The story of two lonesome cowboys who fall in love in the big, wide open spaces of Wyoming touched a chord with those who read the story and caught the movie.

So, here’s the good news. Martha Plimpton has packed up her home in New York to live and work in London. Pooches to follow.

Her first gig? Playing Jacque in Shakespeare’s As You Like It on the stage of @sohoplace, the West End’s first purpose-built theatre in half a century. That Plimpton should deliver, with aplomb, the ‘All the world’s a stage’ monologue in Josie Rourke’s lively festive production, seems wholly appropriate because the same viewpoint applies elsewhere in town.

Related: Deadline’s Broadway Critic Picks The Best Of 2022, And Looks Ahead To 2023

Martha Plimpton in ‘As You Like It’. Photo by Johan Perrson

To watch Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) make the Harold Pinter Theatre’s stage her world in Australian writer Suzie Miller’s legal twister Prima Facie confirms that she’s one of her generation’s best thespians. It was also her debut professional theatre performance.

Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) won the best actress prize at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her West End debut performance playing a criminal barrister specialising in defending rapists — who is then sexually assaulted herself.

Comer won critical and public acclaim for the solo role in Prima Facie, which is written by Suzie Miller and directed by Justin Martin. James Bierman’s Empire Street Productions will launch the courtroom drama at Broadway’s Golden Theatre from April 11, 2023.

Stephen Graham (The Irishman), like Comer a Liverpudlian, presented Comer with the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress, named in honor of the star who died in 2009.

Comer told guests, who included Richardson’s mother Dame Vanessa Redgrave and sister Joely Richardson, that her experience in Prima Facie had been “utterly terrifying, having never trained,” added: “I didn’t know if I could execute this.”

However, she praised the production’s creative team for supporting her,...

Exclusive: Three decades ago Michael Ball (Les Miserables) had teeny-bopper groupies waiting for him at the stage door — in London and on Broadway — thanks to a heartthrob role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Aspects of Love. It didn’t hurt that Ball got to belt out “Love Changes Everything,” which was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ball will star in a new production of the musical, and will sing that song again.

Aspects of Love is set to open in May at London’s Lyric Theatre, owned by Nimax Theatres, a company controlled by Nica Burns and producer Max Weitzenhoffer. Burns will produce.

Ball is the first to acknowledge that he no longer can play the youthful Alex Dillingham, the part he created in the original production in 1989 at the Prince of Wales Theatre. During a recent reception at that very same theater, Ball told Deadline...

Commission

BBC Factual has commissioned “Zuckerberg” (working title), a three-part BBC Two and BBC iPlayer series aiming to present the definitive account of Mark Zuckerberg and his brainchild, marking the 20th anniversary of Facebook’s founding. On Feb. 4, 2004, a teenage Zuckerberg launched a website to help college students connect with each other, which went on to become Facebook. The social media giant, the parent company of which is now called Meta, is in the process of transforming its vision.

The series, which will have access to key players, insider testimony, personal journals and rare archive material, is made by Mindhouse Productions and was commissioned by Jack Bootle, head of commissioning, science and natural history at the BBC. The executive producer is Mindhouse’s Nancy Strang.

Bootle said: “As the 20th anniversary of Facebook approaches, there’s never been a better time to tell the story of its founder — and to...

Cabaret’s London stage revival has triumphed at the 31st Annual Critics Circle Theatre Awards, taking home three of this year’s top honors.

Rebecca Frecknall’s acclaimed new production of the 1966 musical won the award for Best Director, with Oscar-nominated Jessie Buckley earning Best Actress for her performance as Sally Bowles. Tom Scutt was also recognized for his striking stage design.

Complete list of winners below.

The biggest upset of the event came with Cabaret losing out on the biggest award of the night, that of Best Musical, which went instead to Rupert Goold’s Spring Awakening. The latter also brought Start Thompson a joint win for the Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer, along with Samuel Creasy, recognized for The Book of Dust – La Bell Sauvage.

Cush Jumbo won the Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance for her eponymous role in Hamlet, while Ben Daniels was named...

Hollywood star Christian Slater has been forced to delay his British stage debut as he struggles to overcome a bout of chicken pox. The True Romance hunk, 34, was taken ill on Friday during rehearsals of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in London after his co- star Felix Dexter was diagnosed with the highly contagious disease. As Slater's illness continues, producers have pulled the opening night this Friday at Scotland's Edinburgh Festival, giving Slater more time to recover. The play's producer Nica Burns says, "We so hoped we would be able to make the first performance but poor Christian's chicken pox has simply been too virulent. In order to safeguard the rest of the run we are having to take the doctor's advice to let Christian recover for one more day. Randle P. McMurphy is an enormous part requiring great energy." After three weeks at the Assembly Rooms in the Scottish capital, the play were transfer to the West End's Gielgud Theatre.