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    Edward Bond, Playwright Who Clashed With Royal Censors, Dies at 89

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    His brazen first play, “Saved,” though it drew outrage, led to the end of more than 200 years of state control over the theater.No modern British dramatist polarized his countrymen as much as Edward Bond, who died on Sunday at age 89.To some, he was an unholy terror, relentless in his doctrinaire socialism and disconcertingly fond of violent theatrical effects. To others, he was almost a secular saint, a writer of unflinching integrity in a world of compromise and so sensitive to human frustration that he invariably peopled his plays with characters suffering, often graphically, from extreme forms of oppression and exploitation.But both parties would agree that his first important play, “Saved,” precipitated the end of theatrical censorship in Britain.In 1965, the Royal Court Theater submitted “Saved,” a graphic portrait of mostly young and sometimes violent no-hopers adrift in London’s lower depths, to the Lord Chamberlain, who had held absolute power over British drama since 1737. The response by a functionary was widely thought of as absurdly anachronistic: A scene in which hooligans stone to death a baby in a pram could not be publicly staged.Mr. Bond refused to alter a line, and the Royal Court supported him by temporarily becoming a private club, and thus, as the law then stood, no longer needing the Lord Chamberlain’s sanction.This was a tactic that had been used in London before, notably for Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1956 and Arthur Miller’s “View from a Bridge” in 1958, both of which hinted at the then-taboo subject of homosexuality.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is Earlier Better for Theater Start Times?

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      In an effort to entice audiences back after the pandemic, Britain’s National Theater is testing a 6:30 p.m. curtain.At 6:30 p.m. on a recent Thursday, most London theatergoers were still busy at work, or eating a preshow dinner, or maybe waiting at home for a babysitter.Except at the National Theater. There, about 450 theater fans were already in their seats, where the curtain had just gone up on “Till the Stars Come Down,” a dark comedy about a wedding that goes disastrously wrong. That night was the first performance in a six-month trial to see if starting some shows at 6:30 p.m. instead of 7:30 can lure back theatergoers who, since the coronavirus pandemic began, don’t want to stay out late in London anymore.The early performances were “marginally outselling” other midweek shows, said Alex Bayley, the National Theater’s head of marketing. The theater will wait to see the trial results before making the early starts a permanent fixture. In interviews in the bustling foyer before the show, 20 attendees said that they thought the early start was a good idea. Ruth Hendle, 65, an accountant, said that it meant she wouldn’t have to run out at the end to catch the last train home. “I’m too old to be doing that anymore,” she said. Mary Castleden, 68, said that an early finish would mean an easier drive home.The only complaints concerned the lack of time to have dinner first. “I hope they’re not eating food in this play,” said Karim Khan, 29, “otherwise I might get hungry.” (Khan did not get his wish: Soon after the play began, the ensemble cast performed a scene in which they snacked from an overflowing buffet.)In New York, there has been some movement on curtain times, too. Jason Laks, the Broadway League’s general counsel, said that about 10 years ago, an 8 p.m. theater start was sacrosanct. Now, there was “a trend to a 7 p.m. curtain,” he said, although he noted that that shift began before the pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      National Theater, Source of Broadway Hits, Gets Its First Female Leader

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      Indhu Rubasingham will lead the venerable London institution where plays including “War Horse” and “The Lehman Trilogy” originated.Since the National Theater opened in London in 1963, its artistic directors have been among the greats of British theater: Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn, Nicholas Hytner and Rufus Norris. They also had two other things in common. All six are white men.On Wednesday, the theater brought that era to an end when it announced the appointment of Indhu Rubasingham to the top position. She will be the first woman and person of color to lead the National Theater.Rubasingham, 53, will join next spring, the theater said in a news release. She will work for a year alongside Norris, who is departing, before taking sole charge in spring 2025, when she will also share the role of chief executive with Kate Varah, the theater’s current executive director. That sharing of responsibilities is a change for the theater, where Norris currently holds both roles.With three theaters in its building alongside the River Thames, the National, as it is known, stages around 20 plays and musicals each year, and has almost 900 full-time employees. Critics and theatergoers expect it to produce the best new shows and revivals in London, while also staging work that comments on the state of the nation. On top of that, it is tasked with incubating new talent, mounting touring productions across Britain and running an extensive education program.Rubasingham will have to do all of that in the face of a shrinking budget and soaring inflation. Many theaters in Britain, including the National, receive annual government grants meant to cover about a fifth of their operating costs, but the amount of those subsidies is declining. Last year, Arts Council England, the funding body, slashed the National’s subsidy by 5 percent, to 16.1 million pounds (about $20 million), as part of a drive to reallocate grants to institutions outside London.Beginning in fall 2024, the National will face further budgetary pressure when it has to start repaying a loan worth about $25 million. Britain’s government lent the theater the money during the coronavirus pandemic to help the shuttered institution shore up its finances.Rubasingham will be expected to produce money-spinning transfers to both the West End and Broadway. Over the past decade or so, the National’s transfers to New York have included “War Horse,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “The Lehman Trilogy.” Next year, it is sending “The Effect,” a recent hit, to The Shed.The National, as it is often known, stages around 20 plays and musicals each year.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt the much smaller London playhouse that she currently leads, the Kiln, Rubasingham has directed several hits that have found their way to New York, including “Red Velvet,” about the experiences of an African American actor in 19th-century London, which played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2014, and Zadie Smith’s “The Wife of Willesden,” which recently played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her programming at the theater, which changed its name from the Tricycle to the Kiln under her leadership, included acclaimed shows like “The Father,” “The Mother” and “The Son” from Florian Zeller’s trilogy, and works by emerging playwrights.Her time at that theater has not been without controversy.When Israel invaded Gaza in 2014, Rubasingham announced that the theater would no longer host some screenings for the U.K. Jewish Film Festival if it continued to accept funding from the Israeli government. The ultimatum caused a minor furor, and the editor of The Jewish Chronicle called the Tricycle “officially antisemitic” on social media. (The screenings went ahead at other venues.)A spokeswoman for the National Theater said that Rubasingham was unavailable for an interview, and the theater had no comment about the incident.The rebranding of the Tricycle in 2018, so that it became the Kiln, also caused a fuss, and many critics were mystified by the name change.Born in the northern English city of Sheffield to Sri Lankan Tamil parents, Rubasingham has said in interviews that as a teenager she expected to become a doctor until she accepted a work experience placement at the Nottingham Playhouse, a regional theater. She studied drama at Hull University and then worked as a trainee director at the Theater Royal Stratford East in London, where she worked with Mike Leigh, the movie director.Even with a lengthy track record at the Kiln, the National appointment is a huge step up. Clint Dyer, the National Theater’s deputy artistic director, outlined the challenges of running the organization in a recent interview with the Times of London. Whoever got the top job, he said, needed to have the “experience, understanding, empathy, desire” and “forward thinking” required to run any major arts institution, but also “the knowledge of the canon, of new playwriting and the ability to speak to donors, to government, to people like me.”“It’s a herculean task,” Dyer said. More

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      The Grenfell Tower Fire, Now Onstage at the National Theater

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      Six years after 72 people died in a fire at a London high rise, artistic projects, including a verbatim play, have been made about the blaze.“I remember my knees giving way, thinking, ‘This is it now,’ because I cannot take another breath.”On Monday night, the actor Ash Hunter stood onstage at London’s National Theater portraying Nicholas Burton, one of almost 300 people who, six years ago, found themselves trapped inside a burning London apartment block. Hunter spoke Burton’s own words.“Every breath was just hot black smoke,” the actor said, visibly sweating and breathing quickly.On June 14, 2017, a refrigerator caught fire in a 24-story London high rise called Grenfell Tower. That blaze should have been easily contained, and residents were advised to stay in their apartments. But within minutes, flames had engulfed the structure, which lax building regulations had allowed to be clad in a flammable material. It became Britain’s deadliest fire in more than a century.That night, Hunter said in the play, Burton fell asleep while watching a DVD, near his wife, Pily, who had Alzheimer’s disease. He woke to banging on his front door, which he opened, causing thick smoke to billow into the room. Burton knew he couldn’t carry his wife down dozens of flights of stairs, so he took her into the bathroom, where they waited for help.Burton thought he was going to die, Hunter said onstage. Later, his wife did, becoming the fire’s 72nd, and final, victim.Burton is one of 10 Grenfell residents whose stories are told in Gillian Slovo’s “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors,” a verbatim play running through Aug. 26 at the National, one of Britain’s most significant playhouses. On Monday, some audience members shook their heads as they listened to the survivors’ experiences and the catalog of mismanagement that led to the blaze. Others were in tears at the end of the minimally staged production.Ash Hunter, portraying the Grenfell Tower resident Nicholas Burton in “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” at the National Theater in London.Myah JeffersA scene from Steve McQueen’s 24-minute film “Grenfell,” shot using a helicopter. “I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said of the tragedy. via Steve McQueenYears after the fire, Grenfell continues to cast a shadow over British life. Most of the units in Grenfell Tower were a part of Britain’s social housing system and the blaze drew attention to neglect within that system and to unsafe building practices across the country. An official inquiry into the blaze is ongoing, as is a police investigation.With so little resolution for the bereaved, some of Britain’s major cultural institutions and artists have started making works about the tragedy. In addition to the National Theater’s production, the BBC earlier this year announced plans for a TV drama about the fire, and in April, the artist and director Steve McQueen presented a 24-minute video work at London’s Serpentine Galleries. Filmed using a helicopter, McQueen’s “Grenfell” shows the burned tower block as it stood in December 2017, days before it was hidden behind white plastic sheeting.“I was determined that it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said in a statement accompanying the piece.Survivors of the tragedy and local residents have had mixed responses to these projects. Shortly after the BBC’s TV drama was announced, Cecilia Corzo, a resident of the housing project that includes Grenfell Tower, started an online petition calling for the show to be canceled. The petition has more than 61,000 signatures.Corzo wrote in an email interview that she found the idea of anyone wanting to watch a dramatization of the fire “overwhelmingly disgusting.” Survivors have been waiting years for justice, she wrote, and in that time “the only thing that seems to be moving quickly is plans to make entertainment” from the tragedy.Slovo, the playwright, said in a recent interview at the theater that she understood such reactions, but hoped the play’s critics would “come and see what we’ve done.” Her aim was to “amplify” survivors’ voices, Slovo said, adding that the fire was an important example of how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.” Grenfell “stands as a lesson to us all, not just in Britain,” she said.Gillian Slovo, who assembled the play “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” from around 80 interviews, said the fire showed how governments and businesses were “putting profit over people’s lives.”Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesSlovo, a South African-born playwright who has made several previous verbatim plays including one about British riots, began work on “Grenfell” six months after the fire. She said she was shocked that the blaze could happen in a city as rich as London, and by how the survivors’ voices were missing from most media coverage and official discussion of the tragedy. Instead, tabloids were filled with uninformed theories or articles portraying the bereaved as “poor, or as asylum seekers,” Slovo said.Over several years, Slovo conducted around 80 interviews, sending survivors their transcripts so they could remove anything they didn’t want performed onstage. She bolstered those interviews with transcripts from the official government inquiry.Turning that material into the play had its challenges, Slovo said, including “not wanting to turn this into a melodrama in any way” and making sure the play wasn’t traumatizing.To try to guarantee that, “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” is being performed in unusual conditions. The production opens with the house lights up and the actors introducing themselves and the survivor each is portraying. The cast then reassures the audience that the play won’t include any images of the actual fire and that theatergoers are free to leave the auditorium at any point and return when they’re ready. During previews, therapists sat in the audience to provide additional support.Pearl Mackie, who portrays Natasha Elcock, a woman who used bath water to extinguish flames and lost her uncle in the blaze, said she was angry at the horror of the event before reading the script. Even after being cast, Mackie said, she “worried that my own personal reaction was something that would come across every night, and it wouldn’t be serving the truth of the person I’m playing.”After meeting Elcock, though, Mackie said she realized she could depict the community onstage in full, rather than defining Elcock by this one tragedy. The play is “the most important thing I’ve ever done,” Mackie said.All the survivors portrayed have been invited to see the play, and some have done so. Ed Daffarn, who lived on the 16th floor, said in a recent interview that he couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt while watching it. “Almost as a defense, I kind of distanced myself,” he said.He knew other survivors couldn’t bring themselves to go, Daffarn added, but he insisted that the play, and other creative Grenfell projects, were vital to keeping the tragedy in the public consciousness. Homes across England were still encased by flammable cladding, Daffarn said, adding “we haven’t had a single clink of handcuffs.”After a performance, the audience gathered outside the National Theater near the green heart placards. Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt the end of Monday night’s performance, a short film was shown featuring survivors and bereaved family members — including Burton — discussing their lives today, and what they wanted the audience to take from the play.The cast then gave audience members placards shaped like green hearts — a symbol that’s associated with Grenfell — with words like “Justice” written across them, and asked everyone to follow them outside.Silently, the audience did as asked: Hundreds of people carrying those placards high into the London night. For a moment, the evening became more than theater. It became a call for change. More

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      ‘Dear England’ Review: When Soccer Success Becomes a Moral Victory

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      A new James Graham play about the soccer coach Gareth Southgate is a lively romp, but its core message about embracing male vulnerability feels soppy.What makes a good leader? When the unassuming and softly spoken Gareth Southgate was appointed head coach of the England men’s soccer team in 2016, many fans and commentators felt he lacked the kahunas for the role, that he was simply too nice. But in the past seven years he has overseen a remarkable transformation in the England team’s fortunes, making it stronger and more exciting to watch than at any time in recent history.The ups and downs of Southgate’s tenure are portrayed with a blend of playfulness and moral seriousness in “Dear England,” directed by Rupert Goold, which runs at the National Theater, in London, through Aug. 11. It’s a lively, feel-good romp with plenty of irreverent humor, though the narrative borders on hagiography, and its core message about embracing male vulnerability is labored to the point of soppiness.The play chronicles the team’s involvement in three recent major tournaments, starting with its surprise run to the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup in Russia; then comes an agonizing defeat by Italy in the Euro 2020 final, followed by an impressive showing, culminating in an unlucky quarterfinal exit, at last year’s World Cup in Qatar.The on-field action is evoked through dynamic set pieces choreographed by Ellen Kane and Hannes Langolf, in which the players enact key moments in elaborate simulations, complete with slow-motion sequences and freeze-framed goal celebrations. These are kitsch, but mercifully brief, as the bulk of the activity takes place off the pitch: in locker rooms, team meetings and news conferences whose settings are rendered with smart simplicity by the designer Es Devlin.Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate, manager of the England men’s soccer team.Marc BrennerJoseph Fiennes is outstanding as Southgate, who is portrayed as self-effacing but assertive, an approachable father figure to his young charges. Will Close, as England’s captain and star player, Harry Kane, plays up the striker’s famously laconic manner, providing a bathetic counterpoint to the coach’s earnest rhetoric. Adam Hugill is similarly amusing as the defender Harry Maguire, who is portrayed as a lovable simpleton — not the sharpest tool in the box, but solid and dependable. Kel Matsena delivers a spirited performance as Raheem Sterling, who, along with Bukayo Saka (Ebenezer Gyau), speaks out defiantly against racism after England’s Black players are the targets of abuse.The principal female character in this necessarily male-dominated lineup is the sports psychologist Pippa Grange (Gina McKee), hired by Southgate to help the players open up about their feelings and overcome self-doubt. When one unreconstructed member of the coaching staff questions the need for her services, she reminds him that psychology has been at the root of England’s past failures: “This is men, dealing, or not dealing, with fear,” she says.The play’s author, James Graham, is known for political theater, with hits including “Ink” and “Best of Enemies,” and “Dear England” has distinctly activist overtones. Southgate’s mild-mannered disposition, emotional intelligence and leftish politics — he has been supportive of Black Lives Matter and outspoken on mental health issues — are kryptonite to a certain type of reactionary sports jock. So it’s tempting to view his story as a culture-war allegory, pitting touchy-feely liberalism against old-school machismo.From left: Will Close as Harry Kane, Ebenezer Gyau as Bukayo Saka and Kel Matsena as Raheem Sterling.Marc BrennerUnfortunately the play leans into this a little too heavily, with pantomimic cameos from several of Britain’s recent Conservative prime ministers — Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss — pandering to the assumed prejudices of cosmopolitan London theatregoers in a way that comes off as ingratiating and smug. This is ramped up in the second half, which is considerably less funny, and feels rushed: The 2020 and 2022 tournaments are rattled through at speed, in contrast to the more leisurely pacing before the intermission.Southgate’s playing career is best remembered for a decisive miss in a penalty shootout against Germany in the semifinal of the 1996 European Championship, played in London, which resulted in England’s elimination from that tournament. A personal redemption narrative forms a compelling subplot the main story, and it’s a cruel irony that Southgate’s England side also lost the final of Euro 2020 in a penalty shootout on home soil. That Southgate has yet to bag a trophy — the England men’s team still hasn’t won a major tournament since 1966 — remains a powerful trump card for his doubters. And so the play’s celebratory tenor feels a little misplaced.Yet “Dear England” is not so much about sports as it is about culture. The technical and tactical foundations of the England team’s revival are conspicuously underplayed in this telling: The team’s on-field improvement is straightforwardly tethered to a shift in moral values, and we are given to understand that correlation equals causation. You can be fully on board with everything Southgate stands for and still find this cloyingly simplistic.Dear EnglandThrough Aug. 11 at the National Theater, in London; nationaltheatre.org.uk More

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      “The Motive and the Cue” Asks What Makes a Great Performance

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      “The Motive and the Cue,” a new play in London, imagines fraught behind-the-scenes maneuvering by John Gielgud, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during rehearsals for a classic Broadway production.“The classicist who wants to be modern, meeting the modernist who wants to be classical.” So says Elizabeth Taylor, summing up the fractious encounter between the revered Shakespearian actor John Gielgud, and her new husband, the actor Richard Burton. It’s 1964, Taylor and Burton are the most famous couple in the world, and Burton is rehearsing the role of Hamlet for a Broadway production that Gielgud is directing.It’s not going well.That’s the setting for “The Motive and the Cue,” a new play directed by Sam Mendes, written by Jack Thorne, and starring Mark Gatiss as Gielgud, Johnny Flynn as Burton and Tuppence Middleton as Taylor.The play, which opened to enthusiastic reviews in May and runs through July 15 at the National Theater, in London, was an idea born out of the pandemic, said Caro Newling, a co-founder with Mendes of Neal Street Productions, which developed the show.Newling said that, during the first coronavirus lockdown of 2020, Mendes was thinking about why theater mattered, and what went into creating great performances. When they were discussing those questions, she added, Mendes recalled reading a copy of “Letters From an Actor,” an account of the 1964 “Hamlet,” by William Redfield, who played Guildenstern in the production. “Suddenly, bang, this idea shot out,” Newling said.A 1964 photograph shows Richard Burton, left, and John Gielgud in a rehearsal for “Hamlet.”Getty ImagesThe idea was a play based on the fraught relationship between the rambunctious, hard-drinking Burton and the repressed, elegant Gielgud during rehearsals for “Hamlet,” with the added combustible element of a sidelined, glamorous Taylor, sitting out her honeymoon in a hotel suite.Newling and Mendes started researching, and discovered another out-of-print book: “John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet,” a fly-on-the-wall account by Richard Sterne, an ensemble actor who smuggled a tape recorder into the rehearsal room.Mendes called Thorne, the playwright behind the stage blockbuster “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and the television series “His Dark Materials,” and suggested the rehearsal dynamics might provide fruitful material.Initially unsure, Thorne found a focus by “understanding the position that Gielgud was in at the time. He wasn’t being loved by the public, treasured by the profession. His great rival Laurence Olivier was running the National Theater and a new kind of modern theater was dominating the West End. He took the Broadway job because he didn’t have other offers.”“Hamlet,” had been a defining role for Gielgud, who had played the part over 300 times. For the Broadway “Hamlet,” he came up with the idea — daring at the time — of doing the play as if it were a rehearsal run-through, in ordinary clothes. In “The Motive and the Cue,” Burton tries to stamp his brash personality on Hamlet, while the classicist Gielgud wants something more sensitively attuned to Burton’s deeper emotions.The cast of “The Motive and the Cue.” Jack Thorne, who wrote the play, said it was about “why we do what we do, what it feels like, and what it costs.”Mark Douet“What’s interesting is that Burton is getting it wrong, sort of on purpose, trying to show Gielgud that it must be modern,” said Flynn, who lived as a teenager in Wales, where Burton is a national hero. “I had a picture of him playing Hamlet on the door of my house for about 15 years,” Flynn said. “It felt eerie that now, I was playing him, playing Hamlet.”The irony of the Burton-Gielgud conflict, he added, was that Burton idolized Gielgud, and was desperate to be regarded as a serious actor. “He is incredibly successful, but deep down, he fears he has drifted into complacency, is not doing something valuable with his art,” Flynn said.The set, designed by Es Devlin, uses expanding and contracting scrims to create seamless transitions between the “Hamlet” rehearsals, a pink hotel suite in which Taylor and Burton throw glamorous parties for the cast and the scenes of more intimate encounters. One of these is between Gielgud and Taylor, who provides the psychological insight that allows the director to find a way to Burton.Middleton, who plays Taylor, said, “Elisabeth is the voice of reason, one of the wisest characters in the play.”“She completely understood Burton’s obsession with conquering Hamlet, and why it was so difficult for him.,” she added. “It was important to me to show she wasn’t this chaotic, floozy character she is sometimes seen as.”Tuppence Middleton as Elizabeth Taylor in “The Motive and the Cue.” The play is set shortly after Taylor’s marriage to Richard Burton.Mark DouetMuch of the play is concerned with how to play Hamlet: The breakthrough moment for Burton happens when he can connect his painful past to the character’s motivations. “This is what actors have to do when they strip themselves down to play a role,” Thorne said.In the end, the 1964 production was a triumph, running for 136 performances; “The Motive and the Cue” has been a hit, too. It is currently playing to sold-out houses and its popularity suggests that the play’s central ideas — theater as a community and a crucible of emotional connection between actors and audience — have resonated after the enforced closures of the last few years.“It’s about fathers and sons, classicism and modernity, the clash of these forces,” Thorne said. “But I hope it’s also about why we do what we do, what it feels like and what it costs.” More

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      ‘Prima Facie’ and ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ Win Big at the Olivier Awards

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      The Jodie Comer-starring legal drama won best new play at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys and an adaptation of ‘Totoro’ won six gongs — the most of any production.“Prima Facie,” a Broadway-bound play about a lawyer who represents men accused of assault, then is herself sexually assaulted, was the big winner on Sunday at the Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The one-woman show, starring Jodie Comer and written by Suzie Miller, was named best new play during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Comer was also named best actress for her performance at the West End’s Harold Pinter Theater.The awards come just days before “Prima Facie,” and Comer, transfer to New York. The show is scheduled to begin previews at the Golden Theater on Apr. 11.Its success at the Olivier Awards was perhaps unsurprising given that “Prima Facie” was a critical and commercial hit in London during its run last year. Matt Wolf, reviewing the play for The New York Times, said that Comer took a big risk making her West End debut in an “emotionally fraught solo play.” But, he added, “there’s no denying the visceral power of an evening that owes its sellout status to a theatrical neophyte who possesses the know-how of a seasoned pro.”“Prima Facie” beat stiff competition to the best new play title, including Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill A Mockingbird” at the Gielgud Theater; “Patriots” at the Almeida — a timely look at President Vladimir V. Putin’s rise in Russia; and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy” at the Royal Court, a tale of six young Black men in group therapy.Comer accepted her award, thanking “the sisterhood” who worked on the show, then giving a message to viewers online. “To any kids who haven’t been to drama school, who can’t afford to go to drama school, who’ve been rejected from drama school — don’t let anybody tell you that it is impossible,” she said.Although it won one of the night’s most coveted awards, “Prima Facie” was not the only big winner. “My Neighbour Totoro,” an adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated film, at the Barbican Theater in London, won six gongs — the most of any production — including best entertainment or comedy play, and the best director award for Phelim McDermott.The show, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a crowd-pleaser in London partly thanks to featuring several giant, fantastical puppets — including a furry Catbus that is part motor vehicle, part feline. Dominic Cavendish, reviewing the play in The Daily Telegraph, said those puppets were “worth the price of admission alone.”Other major winners included Paul Mescal, the Irish star, who was named best actor for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Almeida Theater.Matt Wolf, in a review for The New York Times, wrote that “Mescal brings both swagger and sensitivity to the role, in the process stepping out of the long shadow cast over this part by its stage and screen originator, Marlon Brando.”The best new musical award went to “Standing at the Sky’s Edge,” a show at the National Theater in London about the intertwined lives of the residents of a housing complex. It triumphed over several higher-profile titles including “Tammy Faye,” about the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, featuring music by Elton John. More

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      On London Stages, Finding Something Fresh in Tragedy

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      New productions of “Medea” and “Phaedra” feature outstanding performances from Sophie Okonedo and Janet McTeer as women pushed to the edge.Tragedies are rarely absent from the London stage, but some defining theatrical titles don’t always deliver. It can be tricky to empathize with characters pushed to unimaginable extremes, and mythical landscapes can feel remote.What’s needed is a way of tapping into those works’ primal power afresh. It also helps to have performers with vocal and emotional range. London is offering two such powerhouses onstage right now: Sophie Okonedo and Janet McTeer, both Tony Award winners, though only Okonedo is in a production equal to her gifts.That would be the recently opened “Medea,” at the West End’s new in-the-round theater, @sohoplace, through April 22; performed in modern-dress without an intermission, Dominic Cooke’s expert production reminds us of the elemental fury at the heart of Euripides’ timeless play.The National Theater’s “Phaedra,” through April 8, is a new play from the Australian writer-director Simon Stone that draws from Euripides, Seneca and Racine. McTeer plays Helen, an anxious modern-day politician undone by love, as Phaedra was before her. But the tone wavers on the way to an attenuated close; the show runs nearly three hours.“Medea,” by contrast, charts a merciless 90-minute descent into the abyss, using the 1946 Robinson Jeffers adaptation from the Greek that is the play’s preferred version on Broadway.Daniels plays all the production’s male roles, including Medea’s husband, Jason.Johan PerssonWe hear the sorceress Medea before we see her, pleading for death from somewhere beneath the stage. Her husband, the explorer Jason, has transferred his affections to the daughter of the king of Corinth, leaving Medea to fester in grief and anger, and to plot literature’s most celebrated infanticide. Those children she will murder first appear onstage sweetly eating ice cream cones‌‌ — but that innocence won’t last.When Okonedo does appear, sunglasses hide the eyes. “I did not know I had visitors,” she says, deadpan, taking in the playgoers seated on all sides. (The intimacy of this circular theater opened last fall by the impresario Nica Burns is among its assets.) The effect draws us further into Medea’s plight, rendering us therapists or co-conspirators — or perhaps both.The play’s chorus consists of three women of Corinth seated in the audience who speak up now and again to voice their alarm. But Cooke’s primary innovation is to cast Ben Daniels, a London stage veteran, as all the play’s men. Seen before he speaks, Daniels circles the perimeter of the auditorium in silent slow-motion before stepping into the space to play a smugly dismissive Jason, or any of the other roles. The actor puts a deliciously camp spin on the Athenian king, Aegeus, in marked contrast to Jason’s knife-wielding machismo.The suggestion is of a male-dominated world in which the high-born Medea is doomed by her gender. Her fury, though, is directed at Jason specifically, and she commits the barbaric murder of their sons unseen, emerging afterward in embittered triumph.Throughout, Okonedo displays the suppleness of thought, and the wit, with which Medea surely once bewitched Jason, and the remorseless logic that has led to her monstrous deeds. Medea may go to extremes unknown to most of us, but this production keeps you on her side every step of the way.Chloe Lamford’s set for “Phaedra” at the National Theater encases the action in an revolving cube.Johan PerssonIt’s easy to imagine a younger McTeer as Medea, a role well matched to this fearless actress’s elegantly smoky voice and imposing physicality. As the sleekly attired Helen in “Phaedra,” she suggests a woman of wealth and power who knows how to work a room.That self-assurance is why it’s startling to watch her composure crack across a fitful evening that might work better if the production felt less remote. It’s a challenge to connect with the characters through the revolving cube of Chloe Lamford’s enclosed set.Not only must the actors be heavily amplified to be heard, but there are long blackouts while we wait for the various locations to be revealed — among them, a London restaurant, a field of reeds in the English countryside, or the rough Moroccan terrain of the play’s end.The characters at the start talk very fast, as if challenging the audience to keep up. But the gabble ceases with the unexpected appearance of Sofiane (Assaad Bouab) whose father, Ashraf, Helen’s lover, was killed in a car crash; Helen was in the vehicle at the time of the incident, which occurred when Sofiane was still a child.In “Phaedra,” Janet McTeer, left, plays Helen, who has an affair with the son of a former lover, played by Assaad Bouab.Johan PerssonHelen transfers her dormant feelings for Ashraf to the now-grown, and flirtatious, Sofiane, unaware that he is soon also bedding Helen’s daughter, Isolde (Mackenzie Davis, in an accomplished stage debut).The play surprises with its bursts of humor. Playing Helen’s sharp-tongued diplomat husband, the wonderful Paul Chahidi brings whiplash timing to a series of stinging takedowns of his philandering wife, who revels in feeling young again. (It would be helpful, though, to know more about Helen’s political life than the play lets on.)But for all McTeer’s considerable magnetism, this “Phaedra” feels like a messy story of romance gone wrong, modishly dressed up. Helen and her world may belong to the here and now, but it’s the centuries-old tale of Medea that really strikes at the heart anew. More

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      Where Culture Flows Along London’s River Thames

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      The Southbank Center, the host of this year’s British Academy Film Awards, has become a focal point of the city’s arts and culture scene.LONDON — As Lisa Vine looked out over the River Thames from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall main foyer, she recalled first coming here as an 11-year-old girl in 1957 to attend a concert.Over the decades, Ms. Vine, a retired teacher and native Londoner, who had stopped in for coffee on the way back from a nearby errand, has seen a lot of change here. She has not only watched the Southbank Center develop — with the Queen Elizabeth Hall opening in 1967 and the Hayward Gallery the next year — she has also seen the area around it grow and change, with the addition of artistic and performance spaces including the National Theater, the British Film Institute, the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe.“I remember when the river was dull,” she said, looking out at a panorama that includes the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now, she noted, “there is so much going in terms of concerts and events, but I don’t get out here as often as I should.”That’s the sentiment of Londoners and visitors alike. With so much going on at the Southbank Center, from classical music concerts, dance premieres and D.J. sets to poetry, film and literature festivals, it would be impossible to attend every event. And all of those happenings — at a venue that’s open five nights a week, where about 3,500 annual events take place — have made the Southbank Center one of the focal points of London’s arts and culture scene.Hosting the British Academy Film Awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, for the first time on Sunday is yet another big moment in the storied history of the space, which has had everyone from Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Jacqueline du Pré to David Bowie, Michelle Obama and Greta Thunberg grace its stages.The Royal Festival Hall, as seen from the Hungerford Bridge. The venue opened in 1951, kicking off the development of what would become the Southbank Center. Bjanka Kadic/Alamy“We’re so thrilled about the central location of the Royal Festival Hall and accessibility of the space, enabling us to program our most ambitious and inclusive night for attendees yet,” Emma Baehr, the BAFTAs’ executive director of awards and content, wrote in an email. (The awards have previously been hosted in various locations, most recently the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington.) “Southbank is the largest arts center in the U.K., home to the London Film Festival and in the heart of London on the River Thames — having staged our television awards there for several years, it felt a natural move for us.”The Royal Festival Hall — which seats 2,700 — was opened in 1951 by King George VI, along with his daughter Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, during the Festival of Britain, which was centered on the south bank of the Thames. The area had been devastated during World War II and its derelict buildings and factories were razed to build a number of temporary structures for the festival.During the next few decades, not only did the Southbank Center develop — both the 900-seat Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery, which holds contemporary art exhibitions, are fantastic examples of 1960s Brutalist architecture — but the area around it did, too.The British Film Institute, which hosts film festivals and has helped fund a number of films including the BAFTA-nominated movies “Aftersun” and “Triangle of Sadness,” opened its first theater in 1957 under the Waterloo Bridge. And the National Theater, under the direction of Laurence Olivier, opened its doors next to the institute in 1976.Members of the royal family, including Princess Elizabeth, center, opened the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall in 1951 during the Festival of Britain.Associated PressThat festival centered on the redeveloped south bank of the Thames, where the Royal Festival Hall, right, sat alongside a typical British pub.Frank Harrison/Topical Press Agency, via Getty ImagesAbout a mile east is Shakespeare’s Globe, which first opened in 1599 and then burned down in 1613 during a performance of “Henry VIII” (a second theater was later built but was eventually closed by parliamentary decree in 1642). The newest version of the theater opened in 1997 and now houses two stages including the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where plays and concerts are performed by candlelight. A stone’s throw from the Globe is the Tate Modern, the world-class modern and contemporary art museum housed in a former power station that opened its doors to the public in 2000.“I spend my life in a constant state of FOMO because there is always something happening,” said Stuart Brown, B.F.I.’s head of program and acquisitions, adding that the area is quite magical because of its location by the river and the architecture of the buildings. “You’ve got these incredible world-class artistic offerings to people through music, theater, visual arts, film, and all those experiences can inspire us, move us, make us think about the world differently.”The American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, backstage at the Royal Festival Hall circa 1963. Ms. Fitzgerald is among the luminaries who have appeared at the London venue. David Redfern/Redferns/Getty ImagesMusic has always been a highlight of the programming at the Southbank Center and with six resident orchestras — including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Aurora Orchestra — almost every evening there is some kind of concert.“Music is absolutely central to everything we do,” said Elaine Bedell, the chief executive of the Southbank Center. However, she added that classical music audiences globally had not returned to full pre-Covid strength and that that was something she and her colleagues wanted to address. “We have a very dynamic new head of classical music, Toks Dada, who has a very clear strategy and has very ambitious plans for bringing new audiences to classical music.”The Purcell Sessions have been part of that overall strategy to bring in younger audiences to various genres, including classical music. Housed in the same building as the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room is an intimate stage with just 295 seats. The series based there is a chance for up-and-coming musicians, some of whom work across different art forms, to showcase their talents. “It has always had this legacy of experimentation,” Ms. Bedell said. “The idea is, it’s a real space for collaboration, innovation and invention.”The Purcell Room, of course, is not the only space for collaboration and experimentation. For 40 years the Southbank Center has had an “open foyer” policy in the building that houses the Royal Festival Hall, which connects to the other Southbank buildings through a series of outdoor concrete walkways. Like the year-round free exhibitions, and the concerts outside during the summer Meltdown festival, the foyer is open to the public seven days a week as a civic space. Weekly music jams, dance groups and language clubs meet up there to practice.“That sense of openness and inclusiveness is the unique thing about the Southbank Center,” Ms. Bedell said, adding that there are cafes and restaurants scattered across the cultural campus that help add to the center’s revenue. “I like the idea that people kind of feel their way to use the space.”Over the years, the various cultural institutions along the river’s south bank have cross-pollinated on projects. For a number of years, the British Film Institute has used the Royal Festival Hall for premiere screenings during the London Film Festival. Last year during the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition “In the Black Fantastic,” which focused on Afrofuturism, the institute hosted a talk with Ekow Eshun, the show’s curator.“We have a warm and collaborative relationship with other organizations on the south bank, meeting regularly as leaders to learn from each other and share best practice,” Kate Varah, the executive director of the National Theater, wrote in an email. “We’re all asking similar questions as we navigate through the permacrisis, and it’s more important than ever that we share our experiences and have a forum for collective ideas.”During the lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth in September, a number of the spaces worked together to entertain — through poignant music and archival film of the royal family — the thousands of mourners who stood in the queue that snaked past the cultural institutions before heading across the river to Westminster Hall.The interaction between the venues is just one of the reasons fans of the area like Ms. Vine say they love it so much.“It is a wonderful place, one of my favorites in London,” she said. 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