You have been reading Episode One of what would have been the greatest sitcom ever. We’ve been inundated with questions asking… Why? What happened? Why wasn’t there more? Was someone ill? Was it too political? Did some high-up intervene, and…
Claudine Vattier’s French translation of Wenckheim’s play arrived. La Terre de Wrangel, she called it; Wrangel Island, in English. It’s a real place. A sizeable island belonging to Russia, about five hundred miles west from Alaska. Today, it’s known as…
In the summer of 1975, I was driving along the coast in the south of France on the way to visit a girl who’d been au pair to Michael Bialoguski. Michael was the self-appointed counter-espionage agent who’d outed Vladimir Petrov…
The other time an actor threatened to unbalance a show I directed, by altering his character, could have been the most disastrous. Jeremy Kingston, notable Punch and Times critic, had written an extremely witty and moving play, much in the…
What makes a professional performer, hired to play a part in a certain way, deliberately break the tacit deal with author and audience? Did a friend of Keaveney’s come round and say ‘I enjoyed the show, but aren’t you horrible!…
Stewart Parker had written a play with music called Spokesong which ran for six months at the King’s Head. When he came up with another text, we jumped at it. Again, it had a lot of music and he called…