Nicklas Radstrom’s Monsters, mkaing its UK premiere under Christopher Haydon’s direction, aims to provoke discussion about James Bulger’s murder. In this week’s paper, Radstrom and Haydon talk to The Stage about the challenges of presenting a play on such an emotive issue while avoiding sensationalism.
“The story is already out there, so it’s more about how we deal with incidents like this that we know have happened, but we don’t want to think about,”explains Radstrom.
“We have to explore them, we have to think about them think about what they mean to us as human beings and being part of a society where this actually happens.
“There are miles of text written about this case in the tabloids, on the internet, but how do we try to understand something like this in a mature, sensible way?”
Also this week:
Comedian and Stage columnist Arthur Smith talks about his new autobiography, what made him want to do stand-up comedy and why, despite being one of the BBC’s Grumpy Old Men, he’s quite cheerful really
As she prepared for her tole in Time and the Conways at the National Theatre, Francesca Annis took a moment out to talk to us about the Priestley play and her career
David Timson has played characters from swashbuckling Errol Flynn types to all of the roles in the Sherlock Holmes stories in his years in radio dramas and audiobooks. He explains how his background as a singer helped with dialects, his experience in radio rep and as a freelance, and changes at the BBC
Best known for the music of The Wombles, Mike Batt continues to enjoy a successful career as songwriter and producer
Curtain Up: Tim Crouch tells Alistair Smith how his latest play, England, takes the form a guided tour around the Whitechapel Gallery
Screen to stage adaptations are all very well — but creativity is suffering as original work becomes less bankable, argues Roger Foss
British theatre company Inspector Sands tooks its award-winning production of Hysteria, along with Q&As and workshops, to major Chinese cities. Duncan Hodson reports on audience response
Plus Maggie Brown, guest columnist Andrew Fishwick, Dear John on how to choose betwen two very different offers of roles, and Q&As with actor Amit Sharma, ballet dancer Darren Goldsmith, Bale de Rua’s Fernando Narduchi and Dina Hall, head of wardrobe at Plymouth Theatre Royal
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