Latest news with #DonmarWarehouse
Time Out
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Exclusive: Heartstopper's Joe Locke makes his West End debut in ‘Clarkston' – full dates and venue
Somehow still just 21 years old despite having been a serious rising star for what feels like at least a decade, Joe Locke long ago proved there was more to him than Heartstopper, the TV show that made his name. From his playfully enigmatic turn in Marvel's Agatha All Along to an excellent stage debut as an embittered teen in a dystopian future in the Donmar Warehouse's The Trials to a stint on the recent Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, he's very much at that phase in his career where everything looks charmed. And as he continues his ascent to the big time, here comes his West End debut, which we can exclusively reveal the venue and dates for. The play is Clarkston by US playwright Samuel D Hunter, best known over here for writing the screenplay to Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-nominated The Whale. It's had fringe success in the States but it now gets its biggest outing to date as it plays a nine-week stint at the Trafalgar Theatre this autumn, in a production helmed by American director Jack Serio. Described as a 'modern frontier story', Clarkston will star Locke as Jack, a young man who heads out to the American West in an effort to rediscover himself, in a journey that obliquely reflects Lewis and Clark's great expedition. He'll co-star with fellow rising star Ruaridh Mollica, plus the wondrous Sophie Melville. It's a very promising looking show from an actor whose early stage roles have so far been as good as his screen ones. Clarkston is at Trafalgar Theatre, Sep 17-Nov 22. Priority book opens at 10am today (Sep 21) and public booking opens 10am tomorrow (Sep 22).
Time Out
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The Donmar Warehouse has announced its autumn season
A new Donmar Warehouse season has been announced and it kicks off pretty sharpish: it seems likely (if unconfirmed) that the playwright Caryl Churchill's recent decision to withdraw an unnamed play of hers from production at the boutique Covent Garden powerhouse has led to a bit of scrabbling around to shore up the schedule. The schedule would now seem to be shored up, however, kicking off next month with the debut of a new play by the prolific, mercurial Mike Bartlett. Directed by James Macdonald, Juniper Blood (Aug 16-Oct 4) follows Lip and Ruth, a couple who have quit the city to pursue a more ethical life in the country. But what's the real price of pursuing your dreams in an imperfect world? As you'd imagine for a play that basically starts in a month, it has a full cast already: Terique Jarrett, Hattie Morahan, Nadia Parkes, Jonathan Slinger and Sam Troughton will star. The most intriguing show of the season is an adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids (Oct 13-Nov 29) by Kip Williams. Genet's surrealist class satire is a reasonably regularly performed classic (Jamie Lloyd did it not so long ago) but the really interesting dimension here is Williams. The Australian director is essentially solely known over here for his ultra high tech one-woman take on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (which starred Sarah Snook); next year he's back in the West End with a similar version of Dracula performed by Cynthia Erivo. Will this be along similar lines? We're promised a 'wild reimagining'; it'll be fascinating to see what that involves. Finally, Donmar boss Tim Sheader directs a revival of JB Priestley's When We Are Married (Dec 6-Feb 7 2026). The comedy about a trio of Yorkshire couples who discover on the occasion of their triple silver wedding anniversary that they are not in fact married is probably Priestley's most famous play that isn't An Inspector Calls, but it's still not been done in London in an age and should be a fun way to see out 2025. The cast includes Siobhan Finneran, Samantha Spiro, Sophie Thompson and Marc Wootton.
Telegraph
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
This devastating play is one of the cultural events of the year
Seven years ago, an unknown young director called Lynette Linton made her name overnight at the Donmar Warehouse with a blistering production of Sweat, a work by double Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Lynn Nottage. Now Linton, firmly established as one of the shining stars in the directorial firmament, returns to the scene of her triumph for a revival of Intimate Apparel – Nottage's exquisite 2003 play about a black seamstress in 1905 New York. It is another devastatingly fine production, headed by a remarkable leading performance from Samira Wiley, known to global television viewers for The Handmaid's Tale. Wiley plays Esther, a skilled and trusted maker of 'intimate apparel for ladies', who dreams of opening her own beauty parlour for black women. She lives in a 'rooming house' and is adequately content with her lot yet, at the age of 35, longs for a little romance. A mutual acquaintance leads her to start exchanging letters with one George Armstrong (Kadiff Kirwan), a Barbadian man working on the Panama Canal and George's increasingly affectionate replies to her are projected in swirling italics on the theatre's back wall. The one problem with this epistolary exchange is that Esther can neither read nor write. Fortunately, two people are particularly keen to assist with the correspondence: Esther's no-nonsense prostitute friend Mayme (Faith Omole) and her wealthy client Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly). The very personal nature of Esther's work means that class and race boundaries are collapsed; one of the beautifully crafted play's many narrative strands involves tales of this rich white woman's increasingly unhappy marriage being recounted obliquely during a series of lingerie fittings. George is not the only man on Esther's radar. There is also Mr Marks (Alex Waldmann), a Jewish fabric merchant whom she visits regularly on business. There is an unmistakable frisson between this gentle pair, a flirtation via fabric, and if they cannot touch one another, they can certainly caress the Japanese silks that they both so admire. Rarely has someone brushing a hair from someone else's jacket been so exquisitely sexy. Wiley superbly suggests the emotions bubbling within Esther: pride in her work and stoic decency, as well as an overriding desire to, at last, wear her own intimate apparel to seduce the man she desires. The character is convinced that she is plain, yet when she believes that she has at last found love, her face radiates the pure beauty of happiness. All six cast members are pitch-perfect and Linton proves once more why she is so highly regarded in a production that marks a magnificent conclusion to Tim Sheader's high-achieving first season as artistic director of this boutique gem of a venue.
The Guardian
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘How much can one person take?': Posy Sterling on her intense portrayal of a mum trapped in custody hell
Each morning before filming Lollipop, Posy Sterling took a giant bucket outside, filled it with ice and climbed in. Never mind that it was November or that her call time was at 5am; the actor would take daily dips in the freezing water in the dark. In Lollipop, Sterling plays a headstrong mother who has recently been released from prison and is fighting to win back her kids. The role is heavy, but the ice baths meant she started the days feeling light. 'I just found it euphoric,' she says. Tickled, her driver started bringing her more ice as part of her ritual. Today, Sterling, 32, is similarly full of beans, buzzing from two coffees and fresh from six weeks in New York. 'I haven't slept,' she says brightly. The actor has been quietly building her profile since Screen International named her one of 2023's Stars of Tomorrow, with performances in the Saoirse Ronan addiction drama The Outrun and Benedict Andrews's buzzy take on The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse in London, which has just finished a run off Broadway. We're meeting in an office in north London, where Sterling is excited to talk about her first leading role in a film. 'I share a fire with Molly,' she says of her character in Lollipop. Sterling is breezy and charming, but there is an intensity to the way she speaks. She says she related to Molly's 'refusal to be reduced', despite the difficulties she faces. In the film, Molly lives in a tent while on a waiting list for a one-bedroom flat. It is the only kind of accommodation she can apply for as a single, unmarried woman, but in order to live with both her children, she needs at least two bedrooms. As if things weren't hard enough, Molly has just spent the last four months in prison. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 58% of prison sentences given to women in England and Wales in 2022 were for less than six months. 'And yet the repercussions of what someone like Molly is going through can last a lifetime,' Sterling says. 'Usually they're reacting to the environment they're in,' she adds, listing poverty, addiction and domestic violence as typical contributing factors. 'A different punishment could be served instead of a prison sentence.' She pauses and laughs darkly. 'Or help, maybe?' The film is written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson, who made the 2015 documentary Half Way, about her and her family's experience of homelessness, when she was just 24. Lollipop is Hudson's first fiction film but it is driven by a similar mission: to expose the bureaucracy that punishes people who have fallen through the cracks of society, and to show their joy and resilience. Sterling is electric as Molly, blazing with intelligence and maternal rage. 'What I really like about what Daisy-May chose to do, is that she doesn't ever say why Molly went to prison,' Sterling says. 'That doesn't define a person, and it doesn't tell you anything, actually, about who they are,' though 'it's probably the first thing people would ask'. The film resists offering up Molly's crime as a way of justifying her situation. Instead, Hudson presents a character study of a flawed, fiercely loving woman trying her best to be a 'good' mum. Sterling doesn't have children of her own but, before Lollipop, had already spent time researching pregnancy in prisons for another role. Sweatbox was produced by Clean Break, a celebrated theatre company whose cast and crew are made up of women affected by the criminal justice system. Set entirely in a prison van and following three women as they are transported between prison and court, the play was turned into a short film, which caught the eye of Lollipop's casting director, Lucy Pardee, a regular collaborator of Andrea Arnold. Sterling read the script for Lollipop seven times before her audition, because how prison affects mothers was something she 'cared about already'. In order to build the character of Molly, Sterling had conversations with a woman who had fought to regain custody of her children after they were removed. 'She would tell me viscerally what her body went through when this happened to her, which was something I was able to draw on when playing Molly,' she says. In the film's most devastating scene, the stoic Molly finally crumbles, letting out an animal howl of pain on the floor of a social services building. Sterling tears up when I mention it. 'It felt quite ancestral, to be honest,' she says. 'It's important that you see how something is just affecting someone. How much can one person take?' Sterling was born in Manchester in 1992, and spent her childhood in north London and, later, Market Harborough in Leicestershire. She is one of eight, including stepsiblings. Sterling and her younger siblings were born quite close together but have different accents because of where they grew up. She says she was 'massively protective' of them. 'I was separated from my siblings for a time,' she explains cautiously, and 'was moved around quite a lot growing up'. The experience of being in so many different situations gave her a fascination with people-watching and quietly psychoanalysing behaviour. 'I don't want to say I was naughty,' she says, but at school, the label stuck. 'I was always very passionate,' she adds, two deep dimples emerging. 'But I was quite rebellious.' Performing was an escape while growing up and Sterling, a gifted singer, would put on shows and direct anyone within earshot. She applied to Italia Conti drama school, whose alumni include Lesley Manville and Naomi Campbell. 'Basically I did get in, before Clean Break,' she says. Sterling declines to talk about the circumstances that led her to Clean Break, but explains that 'to be a service user [at the organisation], you do have to tick some boxes' – Clean Break being for women who have either been affected by the criminal justice system or are at risk of offending. In 2015 she joined Clean Break's Young Artists programme, which she describes as 'a second chance for a lot of women'. When Sterling was referred there, she remembers that she didn't want anything to do with acting. 'I felt things deeply and had started to do my healing,' she says, and so the prospect of ploughing her emotions 'felt like that would be too much'. The programme was an opportunity 'to turn pain and experience into something', as well as an instructive lesson that acting is not the same as therapy. 'Sometimes at drama schools, they try to get you to dig and unearth all the worst things in your life, whereas somewhere like Clean Break, they are nurturing you as a person. It's not always about 'How do you get into character?' but 'How do you get out of character?'' Italia Conti 'held my place' and Sterling graduated in 2016. To be an actor, she says, you need life experience – something that nobody can teach. 'But you need to have the skill to approach characters, and to be able to access parts of yourself in a way that isn't going to re-traumatise you.' In Lollipop, Sterling's soulful performance feels authentic, but it is precise and crafted. It impressed her former mentor, Zawe Ashton, who was introduced to Sterling through Clean Break. In an email, Ashton says Lollipop was the first acting work she had seen from Sterling. She said her performance was 'full of primal feeling and nuance' and left her 'truly awestruck … Posy is that electrifying blend of trained technique and raw emotion.' Sterling is also a gifted vocalist and sings in the film. She is 'learning the guitar at the moment' and has been 'jamming the blues' with musicians she met in New York. During an early Clean Break performance, her rendition of a Frank Sinatra number caught the ear of Jane Winehouse, stepmother of Amy, who invited her to participate in the Amy's Yard outreach programme, which supports vulnerable young musicians. Sterling wrote and recorded a song in Winehouse's studio, and met the producer Mark Ronson at a gala 10 years ago. The experience was a turning point that 'connected me to myself again', she says. A few weeks ago in New York, at a performance of The Cherry Orchard, the actor Grace Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep, was in the audience. She was so taken by the play that she brought Ronson, her husband, with her to see it again the following day. Sterling did a double take when she saw him while on stage. 'They were meant to be going to another show, and she traded the tickets in to come back to see it a second time,' says Sterling. It was a full-circle moment, reminding her of just how much has happened during the last decade. Sterling credits Clean Break and the outreach programmes she took part in with instilling self-belief at a time when she had little. 'They really want you to see what they see,' she says. 'Then it feels like there's been a reason for all of this.' Lollipop is in cinemas from 13 June.
Arab News
05-06-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Playwright Caryl Churchill pulls out of theater project over Barclays' ties to Israel
LONDON: Acclaimed playwright Caryl Churchill has withdrawn from a project with a London theater over its sponsorship by Barclays and the bank's links to companies supplying arms to Israel. In a statement, Churchill, who is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights, called on the Donmar Warehouse to cut ties with Barclays. 'Theaters used to say they couldn't manage without tobacco sponsorship, but they do. Now it's time they stopped helping advertise banks that support what Israel is doing to Palestinians,' she said. The project had not yet been publicly announced but would have marked Churchill's return to the Donmar for the first time since 'Far Away' in 2020. Her move has been backed by more than 300 artists and arts workers, including actors Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson, Alfred Enoch, Samuel West and Tim Crouch, who signed an open letter in support. Barclays has faced increasing pressure from arts and activist groups over its provision of financial services to defense companies operating in Israel. In 2023, the group Culture Workers Against Genocide published a letter condemning Barclays' sponsorship of Sadler's Wells, with signatories including Maxine Peake, an actress. Last year, the Bands Boycott Barclays campaign led to the bank being dropped as a sponsor by several UK music festivals, including Latitude and The Great Escape. Barclays declined to comment on Churchill's withdrawal but said on its website: 'While we provide financial services to these companies, we are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a 'shareholder' or 'investor' in that sense in relation to these companies.' Barclays CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan defended the bank's position in a 2023 Guardian article, writing: 'These companies are supported by our democratically elected governments for their role in protecting the UK and allies in Europe. We will not undermine our own national security by de-banking them.' Responding to Churchill's decision, Culture Workers Against Genocide said: 'Arts institutions have an ethical duty not to contribute to oppression and injustice. By continuing to accept sponsorship from Barclays, Donmar Warehouse is helping to launder the bank's reputation as it profits from Israel's genocide in Palestine.' The Donmar, which lost its £500,000 ($679,355) annual government grant in 2022, has increasingly relied on private support, including corporate sponsorships. It has been approached for comment. Churchill was previously stripped of a European lifetime achievement award in 2022 following criticism of her play 'Seven Jewish Children' and her public pro-Palestinian stance.
