Latest news with #IndhuRubasingham
Daily Mail
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Stormzy arrives at Cambridge University as grime star receives an honorary doctorate in law - seven years after launching his own scholarship programme
UK rapper Stormzy arrived at the University of Cambridge to receive an honorary degree on Wednesday. The London based grime artist, real name Michael Omari Owuo Junior, will be awarded a doctorate in law during a special congregation at Senate House. Stormzy, with four number one singles on the UK charts, launched his own scholarship programme at the prestigious university in 2018. The funding originally covered two Black British students each year for their tuition and maintenance costs before expanding to a further ten. Fifty-five students have been supported by the Stormzy Scholarship and birthed the 'Stormzy effect' - an increase in applications to Cambridge from Black students. Stormzy's Doctorate in Law is in recognition of his philanthropic work including in education, music, sport and literature. The rapper is among Sir Simon Russell Beale, Professor Angela Davis, Lady Arden of Heswall, Dame Katherine Grainger, Sir Oliver Hart, Professor Maria Leptin and Sir John Rutter receiving awards. The doctorate comes as Stormzy prepares to front a new National Theatre diversity drive after signing up for a 'top secret' project at the iconic London venue. The Croydon-born grime artist has been scouted by new National Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham as she looks to modernise and diversify its creative output. As the South Bank venue's first female and ethnic minority artistic director, Rubasingham has announced plans to stage rap adaptations of classic Greek tragedy, although Stormzy's involvement is yet to be clarified. The subversive move is part of a wider aim to build an international audience through the National Theatre's online streaming platform, National Theatre At Home.
Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The big Rattigan revival — and what Succession owes to the playwright
In a world where so many of us share secrets on social media, Terence Rattigan's reticence seems very unconventional. But perhaps that is one reason he is back in fashion again. There was a time, roughly spanning the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, when the Harrow-educated son of a diplomat seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what the theatregoing public wanted. He reigned supreme as the elegant observer of upper-middle-class mores. But with the rise of 'the angry young man' and kitchen sink drama he fell from favour. When he died in 1977, aged 66, the best that many critics would say of him was that he was the master of the well-made play. The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version could always find a public, but the conventional view was that Rattigan was a boulevardier rather than a profound artist. Yet by the time of his centenary in 2011 the pendulum was swinging in the other direction. And that re-evaluation has continued. While The Deep Blue Sea, his 1952 portrait of the self-destructive Hester Collyer, is ensconced at London's Haymarket, one of his lesser-known late-period dramas, In Praise of Love has just opened at the Orange Tree in Richmond, a venue with an impressive track record of Rattigan revivals. And when Indhu Rubasingham, new artistic director of the National, unveiled her plans for her inaugural season, a rarely performed Rattigan play was part of the line-up. Man and Boy — a study of a corrupt Romanian-born tycoon who resorts to using his own son as a homosexual decoy in a plot designed to keep his financial empire afloat — was a flop in 1963, but will be mounted in the Dorfman next year, with the rising young director Anthony Lau overseeing a cast led by Ben Daniels. All this is observed with some pleasure by the actor David Suchet, who, as president of the Terence Rattigan Society, is campaigning for the playwright to receive the honour — also accorded to Noël Coward — of having a West End theatre named after him. • Give Terence Rattigan his own West End theatre, stage stars say 'I believe Rattigan remains incredibly relevant today,' Suchet tells me. 'I'd say he's a kind of modern-day Chekhov, and there are shades of Ibsen too. Both reflected on their societies, often satirising them, and their characters were also steeped in pain and emotional conflict. His work isn't just period drama — it cuts deep into emotional trauma, often through the voices of both men and women. He wrote beautifully for women.' That's the view, too, of the actress Tamsin Greig, who is playing Hester in the production of The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Lindsay Posner, which began life in the tiny Ustinov Studio at Bath Theatre Royal last year before transferring to the Haymarket. We first see Hester, estranged wife of a High Court judge, after she tries to gas herself in the dingy London flat that she shares with her feckless ex-RAF lover Freddie. 'It's a Greek tragedy in somebody's front room,' Greig says. 'Every line that Rattigan has constructed is a beautiful surface which hides a deep blue sea of its own. He does this extraordinary high-wire act between dark comedy and light storytelling.' Greig, who also appeared in Rattigan's 1930s hit French Without Tears in the mid-1990s, confesses that she used to share the conventional view that he was one of life's lightweights. It was seeing Penelope Wilton as Hester in Karel Reisz's acclaimed 1993 revival of The Deep Blue Sea that prompted a change of heart: 'I was completely bowled over by her performance and the depth of the story, never thinking that it would ever come my way three or more decades later. I think that after this, it'll be difficult to find a character that's quite so deep and wide and high as Hester is.' There's a strong autobiographical undercurrent to the play. Rattigan drew inspiration from his decade-long love affair with the young actor Kenneth Morgan, who took his own life in 1949. Since homosexuality was still illegal in the Fifties, Rattigan — whose other lovers included the notoriously snobbish Tory politician and diarist Henry 'Chips' Channon — kept up appearances by channelling his emotions into a female character. Not that every critic back then admired the sleight of hand. Michael Billington's history of postwar theatre, State of the Nation, includes this stinging response from one leading reviewer: 'Perhaps she [Hester] just needs a good slap or a straight talk by a Marriage Guidance Counsellor.' When Mike Poulton, the playwright responsible for bringing Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies to the stage, wrote Kenny Morgan, his play about the relationship — it premiered at London's Arcola in 2016 — he quoted a letter that Rattigan wrote years after he created Hester: 'At last I can write about my particular sins without Lord Chamberlain-induced sex-change dishonesty … Perhaps I should rewrite The Deep Blue Sea as it really was meant to be.' What about recasting it with male lovers? After all, many a classic has been subjected to cosmetic surgery over the years. Or would that be a tweak too far? Alan Brodie, the agent who represents the Rattigan estate and who is preparing a festival to mark the 50th anniversary of Rattigan's death, is unconvinced: 'Hester is one of the great female roles in the canon,' he told me, 'and it would be seem perverse to remove that opportunity from actresses.' Poulton wrote of his admiration for Rattigan when his play was first staged: 'As I researched Kenny Morgan my opinion of Rattigan as a playwright — always very high — grew higher. As a man there's much to admire … Unlike the off-the-peg, mass-produced, plastic celebrities of our own times, Rattigan was the real thing — he earned his fame through sheer hard work and talent, and was rewarded by enormous success. 'I could say it's a shame that he was forced to present a false picture of himself to the public, but I suspect that without his habitual acts of disguise and concealment he'd never have developed into the great and assured playwright he became.' On the surface, Rattigan might have seemed the ultimate Establishment figure — urbane, affluent and cultivated — but his admirers insist that he was never quite what he seemed. This was the man, remember, who, late in his career, championed the career of that uncompromisingly gay Sixties renegade Joe Orton. 'Rattigan always struck me as an outsider,' explains Suchet, who starred in Man and Boy 20 years ago. 'I think his plays reflect that, his pain, his struggles with his identity, and the emotional repression he lived with. He never seemed comfortable in his own skin. Man and Boy was his answer to the kitchen-sink movement, a powerful response, but it didn't land as he'd hoped, and that rejection caused him great pain.' Still, it's ironic that writers who once made Rattigan look behind the times have faded from view: 'It's interesting now that when you look at plays such as The Winslow Boy, they have stood the test of time more than those kitchen sink dramas,' Posner says. 'His preoccupations are with the human condition rather than any specific political time, so people can still relate to the plays and scenes of loneliness and obsessive love or jealousy.' If one challenge remains, perhaps, it's to introduce Rattigan's work to a younger generation. You can't help noticing that, at so many revivals, the audience still tends to be of a grey demographic. Anthony Lau insists Man and Boy is no museum piece: 'It's a play with characters who we recognise today, in the news and on television, and the dynamics between them feel modern,' he says. 'The language is fleet of foot and the pacing of the story feels like a thriller. There is so much of Rattigan in the DNA of things like Succession.'
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Labour plans ‘risk excluding disabled people from workforce', say arts leaders
More than 2,500 figures from the arts including leaders at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company have signed an open letter stating that the government's proposed changes to the Access to Work scheme could 'risk disabled people being excluded from the workforce entirely'. Indhu Rubasingham, the artistic director of the National Theatre, and Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, the co-artistic directors of the RSC, were among the signatories, who said the changes would have a 'devastating impact' on disabled employment rates within the cultural sector. Addressed to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the letter says the proposals in the 'Pathways to Work' green paper will reverse 'decades of progress'. It says: 'We have worked for decades to ensure that the sector can provide better work for disabled people, and now the proposals threaten that progress, and risk disabled people being excluded from the workforce entirely. There is a clear need to reform Access to Work, but this must be based on constructively supporting disabled people into meaningful work, not a cost-cutting exercise.' Access to Work is designed to help people with disabilities or adverse health conditions get back into work or remain in employment. Companies and employees can apply for grants via the scheme to assist disabled people in the workplace, and can provide support beyond the 'reasonable adjustments' an employer is required to make by law. It is designed to prevent employers from discriminating against those who could require expensive workplace accommodations. The comedian and disability rights campaigner Jess Thom recently told of her 'despair' at being informed her Access to Work payment was being cut by 61%. Tom Ryalls, one of the organisers of the open letter, told the Guardian it was the fact 'Jess was no longer able to do her job' and the current green paper consultation that triggered the letter's release. 'There's the consultation but this is also about unspoken cuts that are already happening,' he said. Almost 15% of the workforce in the creative industries is disabled, compared with about 23% in the general workforce. In organisations funded by Arts Council England, this figure falls to about 9%. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The letter calls for a pause on any changes until the Office for Budget Responsibility publishes its assessment; a commitment to protect and improve Access to Work; a guarantee that changes to the scheme will do no harm to disabled people's participation in cultural life; and for those most affected, particularly disabled artists and cultural workers, to be consulted. A government spokesperson said: 'We are determined to create a welfare system that helps people into work and out of poverty. Our welfare reforms include a £1bn-a-year package to support disabled people who can work into work, so they have fulfilling careers in the arts and other sectors.'
Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
National Theatre's new boss: Our plays won't tell you what to think
Talk about a statement of intent: the National Theatre in London has issued two video trailers to plug its 2025/26 season, the first created by its new director, Indhu Rubasingham. One is a series of close-ups of women's blood-stained mouths, rhythmically chanting about how they found a man so 'sickening' that they 'chewed his face off'. This is to promote Rubasingham's staging of Euripides' great tragedy The Bacchae. It launches her reign at the National with what she promises to be 'wild anarchic energy' in a new rap version by the actor Nima Taleghani. Who, incidentally, has never written a play before. And the other trailer? It shows the Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera, dressed in Jacobean ruff and declaiming, 'To be or not
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Bacchae
This is a bold opener for Indhu Rubasingham's first season in charge at the National Theatre: first time playwright (though he's got decent pedigree as an actor) Nima Taleghani offers up what sounds like a racously modern – and probably quite foul-mouthed – adaptation of Euripides's shockingly violent Ancient Greek tragedy. Rubasingham herself will direct the show, which has a cast including James McArdle, Clare Perkins and Ukweli Roach. Following its NT run a version of the show – probably without the famous people in it – will tour to secondary schools.
