Latest news with #SweeneyTodd
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).
The Sun
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I visited grim, gory London Dungeons & was frightened out of my wits – it's a perfect day out with teenage kids
THE door slams shut as we enter the waiting lift . . . Everything goes black and starts to shake. 3 3 Could we actually be stuck here? After a bit too long, the door creaks open and we pile out with relief. My 15-year-old daughter Dulci and I have come to The London Dungeon for the afternoon to be frightened out of our wits! We start by moving through a dense corridor where we are stalked by some eerie screams. We're scared already, so link arms. Then the 90-minute tour begins. As we enter a series of rooms, the grimmest, goriest stories of London's history are played out before us, by actors who are more convincing than they need to be. We're in London's notorious Newgate prison, where a witch in a cage is loudly proclaiming her innocence. It's not the most salubrious of places. But wait, it's pitch black again. Oh no, now what's going on? Well, that would spoil it, wouldn't it? Let's just say it's an immersive experience. 3 Dulci deals with it by keeping her eyes firmly shut. By now we are holding hands — very tightly. We find ourselves in Mrs Lovett's pie shop. She is besties with Sweeney Todd, the crazed and murderous demon barber. Her hearty-looking pies are filled with . . . no, let's not go there. But the blood and gore theme has just got started. There is a dead body before us lying on a slab. Who knew an audience at an autopsy of a plague victim with a deranged surgeon could be so much fun? In fact, it is the highlight of the afternoon for Dulci. What is so glorious about The London Dungeon experience is that you know something scary is around the corner, but you can't figure out what. You can't even get any respite in the loos — as there are screams and wails in there, too. We had a memorable experience and Dulci said it was just the right level of scariness. Afterwards, it was surreal emerging into the light on the South Bank, with the Houses of Parliament standing serene across the river.
Express Tribune
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Joe Locke to make West End debut in ‘Clarkston' after wrapping ‘Heartstopper' film
Joe Locke will make his West End debut later this year in Clarkston, following the completion of filming on Netflix's Heartstopper movie. The play, written by Samuel D. Hunter, explores the lives of two young men who meet while working at a Costco in small-town Washington. Locke expressed his enthusiasm for the role, describing Hunter's writing as 'deeply human and honest' and sharing his excitement to bring the story to London audiences. The UK premiere of Clarkston will be directed by Jack Serio, with Locke starring alongside Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville. Dates and venue details are expected to be announced soon. The play, first staged in Dallas in 2015, follows Jake (Locke), a young gay man from Connecticut who relocates after being diagnosed with Huntington's disease. He forms a connection with Chris (Mollica), who has a strained relationship with his mother (Melville). The production will mark Hunter's first West End staging of the play, which he describes as a story about 'love and friendship in the midst of an unknown future.' Locke, who appeared in Disney+'s Agatha All Along and starred on Broadway in Sweeney Todd in early 2024, shared that the West End opportunity is particularly meaningful, having grown up visiting London theatre with his mother. Filming for the Heartstopper movie, which serves as a closing chapter to the series, is nearing completion, with Locke stating that the team is enjoying the process and looking forward to sharing the final chapter with audiences.
The Independent
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Stephen Sondheim's papers go to Library of Congress, offering a look into a Broadway genius
Manuscripts, music and lyric drafts, recordings, notebooks and scrapbooks from Stephen Sondheim have been donated to the Library of Congress, offering the public a chance to see firsthand the creativity of one of musical theater's giants. The collection includes about 5,000 items, ranging from drafts of songs that were cut from shows or never made it to first rehearsal, as well as a spiral music book titled 'Notes and Ideas' that document some of his musical efforts while a student at Williams College. He died in 2021. 'It's staggering,' said Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz in an interview. 'He's constantly refining, changing words or phrases here and there. It's like he never gives up on trying to perfect the things.' The cache includes drafts of variations on the lyrics to 'I'm Still Here' from 'Follies' and 'Putting It Together' from 'Sunday in the Park with George' that Sondheim wrote for Barbra Streisand at her request. The collection arrived at the Library in March. There also are lyrics for a reprise of 'Side by Side by Side' that never made it into 'Company' and 40 pages of lyric sketches for 'A Little Priest' — 'Is the politician so oily it's served with a doily?' go one of the final lines — from 'Sweeney Todd,' with lists of more than 150 possible professions and types of people who could have been baked into pies written in the margins. 'It seems like the older he gets, the more sketching there is,' says Horowitz. 'For the early shows, there may be three boxes of materials or four boxes. By the later shows, it eight or nine boxes. I don't know if it's because it became harder for him or because he became more detail-oriented.' Some surprises in Sondheim's papers The Library of Congress expects a surge in requests to view the collection when it becomes available this summer. Anyone over 16 with a driver's license or a passport can ask for access to the original pages. It becomes available July 1. Horowitz, the author of " Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions " and editor for The Sondheim Review, who has taught musical theater history at Georgetown, has been surprised by some of the items. One of them was a song Sondheim wrote as part of a public TV contest in the early 1970s. The winner wanted the Broadway icon to write a song for his mother's 50th birthday and Horowitz stumbled over their correspondences. 'I had no idea that existed,' he said. Horowitz convinced Sondheim to donate his papers to the Library of Congress in 1993 and the composer put it in his will. 'I'd seen his manuscripts to some degree in his home before, but nothing like the kind of in-depth page after page after page that I'm doing now.' Horowitz, who has been processing collections for 34 years, built a friendship with Sondheim and even found his own name a few times in the collection. "For large collections that I spend a lot of time on, I tend to feel the ghost of that person over my shoulder. But with Sondheim, it's the first time I can think of that I'm processing a collection of someone who I really knew." A fire and 'a miracle' Six of Sondheim's musicals won Tony Awards for best score, and he also received a Pulitzer Prize ('Sunday in the Park'), an Academy Award (for the song 'Sooner or Later' from the film 'Dick Tracy'), five Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. The fact that Sondheim had anything to donate to the Library at all is a miracle. He suffered a fire in 1995 that started in his office, just feet from where the collection rested on wooden shelves and in cardboard boxes. But somehow it survived, albeit with some papers suffering scorch marks. 'There's absolutely no reason why the collection should not have gone up in flames. And it is truly the closest I've ever seen to a miracle, the fact that they didn't,' said Horowitz. The country's oldest federal cultural institution, the Library of Congress was founded in 1800 under legislation by President John Adams and has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan backing. It contains more than 100 million books, recordings, images and other artifacts and offers a vast online archive, and its contents span three buildings on Capitol Hill. It's not a traditional circulating library but is instead a research library. In his second term, President Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, amid criticism from conservatives that she was advancing a 'woke' agenda. The Library of Congress is already home to the collections of several Broadway icons, including Neil Simon, Arthur Laurents, Marvin Hamlisch, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
Associated Press
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Stephen Sondheim's papers go to Library of Congress, offering a look into a Broadway genius
NEW YORK (AP) — Manuscripts, music and lyric drafts, recordings, notebooks and scrapbooks from Stephen Sondheim have been donated to the Library of Congress, offering the public a chance to see firsthand the creativity of one of musical theater's giants. The collection includes about 5,000 items, ranging from drafts of songs that were cut from shows or never made it to first rehearsal, as well as a spiral music book titled 'Notes and Ideas' that document some of his musical efforts while a student at Williams College. He died in 2021. 'It's staggering,' said Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz in an interview. 'He's constantly refining, changing words or phrases here and there. It's like he never gives up on trying to perfect the things.' The cache includes drafts of variations on the lyrics to 'I'm Still Here' from 'Follies' and 'Putting It Together' from 'Sunday in the Park with George' that Sondheim wrote for Barbra Streisand at her request. The collection arrived at the Library in March. There also are lyrics for a reprise of 'Side by Side by Side' that never made it into 'Company' and 40 pages of lyric sketches for 'A Little Priest' — 'Is the politician so oily it's served with a doily?' go one of the final lines — from 'Sweeney Todd,' with lists of more than 150 possible professions and types of people who could have been baked into pies written in the margins. 'It seems like the older he gets, the more sketching there is,' says Horowitz. 'For the early shows, there may be three boxes of materials or four boxes. By the later shows, it eight or nine boxes. I don't know if it's because it became harder for him or because he became more detail-oriented.' Some surprises in Sondheim's papers The Library of Congress expects a surge in requests to view the collection when it becomes available this summer. Anyone over 16 with a driver's license or a passport can ask for access to the original pages. It becomes available July 1. Horowitz, the author of " Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions " and editor for The Sondheim Review, who has taught musical theater history at Georgetown, has been surprised by some of the items. One of them was a song Sondheim wrote as part of a public TV contest in the early 1970s. The winner wanted the Broadway icon to write a song for his mother's 50th birthday and Horowitz stumbled over their correspondences. 'I had no idea that existed,' he said. Horowitz convinced Sondheim to donate his papers to the Library of Congress in 1993 and the composer put it in his will. 'I'd seen his manuscripts to some degree in his home before, but nothing like the kind of in-depth page after page after page that I'm doing now.' Horowitz, who has been processing collections for 34 years, built a friendship with Sondheim and even found his own name a few times in the collection. 'For large collections that I spend a lot of time on, I tend to feel the ghost of that person over my shoulder. But with Sondheim, it's the first time I can think of that I'm processing a collection of someone who I really knew.' A fire and 'a miracle' Six of Sondheim's musicals won Tony Awards for best score, and he also received a Pulitzer Prize ('Sunday in the Park'), an Academy Award (for the song 'Sooner or Later' from the film 'Dick Tracy'), five Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. The fact that Sondheim had anything to donate to the Library at all is a miracle. He suffered a fire in 1995 that started in his office, just feet from where the collection rested on wooden shelves and in cardboard boxes. But somehow it survived, albeit with some papers suffering scorch marks. 'There's absolutely no reason why the collection should not have gone up in flames. And it is truly the closest I've ever seen to a miracle, the fact that they didn't,' said Horowitz. The country's oldest federal cultural institution, the Library of Congress was founded in 1800 under legislation by President John Adams and has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan backing. It contains more than 100 million books, recordings, images and other artifacts and offers a vast online archive, and its contents span three buildings on Capitol Hill. It's not a traditional circulating library but is instead a research library. In his second term, President Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, amid criticism from conservatives that she was advancing a 'woke' agenda. The Library of Congress is already home to the collections of several Broadway icons, including Neil Simon, Arthur Laurents, Marvin Hamlisch, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
