The Play Podcast

11/09/2025

In 2015 the esteemed theatre critic, Michael Billington, published 'The 101 Greatest Plays – From Antiquity to the Present'. Michael wrote that his selection was intended as a “provocation”, a “prelude to debate”. Well, I was provoked!
For our 101st epsiode I invited Michael and the arts journalist, Mark Lawson, to join me to review and debate his criteria and selection.

During our discussion we not only wrangled over specific inclusions and exclusions in Michael’s list, including most controversially his omission of both King Lear and Waiting for Godot, we also addressed more general questions about the criteria for selection, what elements make a great play, and what makes a play more likely to endure beyond its own time.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or on our website, where you will also find a complete list of Michael's 101 chioces.

Join us in the debate!

Critics Michael Billington and Mark Lawson join me to review and debate Michael's criteria and selection of the 101 Greatest Plays.

20/08/2025

Thank you to Theatre Tokens, our listeners have a chance to win £100 of tokens.

We're giving away £100 in Theatre Tokens with The Play Podcast!

To celebrate the podcast reaching its landmark 100th episode, in which each episode host Douglas Schatz talks in depth about a single play with an expert guest, we've teamed up to give away £100 in Theatre Tokens.

To be in with a chance of winning, visit ThePlayPodcast.com or listen to the latest episode where Douglas discusses A Moon For The Misbegetton by Eugene O'Neill, which was recently on stage at the Almeida Theatre.

13/08/2025

A Moon for the Misbegotten is the last play that Eugene O’Neill wrote. It is in some way a eulogy for his brother, Jamie O’Neill, who like the character of Jim Tyrone in this play, drank himself to death. In fact, it is also an epilogue of sorts to his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night, where we first met Jim Tyrone. It is eleven years later, and Jim is about to leave the family home in Connecticut following the death of his parents, but not before saying a final goodbye to the woman who lives next door, Josie Hogan. Josie and Jim have unacknowledged feelings for each other, but their tortured moonlit night together does not offer them the salvation or future that they may have thought possible.

As we record this episode, a new production of A Moon for the Misbegotten is playing at the Almeida theatre in London, and I am delighted to be joined by O’Neill expert, Beth Wynstra, to explore what one American critic called ‘a major minor-masterpiece”.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/100-a-moon-for-the-misbegotten-by-eugene-oneill/

Ruth Wilson as Josie and Michael Shannon as Jim; photo by Marc Brenner.

To mark our 100th episode listeners have a chance to win £100 of theatre tokens – see the show page for details on how to enter!

Associate Professor Beth Wynstra joins me to talk in depth about Eugene O'Neill's last tragic drama, 'A Moon for the Misbegotten."

25/07/2025

It is Sylvia and Marek’s wedding day. But this is not an entirely traditional English wedding, because unlike her older sisters, Sylvia’s husband-to-be is not a local man; Marek is a Polish immigrant. As the festivities unfold, fuelled by beer and vodka, emotions run high, and fault lines appear within the family that will change their lives forever.

Beth Steel’s 'Till the Stars Come Down', is an hilarious and heartbreaking family drama, as well as a richly layered exploration of the social and economic landscape of the country they live in.

'Till the Stars Come Down' premiered to great acclaim at the National Theatre in January 2024, and as we record this episode is back on stage at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End. I’m delighted to be joined by the play’s author, Beth Steel.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/099-till-the-stars-come-down-by-beth-steel/

Sinead Matthews as Sylvia, Photo by Manuel Harlan

Playwright Beth Steel joins me to talk in depth about her hilarious and heartbreaking, state-of-the-nation play, 'Tlll the Stars Come Down'.

11/07/2025

It is 1976, and a fictional rock band is holed up in a studio in California attempting to record their much anticipated second album. The pressures of an inflated studio budget and raised artistic expectations expose the fault lines in the band’s professional and personal relationships. David Adjmi’s Tony-award-winning play, 'Stereophonic', is a fly-on-the-wall depiction of both the magic and the monotony of collaborative artistic endeavour, as the cast recreates the live process of making music, and play out the price they pay for their art and fame.

As we record this episode, 'Stereophonic' has opened in London’s West End following its triumph on Broadway, and I am thrilled to be joined by the play’s author, David Adjmi, to explore his unique creation.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/098-stereophonic-by-david-adjmi/

Photo: Lucy Karczewski, Nia Towle, Jack Riddiford at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London.

Photo by Marc Brenner

25/06/2025

It is 1983, and the famous children’s author Roald Dahl’s life is in some turmoil. He has just divorced his wife of 30 years, and his new fiancée has moved into the family home and has initiated disruptive renovations to the house, disturbing his very particular writing routines. Dahl also now finds himself the target of publlic outrage for the antisemitism contained in his recent published criticism of Israel’s violent attack on Lebanon. Representatives from his British and American publishers have arrived to try to persuade Dahl to issue some conciliatory response, but Dahl is characteristically disinclined to retreat from his deeply-felt opinions.

This is the premise for Mark Rosenblatt’s award-winning first play Giant, which is currently earning five-star reviews in London’s West End. I am delighted to be joined by the play’s author, Mark Rosenblatt, to explore his electrifying play.

Mark Rosenblatt joins us in this episode to talk about his extraordinary first play, 'Giant'.

29/05/2025

A poker game in the basement of a London restaurant is the setting for six men to play out their dreams and disappointments in Patrick Marber’s first play, Dealer’s Choice. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 1995, and thirty years on a cracking new production is on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in London.

I’m delighted to be joined by its director, Matthew Dunster, to explore Marber’s perceptive portrait of male conflict and compulsion.

Matthew Dunster, the director of 'Dealer's Choice' at the Donmar Warehouse, joins me to explore Patrick Marber's play.

12/05/2025

A rhinoceros charges through the square of a small French village, and soon all of its inhabitants are being transformed into rhinoceros themselves. Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist satire, 'Rhinoceros', was conceived as a metaphor for support for the rise of fascism in Europe between the world wars, and for conformism more generally.

As we recorded this episode an imaginative new adaptation of the play was playing at the Almeida theatre in London, and I’m delighted to be joined by the show’s translator and director, Omar Elerian.
https://www.theplaypodcast.com/095-rhinoceros-by-eugene-ionesco/

Photo: Sopé Dirisu by Andy Gotts

In this episode, Omar Elerian, the director of the new Almeida production, joins me to explore Ionesco's absurdist satire, 'Rhinoceros'.

27/03/2025

Sophocles’ tragic drama of the myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, not only directly inspired Freud’s notorious dream theory, but has itself survived as a masterpiece of theatrical invention and power. Written nearly two and a half thousand years ago, 'Oedipus the King' has endured because of the dramatic trauma of Oedipus’ personal story, and also as an allegory of authoritarian political rule. The play has proved remarkably adaptable to modern social and political times, which is attested by the fact that not one, but two major productions of the play have been staged in London this year.

I’m delighted to review Sophocles’ shattering classic with the esteemed Classics professor, Edith Hall.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/094-oedipus-the-king-by-sophocles/

Photo by Manuel Harlan The Old Vic Theatre

11/03/2025

Anton Chekhov’s 'Three Sisters', the third of the quartet of great plays that he wrote in the last years of his short life, is a symphonic study of the search for purpose and love.

'Three Sisters' premiered in January 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where his previous two major plays, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull had debuted.

As we record this episode a spellbinding new production is on stage Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London. The text for that production is translated by playwright Rory Mullarkey, who joins us to explore Chekhov’s masterpiece.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/093-three-sisters-by-anton-chekhov/

Photo by Johan Persson.

11/02/2025

When Lorraine Hansberry’s play 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened in New York in 1959, its author became the first African-American woman to have a play on Broadway, and this with her debut at age of 29. The play was ground-breaking for its realist portait of a black working-class family, spotlighting their personal dreams and the public prejudice they confront.

We recorded this episode shortly after an acclaimed new production of the play completed its run at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London, and I am delighted to talk about this landmark play with the production’s director, Tinuke Craig.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/092-a-raisin-in-the-sun-by-lorraine-hansberry/

Cash Holland as Ruth and Solomon Israel as Walter
📷Ikin Yum

28/01/2025

Tennessee Williams’s third great play, 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' is a blistering drama of family conflict and repressed sexuality. The play opened on Broadway in 1955 to rapturous reviews, and the film that followed with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman was a box-office hit, despite its egregious watering down of the play’s sexual trauma and family strife.

As we record this episode a stunning new production of the play is on at the Almeida Theatre in London, and I am delighted to talk about this classic with Arifa Akbar, the Guardian newspaper’s chief theatre critic.

https://www.theplaypodcast.com/091-cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-by-tennessee-williams/

Photo by Marc Brenner

In this episode we explore Tennessee Williams's blistering drama of family conflict and repressed sexuality, 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'.