Alastair Whatley News

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its first full season since it reopened with the Footprints Festival earlier this year.  The Encounters Season, which runs from mid-September to the end of the year, features some of the greatest on-stage talent in the UK, in a line-up that includes Sîan Phillips, Michael Pennington, Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer.

Emily Head (The Inbetweeners, Emmerdale, The Syndicate) plays all the characters in the intriguing production which was filmed live on stage in a single camera take at the New Wolsey Theatre.  

 Written by Adrian Lukis and Catherine Curzon, this one-man play about one of Jane Austen's most charmingly roguish characters, is directed by Guy Unsworth and designed by Libby Watson. 

The award-winning Original Theatre Company and Octagon Theatre Bolton present the 2021/22 tour of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted for the stage by Steven Canny and John Nicholson for Peepolykus, in a production which was first performed at the Octagon Theatre this summer, the classic detective ta​le gets a brilliantly farcical overhaul in Lotte Wakeham’s acclaimed production.

In this incisive drama, the audience is invited into the interrogation room with the murder suspects. As, one by one, the murder suspects give their accounts of that night, a dark truth begins to reveal itself. A truth so powerful it could change everything… and everyone.  

Theatre is no stranger to fictional renderings of famous get-togethers. There’s One Night in Miami, where Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown celebrate at Hampton House Hotel in 1964 ­– the night Clay became world heavyweight champion. Malcolm X features again in The Meeting, alongside Martin Luther King. And in Copenhagen, the previous play on at Theatre Royal Bath, Nobel-winning physicists Dane Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg have a clandestine encounter.

In this drama, inspired by real characters and events, it is only as the three former agents depart for London in a taxi – for “a cold supper behind Harrods” – that the disturbing truth finally emerges.

Rehearsal images have been released for A COLD SUPPER BEHIND HARRODS, a one-night only, semi-staged, rehearsed reading will be live streamed from the stage of Oxford Playhouse on Friday 11 June at 7:30pm.

Set in Moscow 1987,  the cold war begins to thaw,  after declining his offer for more than 30 years, novelist Graham Greene travels into the heart of the Soviet Union to meet with his old MI6 boss, Kim Philby.  Under the watchful eye of Kim’s Russian wife, Rufa, the two men set about catching up on old times.

I must admit, my first reaction was not wholly positive: some time in January this year, the producer Alastair Whatley rang me to say that he proposed to go ahead with rehearsing my new play, A Splinter of Ice, in March, despite the national lockdown. But since it was now impossible to invite an audience to see it at the Everyman Theatre Cheltenham (where it had been due to open), he’d instead like to film it onstage in the empty auditorium and release it online. I felt like I’d written a knife that would now be judged as a spoon.

Karen Ascoe will be joining the previously announced Oliver Ford Davies (Graham Greene) and Stephen Boxer (Kim Philby) as Rufa Philby. 

New dates have been added to Original Theatre Company's first live stage production since March 2020.  The UK Tour of Ben Brown's new political drama, A SPLINTER OF ICE, will open on 8 June in Malvern and will tour until 31 July, with extra dates in York and Cambridge.

Original Theatre Company, in association with Perfectly Normal Productions, will reunite David Jason, Stephanie Cole and Anton Lesser, the original stars of the BBC Radio 4 play, A Cold Supper Behind Harrods, for a one night only, semi-staged, rehearsed reading to be live streamed from the stage of the Oxford Playhouse at 7.30pm on Friday 11 June.

Set in Moscow 1987,  the cold war begins to thaw,  after declining his offer for more than 30 years, novelist Graham Greene travels into the heart of the Soviet Union to meet with his old MI6 boss, Kim Philby. 

The UK Tour of Ben Brown's new political drama, A SPLINTER OF ICE, will open on 8 June in Malvern and will tour until 31 July. 

Written by Adrian Lukis and Catherine Curzon, this one-man play about one of Jane Austen's most charmingly roguish characters, will be directed by Guy Unsworth, designed by Libby Watson and filmed by Matt Hargraves and his team from North South Culture, who recently worked on the acclaimed streaming of Hymn at The Almeida.

All new photos have been released of the cast of Ben Brown’s new political drama, A SPLINTER OF ICE, in rehearsals. The play will be filmed on stage at the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre and released online from 15 April to 31 July 2021.

Following a highly productive and successful season of online productions, Original Theatre Company is delighted to announce its first live stage production since March 2020, which will be filmed on stage at the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre and released online, before touring UK theatres early summer. 

Original Theatre Company and Perfectly Normal Productions present the first revival of Barnes' People, a series of four theatrical monologues starring Jon Culshaw, Matthew Kelly, Jemma Redgrave and Adrian Scarborough and directed by Philip Franks and Charlotte Peters. 

An all new trailer for Original Theatre Company's The Haunting of Alice Bowles has been released.