News

Chicago – If you’ve never seen the farcical ensemble theater chestnut “Noises Off,” you will see no better version than on the Steppenwolf Theatre stage, now at their northside Chicago venue through November 3rd. For tickets and details for this riotous theater experience, click Noises Off.

Play Rating: 4.5/5.0

The story opens on the final dress rehearsal for a touring company of “Nothing On,” a supposed comedy about couples and misunderstandings in a country house. The actors in the play are horribly unprepared, much to the chagrin of director Lloyd (Rick Holmes), who is beside himself despite the best efforts of his assistant Poppy (Vaneh Assadourian) and Stage Manager Tim (Max Stewart). The actors include Dotty (Ora Jones), portraying centerpiece housekeeper Mrs. Clackett, Garry playing Roger (Andrew Leeds), Brooke portraying Vicki (Amanda Fink), Freddie playing Philip (James Vincent Meredith), Belinda portraying Flavia (Audrey Francis), and Selsdon playing The Burglar (Francis Guinan...

This year’s Tonys will be held on June 16, so the American Theatre Wing will likely be announcing its Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in the near future. Who do you think should take home this prestigious trophy, which honors an individual’s body of work? It has gone to veteran stage performers, directors, choreographers, playwrights, songwriters, producers and designers. In some years we get multiple recipients.

Last year these honors went to actor Joel Grey and composer John Kander. The following living male Broadway vets have also received this award in the past and thus won’t be chosen again: Paul Gemignani, Alan Ayckbourn, Athol Fugard, Marshall W. Mason, Tommy Tune, James Earl Jones, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Harold Wheeler.

Here are 10 possibilities featured in our poll below, all accomplished men over the age of 65. Vote to let us know who you’d like to see honored. And take a...

Michael Blakemore, the only director in Tony Award history to win twice in one year, died Sunday, Dec. 10, following a short illness. He was 95.

His death was announced by the London-based United Agents literary and talent agency.

An acclaimed director of both West End and Broadway productions – his formidable credits include A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1968), Noises Off (1983), City of Angels (1989), Lettice & Lovage (1990) and The Life (1997), among many others – secured his place in the Tony Award record books by becoming the first, and to date only, director to win twice in one year: In 2000, he won the award for Best Director of a Play for Copenhagen and Best Director of a Musical for the revival of Kiss Me Kate.

Born June 18, 1928, in Sydney, Australia, Blakemore made his directing debut in 1966 at the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre, where he served as Artistic Director. His international breakthrough came in 1967 when...

“I didn’t know how intense it would be,” Matthew Macfadyen recalls about eagerly opening the script for the Season 3 finale of HBO’s “Succession” to read about his character Tom’s massive betrayal. Unlike the first two seasons, Macfadyen says series creator Jesse Armstrong “rang me before we started Season 3 and gave me a little outline of where Tom might end up.” Even with the idea of the shocking cliffhanger in mind, he admits, “I didn’t feel precious about it” because the writers “may change” the ending as production progressed. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Before discussing the details of the season finale in depth, Macfadyen talks about his character’s arc this season and the events that slowly led Tom to betray his wife Shiv (Sarah Snook) and side with her father Logan (Brian Cox) on his decision to sell the family company. Early in the season,...

“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to do something about food,” shares Daniel Goldfarb, the creator and writer of HBO Max’s “Julia.” Although he did not always have a dramatization of Julia Child‘s life in mind, the culinary arts have always been a part of his life, and the television icon and host of the legendary show “The French Chef” seemed a perfect fit. For the series, Goldfarb teamed up with showrunner Christopher Keyser, who describes “Julia” as an exploration of the “evolving, wonderful marriage” between Child and her husband Paul. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

To launch a new series about Child, Goldfarb and Keyser had to cast their Julia, and they both immediately thought of Sarah Lancashire. “We’re both just huge fans of her work,” Goldfarb says about why they thought of the BAFTA Award-winning actress, adding that they “think she’s...

Three weeks after filmmaker Sam Mendes teamed up with Netflix to launch a $620K (£500K) fund to support the UK’s embattled theater workers, the pot has swollen to $2M (£1.6M) and counting.

Prominent figures to contribute include the estate of the late Peter Saunders and Lady Saunders, the UK theater impresario behind The Mousetrap, which joins Netflix as the headline supporter. The Mackintosh Foundation, Eileen Davidson Productions, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, and Linbury Trust have also donated.

Individuals to have given money include Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter, Imelda Staunton, Eddie Redmayne, Sonia Friedman, Caro Newling, Colin Firth, Hugh Bonneville, and Tom Hiddleston.

The team says they have also received $110,000 through the online platform Enthuse, including from Michaela Coel, Michael Frayn, David Hare, Nicholas Hytner, Armando Iannucci, Thea Sharrock, Mark Strong, Emma Thompson, Laura Wade, David Walliams and Edgar Wright.

The fund also revealed today that is has received...

BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge follows two shows from the 2004-2005 season on this edition of Broadway Rewind. It's a look at The Beach Boys musical Good Vibrations, but we start things off at the opening night celebration of the New York production of Michael Frayn's play Democracywhich starred Richard Thomas, James Naughton and Robert Prosky. Richard talked about sharing the stage once again with his friend, James Naughton. 'We go way back. This is our fourth play we've done together. We love being onstage together. We're so different in every way, physically and vocally. It's a terrific match for us and we just love to talk to each other onstage.'...

Exclusive: Brit scribe Rebecca Frayn, whose latest feature is the Keira Knightley-starring Misbehaviour which hits UK cinemas next week, is set to direct Spies, based on her father’s 2002 Whitbread Prize-winning novel.

Michael Frayn is handling the adaptation of his own work. The book follows a man as he relives his childhood experiences of the Second World War, retracing his steps as he tries to uncover the secrets of his best friend’s mother who they believe to be a German spy. Belinda Allen is producing the feature through her banner Middlemarch Films with Misbehaviour and The Crown producers Left Bank Pictures also aboard.

Final touches are being made to the screenplay and the team will soon go out to attach a lead actress. Frayn’s writing credits include Luc Besson’s Aung San Suu Kyi biography The Lady, and she has previously helmed several TV projects including one-off drama Whose Baby?...

“Noises Off” is the Michael Frayn play that repeats the first act of a really lame British farce three times. It’s a nifty conceit. The first time we see that play within a play, titled “Nothing On,” it’s during a dreadful late-night dress rehearsal. The second time we see it, Frayn shows us what’s going on backstage a few weeks later during a dreadful performance before a live audience, which is off stage. And the third time, it’s from the front of the house at an even more dreadful performance late in the show’s run.

The key thing about farce isn’t the slamming of doors but the solidity of walls; without rigid order there can be no liberating chaos. The carpentry is crucial, and I doubt there’s ever been a better-carpentered example of the genre than Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, now in a cry-your-eyes-out funny revival at the Roundabout. So precise is the play’s construction, both in terms of physics and metaphysics, that it seems to have been written with a magic wand and a nail gun. Watching it, helpless with laughter for long stretches, I was too distracted to think much about the work that went into it, but later, reading the script, which is more like an engineering blueprint for a nuclear device, I began to wonder if it wasn’t among the best-built things, farce or not, ever put on a stage, including even Megan Hilty in a pink pushup teddy.

Roundabout Theatre Company presents Michael Frayn's comedy Noises Off, starring Andrea Martin as 'Dotty Otley,' Campbell Scott as 'Lloyd Dallas,' Tracee Chimo as 'Poppy Norton-Taylor,' Daniel Davis as 'Selsdon Mowbray,' David Furr as 'Garry Lejeune,' Kate Jennings Grant as 'Belinda Blair,' Megan Hilty as 'Brooke Ashton,' Rob McClure as 'Tim Allgood' and Jeremy Shamos as 'Frederick Fellowes.' Tony nominee Jeremy Herrin will direct the new Broadway production as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th anniversary season. BroadwayWorld has a first sneak peek of the cast in action below...

Roundabout Theatre Company presents Michael Frayn's comedy Noises Off,starring Andrea Martin as 'Dotty Otley,' Campbell Scott as 'Lloyd Dallas,' Tracee Chimo as 'Poppy Norton-Taylor,' Daniel Davis as 'Selsdon Mowbray,' David Furr as 'Garry Lejeune,' Kate Jennings Grant as 'Belinda Blair,' Megan Hilty as 'Brooke Ashton,' Rob McClure as 'Tim Allgood' and Jeremy Shamos as 'Frederick Fellowes.' Tony nominee Jeremy Herrin will direct the new Broadway production as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th anniversary season. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below...

Roundabout celebrates it's 50th anniversary season this year with an outstanding lineup of productions. Included are Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelly Reilly in Old Times by Harold Pinter, directed by Douglas Hodge Andrea Martin, Campbell Scott, Tracee Chimo, Daniel Davis, David Furr, Kate Jennings Grant, Megan Hilty, Rob McClure and Jeremy Shamos in Noises Off by Michael Frayn, directed by Jeremy Herrin The Humans by Stephen Karam, directed by Joe Mantello Keira Knightley, Gabriel Ebert, Matt Ryan and Judith Light in a new adaptation of Therese Raquin by Helen Edmundson, based upon the novel by Emile Zola, directed by Evan Cabnet Laura Benanti, Josh Radnor, Rene Auberjonois, Gavin Creel, Michael McGrath and Jane Krakowski in She Loves Me by Joe Masteroff, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, directed by Scott Ellis Jessica Lange, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher, Jr. in Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill,...

Noah Baumbach's latest, Mistress America, never stops to let you catch up to its momentum, and it's all the better for it. You either get into its offbeat, fast-mouthed rhythm -- initially or eventually -- or you don't. If you do follow along and enjoy its rapid-speed groove, it's a raucous good time. It's not flawless, as its story beats are moderately traditional to a fault and some of its characters lose themselves, occasionally coming across more like dialogue machines than fleshed-out characters. Yet, the film remains finely polished and a constant delight, easily among the most refined and accomplished works the director's produced thus far. Lonely college freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke) is a writer desperately searching for inspiration. Her short stories lack flavor, spirit or spark and, because of this, she can't gain acceptance into the exclusive Mobius Literary Club on campus. Her lack of social suave also...

Roundabout Theatre Company Todd Haimes, Artistic Director just announced the complete cast for Michael Frayn's comedy Noises Off. Joining the previously announced Andrea Martin as Dotty Otley are Campbell Scott as Lloyd Dallas, Tracee Chimo as Poppy Norton-Taylor, Daniel Davis as Selsdon Mowbray, David Furr as Garry Lejeune, Kate Jennings Grant as Belinda Blair, Megan Hilty as Brooke Ashton, Rob McClure as Tim Allgood and Jeremy Shamos as Frederick Fellowes. Tony nominee Jeremy Herrin will direct the new Broadway production as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th anniversary season.

At some point in their writing lives, most playwrights turn from the world they can never finally fathom to one they already know too well. Recent New York seasons have brought us both fond backstagers and bitter portraits of actors gone feral in works by Chekhov and Odets, Mamet and Gurney, Ruhl and Jacobs-Jenkins, and many others. (One of the best of the genre, Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off, returns in December.) Whether love letters or poison pen, these plays all exploit the oversized personalities and built-in hysteria of show folk and show-making to establish the stakes. Not 10 out of 12. Anne Washburn’s odd and often hilarious new comedy, commissioned by Soho Rep, takes on the perverse challenge of making theater out of the only part of the theatrical life that almost everyone hates: the intense, soul-crushing boredom of tech rehearsals.These are the run-throughs that take place in...

Her screen credits include Doctor Who, EastEnders, Tenko and Bergerac - but Louise Jameson has also forged a long and impressive career on the stage, and says performing for a live audience will always be her first love.

Jameson's latest stage stint will see her play Dotty in a new production of Noises Off - the 1982 'farce-within-a-farce' by playwright Michael Frayn - at The Mercury Theatre, Colchester.

While she was in the thick of rehearsals, Digital Spy got Louise on the phone to sound off about Noises Off - and, of course, her role on the world's greatest sci-fi series.

Noises Off is often hailed as one of the greatest theatrical comedies ever written. How are you feeling about bringing your version of Dotty to the stage?

It feels extraordinary but it's also been one of the most difficult rehearsal periods I've ever had. The whole thing has to look...

Chatting about writing, The Muppets, DreamWorks, Clockwise and Charles Crichton, all with Mr John Cleese...

Now out in hardback is John Cleese's autobiography, So Anyway. It's a genuinely interesting read, very much written in his own voice, and he spared us some time to have a chat about it, and his career.

Here's how it went...

Can we start with the predictable stuff first, but I always wonder this when anyone writes an autobiography: why do it? Why put your life down in a book, who is it for, and did you enjoy it?

Well let's go backwards on that. Yes I enjoyed it very much. Who is it for me? In a funny kind of way it was for me, because some people seem to think that I've had a very interesting life, which compared with people who have fought in wars, and been spies, and discovered rivers in Africa,...

Roundabout Theatre Company Todd Haimes, Artistic Director just announced dates for Michael Frayn's comedy Noises Off, starring Tony and Emmy Award winner Andrea Martin as 'Dotty.' Jeremy Herrin will direct the new Broadway production as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's 50th anniversary season. Noises Off will begin previews on Thursday, December 17, 2015 and open officially on Thursday, January 14, 2016 on Broadway. This will be a limited engagement.

Birdman

Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

USA, 2014

Birdman is director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s mad masterpiece about one man’s search for relevance and validation. It’s a striking and welcome return to form for Michael Keaton, who has long been absent from the spotlight, bar occasional supporting roles in the likes of The Other Guys and the RoboCop remake. The surprisingly meta world of Birdman is more along the lines of a Charlie Kaufman concoction than something Iñárritu would normally attempt. His crushingly sad takes on existence in Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful have inventive plot devices about intersecting lives, but Birdman is wholly about the grand hallucinatory ego of one man and the stories that happen to briefly touch him. Both Keaton and Iñárritu provide us with ample reasons to admire the off-the-wall, swirling existential crisis that is Birdman.

Venetian perennial Alejandro Inarritu opens this year’s Venice Film Festival with the exhilarating Birdman, a self-referential, biting comedy that channels something of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off but this time it’s for the Twitter generation.

The setting is a Broadway theatre, and our hero (or should I say superhero?) is aging Hollywood star Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), he of the Birdman superhero trilogy, last seen spreading his wings in the early 1990s. Now Thomson has decided to bring his stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver story to the stage, writing, directing and starring in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Has he undertaken too great a task? Is he just another Hollywood has-been using the New York theatre scene to boost his ego and show of his acting chops? The evil Times critic appears to think so and she is determined that he fail. She is played by Lindsay Duncan,...

Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy

Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.

Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union,...

More than 100 prominent people from literature, the arts, science, academia, human rights and the law have signed a declaration urging newspaper and magazine publishers to embrace the royal charter system of press regulation.

They join people who have been victims of press misbehaviour in arguing that charter will give "vital protection to the vulnerable" from abuse of power by the press.

The signatories include broadcasters Stephen Fry, Clare Balding, Gary Lineker and Rory Bremner. Actor Emma Thompson has signed, as have Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir Jonathan Miller.

Several film directors are on the list, such as Stephen Frears, Alan Parker, Mike Leigh, Beeban Kidron, Guy Ritchie, Stephen Daldry, Bill Forsyth, Peter Kosminsky, Terry Gilliam and Michael Apted.

Among the writers and playwrights are Alan Bennett, William Boyd, Alan Ayckbourn, Tom Stoppard, Monica Ali, Helen Fielding, Michael Frayn, Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, David Hare, Alan Hollinghurst, Jk Rowling, Salman Rushdie,...

Veteran critic Philip French has been awarded a BFI Fellowship for outstanding contribution to film culture.

Film critic Philip French has been awarded a BFI Fellowship for his contribution to film culture.

BFI chair Greg Dyke last night presented veteran critic French with the Fellowship at a ceremony at BFI Southbank.

Audience guests included Terence Davies, Douglas Slocombe, Claire Tomalin, Michael Frayn, Jeremy Thomas, Maryam D’Abo , Hugh Hudson, and Amanda Nevill, BFI CEO.

Dyke said: “As one of the most important and influential British writers on film and film-related subjects of the last 50 years or more Philip has done more than perhaps any other writer to build a critical context for the informed watching and making of film.”

French commented: “It is a great honour indeed for me to be offered a BFI Fellowship, and I accept with gratitude and alacrity. The BFI has been an important part of my life ever since I first bought...

Veteran critic Philip French has been awarded a BFI Fellowship for outstanding contribution to film culture.

Film critic Philip French has been awarded a BFI Fellowship for his contribution to film culture.

BFI chair Greg Dyke last night presented veteran critic French with the Fellowship at a ceremony at BFI Southbank.

Audience guests included Terence Davies, Douglas Slocombe, Claire Tomalin, Michael Frayn, Jeremy Thomas, Maryam D’Abo , Hugh Hudson, and Amanda Nevill, BFI CEO.

Dyke said: “As one of the most important and influential British writers on film and film-related subjects of the last 50 years or more Philip has done more than perhaps any other writer to build a critical context for the informed watching and making of film.”

French commented: “It is a great honour indeed for me to be offered a BFI Fellowship, and I accept with gratitude and alacrity. The BFI has been an important part of my life ever since I first bought...

Student revue group helped launch careers of Peter Cook, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson

Considering how successful Cambridge has been as a theatrical training ground for writers and performers, outsiders may be surprised to find that the university has no drama school.

The whole thing, Marlowe Society and Adc (Amateur Dramatic Club) presenting the classics, and Footlights tickling the comic muse, is kept going by the initiative of generation after generation of undergraduates. There are of course senior members of the university to advise and guide, but the various clubs lurch from flop to triumph with only ticket sales and members' enthusiasm and talent to sustain them.

Next week Cambridge celebrates the centenary of the Footlights, which came into existence on June 9, 1883. The Footlights has certainly lived off its wits. And what wits they have been. Skimming through Robert Hewison's centennial history of the club, the eye catches names like Ian Hay,...

Helen Mirren was crowned queen of the London stage at the Olivier Awards Sunday, while compelling, canine-titled teen drama The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time emerged as best in show with seven trophies.

Mirren, 67, was a popular and expected best actress choice for her regal yet vulnerable Queen Elizabeth II in “The Audience,” Peter Morgan’s behind-palace-doors drama about the relationship between Britain’s queen and its prime ministers.

The actress, who won an Academy Award in 2007 for playing Britain’s monarch in The Queen, quipped that it was 87-year-old Elizabeth who deserved an award, “for the...

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time wins seven awards, with Top Hat and Sweeney Todd victorious in musical categories

The categories in full

Best actor

Luke Treadaway for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Best actress

Helen Mirren for The Audience (Gielgud theatre)

MasterCard best new play

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Best director

Marianne Elliott for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Best revival

Long Day's Journey Into Night (Apollo theatre)

Best actor in a supporting role

Richard McCabe for The Audience (Gielgud theatre)

Best actress in a supporting role

Nicola Walker for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

White Light award for lighting design

Paule Constable for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Best...

Play about maths genius equals Matilda's record, as Helen Mirren has first win and Top Hat is named best musical

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time dominated the UK's most prestigious theatre awards on Sunday night, equalling the record by picking up seven Oliviers, including best actor for its star, Luke Treadaway. The 28-year-old, who gives an astonishing performance as 15-year-old maths genius Christopher Boone, beat off heavyweight competition in the shape of Rupert Everett, James McAvoy, Mark Rylance and Rafe Spall to pick up the prize at the Royal Opera House ceremony.

The awards, now in their 37th year, also saw Helen Mirren win her first Olivier, for her performance as the Queen in The Audience. The musical honours were shared by Top Hat and Sweeney Todd, which won three apiece.

Accepting her award, Mirren said she thought the Queen would be thrilled and deserved an...

The complete list of nominees for this year's Olivier awards, celebrating the best of British theatre, dance and opera

Best actor

Rupert Everett – The Judas Kiss

James McAvoy – Macbeth

Mark Rylance – Twelfth Night

Rafe Spall – Constellations

Luke Treadaway – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Best actress

Helen Mirren – The Audience

Hattie Morahan – A Doll's House

Billie Piper – The Effect

Kristin Scott Thomas – Old Times

Best actor in a supporting role

Paul Chahidi – Twelfth Night

Richard McCabe – The Audience

Adrian Scarborough – Hedda Gabler

Kyle Soller – Long Day's Journey Into Night

Best actress in a supporting role

Janie Dee – Nsfw

Anastasia Hille – The Effect

Cush Jumbo – Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse)

Helen McCrory – The Last of the Haussmans

Nicola Walker – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mastercard best new play

Constellations

The Audience

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

This House

Best director

Stephen Daldry...

Versatile actor who brought depth and humanity to supporting roles

The actor Pat Keen, who has died aged 79, had a successful career in supporting roles for more than half a century. She possessed an uncommon versatility, as happy in Chekhov and Ibsen as she was feeding lines to Les Dawson, whom she adored. For all that she was in demand in later years to play harridans and busybodies, she never resorted to caricature. She believed in the people she portrayed, breathing life into the stereotypes beloved by too many writers of comedy for television. She refused to take the easy route of playing for laughs, whether on stage or screen.

Pat was born and raised in Willesden, north-west London. She left school after taking A-levels, and it was because of her ability to speak very good colloquial French that she secured a post at the Foreign Office when she was 18. Two years later,...

A Good Day to Die Hard is top of the pops, the Valentine's Day battle is won by This Is 40, and Run for Your Wife – why?

The winner

Critics may have questioned the need for a fifth Die Hard movie, but audiences signalled their sustained interest in the franchise, powering the latest instalment to an opening of £4.55m. That was enough for A Good Day to Die Hard to elbow Wreck-It Ralph aside, claiming the chart crown. On closer inspection, however, the Bruce Willis flick saw its takings inflated by Valentine's Day previews totaling £1.28m. Strip those out, and A Good Day's debut falls to £3.27m, below Wreck-It's second-weekend takings of £3.43m. It's actually doing better in the UK than the Us, going by the accepted rule of thumb. The Us four-day opening of $37.54m would typically yield a UK equivalent of £3.8m, but the actual achieved result...

Actor best known for his role as the rugged and handsome captain in The Onedin Line

James Onedin, the protagonist of the long-running BBC television series The Onedin Line, gained his splendid name from a sea nymph. After the programme's creator, Cyril Abraham, had read about mythological figure Ondine, he transposed the "e", thus making her a man. And what a man: Peter Gilmore, who played Onedin in 91 episodes from 1971 to 1980, had tousled hair, flinty eyes, hollow cheeks, mutton-chop sideburns racing across his cheek, lips pulled severely down, chin thrust indomitably forward to face down the brewing gale. He has died aged 81.

The sea captain did not so much talk as emit salty barks that brooked no demur. In 1972, while filming, Gilmore was buzzed by speedboats from the Royal Naval College. Still in character as Onedin, he yelled irascibly at the tyro sailors: "Taxpayers' money! Where are your guns? What...

Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney. Australian actor-writer-director Bille Brown, who performed on Broadway and the West End and in the films Killer Elite, The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader and Fierce Creatures, died Sunday in a Brisbane hospital. He was 61 and had been battling bowel cancer. William “Bille” Brown began his career in the early 1970s at the Queensland Theater Company with Geoffrey Rush, among others. In 1976 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in productions at London’s Aldwych and Haymarket Theaters and with the Chichester Festival Theater and English National Opera. He had two further engagements with the RSC, from 1986–88 and 1994–96. He was an artist-in-residence at the State University of New York in 1982 and made his Broadway debut in 1986 in Michael Frayn’s Wild Honey with Ian McKellen. He returned to Australia to live permanently in 1996. His Australian film credits include The Dish,...

Actor known for his roles as clergymen, favourite uncles and tragic-comic characters

There is a great tradition in the rotundity of actors, and Roger Hammond, who has died aged 76 of cancer, stands proudly in a line stretching from Francis L Sullivan and Willoughby Goddard through to Roy Kinnear, Desmond Barrit and Richard Griffiths, though he was probably more malleably benevolent on stage than any of them.

He reeked of kindness, consideration and imperturbability, with a pleasant countenance and a beautiful, soft voice, qualities ideal for unimpeachable clergymen, favourite uncles and tragic-comic characters such as Waffles in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (whom he played in a 1991 BBC TV film, with David Warner and Ian Holm), a man whose wife left him for another man on his wedding day but who has remained faithful to her and forgiving ever since.

Hammond grew up in Stockport, Lancashire. His chartered accountant father was managing director of his own family firm,...

Outstanding actor of stage and screen who made his name as Bri in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

The British theatre changed for ever when Joe Melia, as the sardonic teacher Bri, pushed a severely disabled 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair on to the stage of the Glasgow Citizens in May 1967 and proceeded to make satirical jokes about the medical profession while his marriage was disintegrating. The play was Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which transformed the way disability was discussed on the stage. It made the names overnight of its author, the director Michael Blakemore, and Melia. Albert Finney took over the role of Bri on Broadway.

Flat-footed, slightly hunched, always leaning towards a point of view, Melia, who has died aged 77, was a distinctive and compassionate actor who brought a strain of the music hall to the stage, a sense of being an outsider.

'The worst thing anyone's ever said to me? "Are you Michael Palin?"'

John Cleese, 72, was born in Weston-super-Mare. At Cambridge University, he studied law and joined the Footlights, where he met Graham Chapman. In the late 60s, he formed the Monty Python troupe with Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. Cleese went on to further success as Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, which he wrote with his then wife, Connie Booth. In 1988, Cleese wrote and starred in the hit movie, A Fish Called Wanda. His latest film, Spud, is out on DVD. Cleese recently married for the fourth time and lives in Monaco.

When were you happiest?

There are different kinds of happiness, but the simplest was when I was 13 because what one had to do was so obvious.

What is your greatest fear?

Lack of meaning.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?...

The Fresh Meat star on working in a cinema in Hackney, growing up on British television and moving to La next year

Zawe Ashton shows me the flip-down seat at the back of the Rio cinema in Hackney, east London, where she spent several years sitting in the dark. "The first film I ushered was Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar," says the 27-year-old actress, soon to appear in a new series of Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat. "I started at 18. Best job in the world. Blockbusters, indie films, classic matinees. I remember watching City of God three times a day for a fortnight. Anyone who's been an usher knows it's a training in resilience. But you get such a film education. And the popcorn's free."

She grew up a few roads away, the daughter of a mum from Uganda (her name, pronounced "Zow-ee", is Ugandan) and an English dad, both...

The Old Vic’s current revival of Michael Frayn’s Democracy could not be more perfectly timed; a play about the mistrust and deceit within a fledgling coalition government will bear more than a few contemporary similarities. Günter Guillaume is a lowly public servant who, by sheer luck, is plucked from obscurity to work in West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s newly formed office in 1969. Guillaume is also a dedicated East German spy, and is tasked with becoming as close to Brandt as possible.

Paul Miller’s direction is assured and confident; he lets his cast stand tall as the play opens, positioned across the stage like skyscrapers, symbols of the prosperous possibilities of West Germany. Patrick Drury stands foremost as Brandt, and speaks with a confident tone of voice; Drury manages to perfectly make a speech appearing to speak to everyone whilst really looking at no one, I wonder...

Stars of the small screen talk TV

The total package: Zawe Ashton

I'm a massive disappointment," says Zawe Ashton, star of C4's Fresh Meat. Ashton's wayward, partying character Violet, better known as Vod, won the hearts of viewers in the first series – so much so that when Ashton meets people at parties they expect her to be the last one standing. "It's a compliment that people think I'm going to be like her – it means I'm doing my job properly. But I can see the disappointment in people's eyes when I switch to fizzy water before heading for the door at a decent hour!"

Ashton's star has been on the ascent for a couple of years now. She's appeared on stage as well as screen, and she's also honing her skills as a writer, including a stint as writer-in-residence for production company Clean Break. Having just finished her run...

Danny DeVito has had a successful career both in front of the camera and behind it. Now, at 67, he is preparing for his first West End run in The Sunshine Boys – and shows no sign of slowing down

The first thing you notice about the actor, director and producer Danny DeVito is that, as has been exhaustively documented, getting on for a zillion times, he's short (five foot nothing) and round, like a human Teletubby. Albeit a 67-year-old Teletubby, with white wisps of hair around his ears, which he pulls at constantly.

The second thing you notice is how animated and expressive he is. It's not a cartoon version of DeVito's native Italian-American, but it's at the turbo end of vibrant. In the rehearsal space where we meet, he's constantly shrugging, gesturing with his hands, laughing so that his glasses fall off his forehead over his eyes; at one point,...

Our critics' picks of this week's openings, plus your last chance to see and what to book now

• Which cultural events are in your diary this week? Tell us in the comments below

Opening this weekTheatre

I Dreamed a Dream

SuBo is played by Elaine C Smith in this new musical based on the life of the Britain's Got Talent sensation, who has given her personal endorsement to this money-spinner – sorry, show. Theatre Royal, Newcastle (0844 811 2121), until 31 March, then touring.

Fierce festival

Birmingham gets ready for boundary-busting performances from UK and international performers, including Ann Liv Young, Playgroup and Graeme Miller. The festival takes place in unusual spaces all across the city, including the soon to be demolished library and under Spaghetti Junction. Various locations, Birmingham, Thursday to 8 April.

Film

The Hunger Games (dir. Gary Ross)

Suzanne Collins's teen bestseller is turned into an exciting dystopian thriller. Jennifer Lawrence stars.

Twickenham Film Studios' sad end, gunfight at a vacant lot near the Ok Corral and Joely Richardson's family semaphore habit

✒ Round where we live we're very sad indeed about the likely closure of Twickenham Film Studios. Many great British and foreign films have been made there, including the Beatles movies, Alfie, The Italian Job, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Fish Called Wanda, Blade Runner and more recently My Week with Marilyn and War Horse. The studio, which occasionally brought a faint dusting of star glamour to our suburb, has been on the site for 99 years. Now there's a petition to save it, signed by among others Steven Spielberg, Colin Firth and John Landis.

There is some puzzlement about why it has gone into administration. Someone who works there told me this week that it had been badly managed for years. Now comes the horrible news that Taylor...

Journalists have been glamorous social climbers and bumbling fools in fiction – sometimes they've even been feminists and righters of wrongs

Journalism is a glamorous trade in Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami, as Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod's film adaptation (released in the Us next week and in the UK a week later) underlines by casting Robert Pattinson as Georges Duroy and Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci and Holly Grainger as women drawn to the rising Parisian reporter. As well as introducing him to them and assisting his progress as a social climber, working for La Vie Française gives him the power to manipulate or bring down ministers.

What he epitomises too, though, is a press that's sordid and shallow, advancing the personal ends of journalists and owners with no underlying ethical code. Writing talent and a lengthy building up of specialist knowledge aren't essential: Duroy owes...

Our critics' picks of this week's openings, plus your last chance to see and what to book now

• Which cultural events are in your diary this week? Tell us in the comments below

Opening this weekTheatre

Bingo

Patrick Stewart stars as the ageing Shakespeare in Edward Bond's play in which the playwright, now a rich landowner, is facing pressure from local Stratford people. Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 2922), until March 31.

An Appointment with the Wicker Man

National Theatre Scotland take on the cult 1970s movie with a play within a play about an amateur dramatic society on a remote Scottish island who are putting the play on stage. But when one of their actors falls ill, a replacement is called in from the mainland. His Majesties, Aberdeen (01224 641122), Tuesday to Saturday, then touring until 24 March.

Film

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (dir. Stephen Daldry)

Oscar-nominated drama, based on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel.

Royal Court; Lyttelton; Theatre503, London

Every now and then the Royal Court does this. It throws up a small-cast, depth-charge production that makes bigger dramas look over-stuffed and under-nourished. It did so metaphysically with Caryl Churchill's A Number and emotionally with Mike Bartlett's Cock. It has done so again with Nick Payne's wiry new play.

Constellations is a love story that investigates ideas about time. Or it's a look at theories about time that takes the form of a love story. It tells us that we may have no such thing as free will, but leaves its audience to make up its own mind. Following the lead given 14 years ago by Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, in which a scientific theory is demonstrated in the structure of the play that discusses it, Constellations embodies its doubts and questions. It quizzes the notion of destiny by giving alternative versions...

More Dickens and even more Shakespeare, but also new novels from Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, plus exciting new voices – 2012's literary highlights

January

10 Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring Matthew Rhys and Tamzin Merchant, begins – and, unlike the book, ends – on BBC2.

13 Michael Morpurgo's much-loved children's novel War Horse, a long-running favourite at the National and on Broadway, gets the Hollywood treatment. A tearjerking saga about a young soldier and his horse – it was only a matter of time before it was Spielberged.

16 Ts Eliot prize. Despite withdrawals from the shortlist over objections to a hedge fund's sponsorship of the prize, the Eliot remains the UK's premier poetry award, and its eve-of-event reading is always a treat. This year's shortlist includes Daljit Nagra, Carol Ann Duffy and John Burnside.

20 Release of film of Coriolanus, an Orson Wellesian effort directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes,...

As a teenager I'd scoff at the unreality of the Hollywood musical, but now their numbers seem utterly delightful

We are now nearing the end of a run of days that, by my reckoning, are always the most enjoyable London can offer. They start around 22 December, when taxis, tubes and restaurants are at last empty of Christmas drunks, and end on 3 or 4 January, when work resumes. Every year during this interval, an older and easier kind of London asserts itself; also, an emptier one. The people for whom the city is mainly a work station go home to Lancashire and France. Commuters, if they bother to come in, return soberly with last-minute parcels on the teatime trains. Tourists are fewer, and easily avoided once you leave the axis that stretches from Harrods to St Paul's. On the buses, you notice more people like yourself: middle-aged, or past it, and often...

Kermit, Miss Piggy and pals are back with a new film and a TV series in the works. Hadley Freeman fondly remembers the satirical puppets and the massive role they played in her childhood

Some of us, for the record, have always played the music. And some of us, also just to clarify, never stopped lighting the lights. That's because, for us in the cultural elite, we are always ready to meet the Muppets on The Muppet Show tonight.

When it was announced on Tuesday that Us TV broadcaster NBC has commissioned a script for a new series of the Muppets, the reaction among critics, commentators and tweeters was, frankly, remarkable. It is rare that a four-decades old franchise can announce a return to TV and prompt such unabashed enthusiasm as well as a total lack of cynicism about quality control. Everyone loves the Muppets – that goes without saying. More...

Alfred Molina, David Krumholtz and Jane Kaczmarek star when L.A. Theatre Work's records Michael Frayn's Tony award-winning drama for radio broadcast. A world at war, two scientists, and a meeting that may well have determined who would create the most dangerous weapon mankind has ever known. How different would the world have looked had the Nazis been first to build an atomic bomb All performances will be recorded to air on L.A. Theatre Works' syndicated radio theater series, which broadcasts weekly on public radio stations nationwide and can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org.