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Talking nunsense
Kathy has spoken about with the fact that she spent the past 12 months extremely unwell and hasn’t been working as a result. She did an interview with Mark Lamarr and Jo Brand on Radio 2 and talked about catching the Clostridium difficle “superbug” while in hospital for an operation on her abdomen. Disturbingly, she apparently went through no less than three “near-death experiences” during the course of the year, but jokingly added that “I didn’t see any white light or nuns or anything.” The C.difficile bacteria occur naturally in the body but an infection – on the increase in hospitals in recent years – can result in massive overgrowth…
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Dying for it – literally?
According to The Sun newspaper, Kathy was taken to hospital yesterday “with a mystery illness after collapsing with crippling stomach pains”. Despite the wisdom of taking any Sun story with a pinch of salt, it has since turned out that Kathy has already been replaced as director for a play opening at the Almeida Theatre in March. In fact, the Almeida put out a barely noticed press release [Word doc] on 29 January that read: “Anna Mackmin will take over from Kathy Burke to direct the Almeida’s latest commission Dying For It – Moira Buffini’s new free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s satirical comedy The Suicide. Kathy Burke has unfortunately had to withdraw from the production at short…
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Death by satire
Kathy will direct Dying For It, Moira Buffini’s new free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s satirical comedy The Suicide from 15 March until 28 April 2007 at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, London. The classic comedy was banned by Stalin before a single performance, and this “inspired by” verison centres on Semyon, unemployed, living in the hallway and watching his wife Masha slave all the hours God sends. When his last hope to earn money and gain self-respect disappears, he decides to take his own life. Word gets out and Semyon finds himself inundated with visitors begging him to die on their behalf. On the night he is to shoot himself they hold a…
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French tickler
Kathy consistently pops up in various pointless newspaper or magazine chart rundowns voted by readers, or, more often than not, desperate features editors. And in a classic piece of manipulation, the Radio Times “commissioned a poll” which showed that Our Kath was the third “funniest woman of all time”, beaten only by Dawn French and Victoria Wood respectively. The reason why it is being pointed out this time is the same reason the poll was “commissioned” in the first place: because Dawn French has a new TV series called Girls Who Do Comedy, on BBC1 on Sundays at 10.15pm, which features Dawn French interviewing various female comedians in an effort to… well, it’s…
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(Not) Getting smaller
Well, the reviews for Smaller are in (theatre of course doesn’t even exist outside of London, according to the media) – and it’s not good news. People don’t like it. The kindest has been three stars out of five; the cruelest one star. The FT gave it two stars but savaged it, starting with the line: “As dismal evenings in the theatre go, Smaller is not offensive – merely slow, obvious and banal.” The general feeling is that the writer – TV soap author Carmel Morgan – has extended a particularly traumatic episode into a full play. It left quite a few critics depressed – “remorselessly bleak” said The Telegraph. And yet, as ever, everyone praises Kathy Burke as director. It…
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Small, er, correction
Kathy’s latest play, Smaller, is not being staged at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith from 28 March to 6 May, as was previous stated on this site. It is in fact at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Their booking number is 0870 145 1165, or you can buy tickets online here. Since it was the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith that was good enough to point this out, it seems only fair to alert readers that the Lyric will be staging a 21st century version of Homer’s classic tale The Odyssey, complete with live music and puppetry, between now and 1 April; and then “music pandemonium” The Wolves in the Walls from 12 to 29…
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Who? What? Why? When? You!
Kathy has been added to this year’s addition of Who’s Who. To appear in the book you must be a person of “distinction and influence”. Which is nice. Kathy was one of 1,000 new entrants this year including Dame Kelly Holmes, who won two golds for Britain in the Athens Olympics, and Frank Skinner who will apparently be listed as a comedian. Once in, you stay in Who’s Who until you die, at which point you get a place in Who Was Who.
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Plenty Moyet to come
You can’t accuse Kathy Burke of being afraid of hard work. The God of Hell finished earlier this month, and she’s already signed up for another directing stint. Smaller, written by TV writer Carmel Morgan (Coronation St, Brookside, Shameless), will star comic legend Dawn French alongside songstress and friend Alison Moyet, and will open in Milton Keynes on 20 February. From then it will go to Brighton, Birmingham and then settle in for a six-week run at the Lyric Theatre in London (on Shaftesbury Avenue). All details and links below. Smaller is a musical play and tells the story of Bernice Clulow (Dawn French), a teacher and the life and soul of the staff room,…
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Bloody hell
The God of Hell press reviews have come in and well… there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that no one likes it. The Telegraph has been the most forthright, calling it a “dismayingly glib piece of right-on, left-wing paranoia”. Most of the others have found the satire a bit, well, obvious. The Stage says: “as is often the case with those who rail against the establishment, he goes a bit too far”. And so on and so forth. The good news is that the “he” in the last quote refers to the writer, well-known US playwright Sam Shepard. All the reviews just don’t like the play. However, they are…
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‘I’m a person who walks on eggshells’
The Observer A hit comedy career plus a Palme d’Or for straight acting should be enough for anyone. Not ex-Kevin and Perry star Kathy Burke. Now directing a new Sam Shepard play, she talks about demons, heroes and life as a ‘smoking humanist’ Three years ago Kathy Burke began throwing plates. She turned over a few tables. ‘I called up a friend and just screamed down the phone at them,’ she says wide-eyed, as if surprised by the memory. There was, though, something familiar about this burst of anger. ‘I used to be terribly aggressive in my twenties,’ she says. ‘But I thought I’d sorted it out.’ Clearly she hadn’t.…
