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Steeling the Turbine
Kathy Burke will direct one-woman show Honest Amy at the Turbine Theatre (inside the old Battersea Power Station) from March to April next year. The self-deprecating and hilariously honest confessional is written and performed by Amy Booth-Steel and was a success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year – which Kathy also directed. It will run at the Turbine from March 24 to April 11, closing out the season. You can buy tickets online. Here’s the description of the show from the Turbine Theater’s website: Remember when I got cancer and had a breakdown in Tesco’s? Then literally went mental and posted some songs on Twitter? When anxiety was at…
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Co-directing Alone
Kathy Burke will co-direct, and take on tour, a new play by Sally Abbott with Scott Graham, as part of the 25th anniversary of the Frantic Assembly theatre company. The world premiere of I Think We Are Alone will run from February 3, 2020 to May 16, visiting 11 theatres across the UK including the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Lowry in Salford, Nuffield Southampton, Bristol Old Vic, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud and Leicester Curve. The company’s website describes it as “a delicate and uplifting play about our fragility, resilience and our need for love and forgiveness.” As for the story… Two sisters are estranged and bicker over…
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Latest play: Once A Catholic
The cast of Kathy’s latest play has just been announced. Once A Catholic will be playing at the Tricycle Theatre from 21 November to 18 January 2014. The “raucous comedy”, originally performed in 1977 and written by Mary O’Malley, is set in 1957 and follows a group of Catholic schoolgirls as they take their final exams and discover the world’s forbidden fruits.
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Getting the Horne
The BBC has put out a press release about Horne and Corden, calling it “most successful first series of a comedy on BBC Three”. The series attracted an average of 929,000 viewers – impressive but plenty of critics have been mean enough to point out that the audience dropped off rapidly, with nearly 1.4 million watching the first episode but less than half that – 675,000 – watching the last. The BBC feels it has a success on its hands (talks are “underway” for a second series) but the critics have been pretty much universally negative calling it crude and unfunny.
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Last call for Corden
The last episode of Horne and Corden was shown today. For in-depth details of the show and an episode guide, go to the British Comedy Guide website. There is an official website for the series on the BBC website.
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Direct this!
An amusing spoof of Kathy’s directing and role in British comedy filed on the set of Horne and Corden has been posted on YouTube by BBC Three. Pasted below.
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From Waynetta to director
She’s given up acting – much to the delight of Britain’s hottest comedy duo. The Independent Hanging in pride of place over the dining room table in Kathy Burke’s north London home is a still from the set of Nil by Mouth, the acclaimed domestic-violence drama for which she deservedly won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes film festival in 1997. But there’s a surprise. The photo depicts the film’s director, Gary Oldman, leaning over to whisper something to her co-star Ray Winstone. Burke is not in the picture. It’s an apt image. For Burke, one of our most adored actresses, is now far happier to be absent from…
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New gig
Kathy has been named as the director for a new BBC comedy sketch series with the working title Horne And Corden Have Come. According to a press release, the BBC Three show is “designed as a traditional comedy entertainment show in the style of Morecambe and Wise”. It will be consist of new comedy characters as well as performances in front of a live studio audience. The production company, Tiger Aspect, has a few sparse details about the series on its website. A fan site for one of the two stars – James Corden – has a lot more. And the BBC’s Newsbeat has an interview with the two about it. Of working with Kathy, they…
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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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(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…
