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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.…
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Opening the gates to Hell
Thursday was the opening night of Kathy’s new play. She’s directing the European premiere of Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell, a strong criticism of the current Republican administration in power in the US. It’s at the Donmar Theatre, from 20 October to 3 December. Box Office: 0870 060 6624. To tie in with it, she’s been interviewed in The Observer today. Quite a long piece. And interesting in that Kathy talks about going to see a therapist, as well as how deals with the job, works with people, why she dislike acting (again) and other stuff. I’ve stuck it in the Media section. No reviews as yet.
