About

My blog has quite a lot of posts about Samuel West (Julius Caesar, On Chesil Beach and Darkest Hour) and Charles Edwards (My Fair Lady Australian tour and Henry IX).

Sunday 29 November 2015

A selection of recent articles about cultural, socioeconomic and gender diversity

... in the entertainment industries in the US, the UK and Australia.

In the New York Times, Aziz Ansari has written about the disproportionate representation of characters with a range of ethnicities:
"whatever progress toward diversity we are making, the percentage of minorities playing lead roles is still painfully low... at a time when minorities account for almost 40 percent of the American population, when Hollywood wants an “everyman,” what it really wants is a straight white guy. But a straight white guy is not every man."
Click here to read his article in full (via Act for Change's Twitter, @actforchangehq).

Asian American actors performed some of their dream roles from musical theatre in the Changing the Stats: Asian Americans on Broadway concert (2 November, Symphony Space). Playbill has a compilation of clips from the performance. The concert was co-sponsored by the Actors' Equity Association. Christine Toy Johnson, chair of the Association's Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, said that the "concert of dream roles not traditionally cast with Asian American actors was a true celebration and extension of our tenacity in achieving more and more."

Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands) discusses his career and how Asian characters are represented on screen, in an interview on Slate (via @monkeywonder's retweet). An excerpt:
You didn’t think about trying to come back and make it in Hollywood?
"I knew from growing up that they wouldn’t put my kind of people onscreen. There were no decent roles for Asians, much less Asian males. Even when Jackie Chan broke through over here and people fell in love with him, they weren’t really seeing him as this iconic, superstar actor—they were seeing him as this cute, funny oriental dude who spoke broken English and did acrobatic tricks. As an Asian American male, what they were in love with is everything you hate, you know?"

The Guardian partnered with an academic research team to launch a survey about diversity in the creative industries in the UK (via Samuel West's Twitter, @exitthelemming). The key findings are:
  • At least 75% of people working in the arts have a middle class background, which suggests that it is difficult for people who don't have this financial privilege to break into these industries.
  • White and BAME (black and minority ethnic) arts employees have relatively disparate views on ethnicity. 29% of BAME respondents to the survey believed that ethnicity is very important in getting ahead, compared to 10% of white respondents.
  • On average, women earn 32% less than men
More results have been published on createlondon.org

The Australian Directors Guild has proposed a quota for Screen Australia: to allocate 50% of production funding to projects directed by women. The Guild has called on support from government agencies and the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to support this initiative (the Guild's press release).
Thanks to Maddy, who is co-creator of Those Two Duffers.

Thursday 26 November 2015

Charles Edwards - Matchbox Theatre and Waste interviews

Charles, Alex Jennings and Roger Allam are in episode 1 of Michael Frayn's Matchbox Theatre, which premieres on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow (27 November).

He has been interviewed in Official London Theatre and The Stage. In the former, he discusses working at the National Theatre:
"When I started being an actor, being here at the National Theatre was always the goal. Doing All My Sons here in 2000 with Howard Davies directing was one of the biggest thrills. Getting a job at the National. The feeling never abates when you come to work here."

In the latter, he discusses Henry Trebell, the character he plays in Waste:
"He’s used to having to compartmentalise. He’ll have an intensely emotional scene that has to be kept quiet so as not to be heard outside, and then suddenly, the door will be flung open and in comes a big political figure and immediately he’s putting up a front. It’s the switch back and forth, that’s what I love."

Monday 16 November 2015

Samuel West - Present Laughter, Cancer Research UK Christmas Concert, BAFA Award

Sam will star as Garry Essendine in Present Laughter at the Theatre Royal Bath next year. It will run in the theatre's main house from June 22 to July 9; press night will be on June 29 (The Stage).
The play will be directed by Stephen Unwin, who collaborated with Sam on Henry IV Parts I and II (English Touring Theatre, 1996-1997). This is the second time Sam has played Garry Essendine - in 2013, he played the character in a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Noel Coward's play.


Tom Hollander, Hugh Bonneville, Penelope Wilton and Sam will read at the Cancer Research UK Christmas Concert, 15 December at St Paul's Cathedral (via his Twitter, @exitthelemming).

He received the BAFA (British Arts Festivals Association) award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts 2015 (National Campaign for the Arts Twitter, @artscampaign).

Friday 6 November 2015

Samuel West - After Shakespeare and Philip French

Sam will read from Hamlet at After Shakespeare (D'apres Shakespeare), a concert by the Orchestra of the Opera Rouen Normandie (Opéra de Rouen Normandie via their Twitter @operaderouen). The concert is on 20 November at the Théâtre des Arts.
All works in the program are Shakespeare-themed: incidental music for King Lear by Claude Debussy, The Magic Island by William Alwyn is inspired by The Tempest, King Lear Overture by Hector Berlioz and Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario by William Walton.

He contributed to an article in the Observer about the late Philip French (via his Twitter, @exitthelemming).

Thursday 5 November 2015

Samuel West - Young Chekhov review round up

Tweets
I have updated my Storify with tweets from the past two weeks about these plays.

The Real Chrisparkle
"Samuel West leads the cast of Ivanov, wonderfully convincing as the self-obsessed, mentally unstable, cruel title character, almost visibly being eaten up by the black dog as he either retreats into inner nothingness or lashes out at those who care about him. I also enjoyed his rather self-effacing Trigorin in The Seagull."

britishtheatre.com
[review of The Seagull] "West makes Trigorin very compelling and attractive, but romantic and simplistic on the one hand and devious and self-serving on the other... West certainly makes a compelling case, producing one of the most rounded and nuanced takes on the role in recent years... a mature and involving performance of great finesse."
[review of Ivanov] "Samuel West is in vital, exhilarating form as the titular trapped thinker. There is no endless shower of hand wringing or endless introspective castigation in West’s performance; rather, he strives to present a portrait of a man refusing to wallow in self-pity, a man trying to find a way forward.
He might be the hero of the piece, but West does not shirk from the darker aspects of Ivanov’s character. Fear, panic, regret and rage are all part of West’s performance and he balances them expertly. His final chilling encounter with his dying wife, Anna, sets up the final tragic moments of the play quite potently. It’s a terrific, endlessly fascinating performance."

British theatre guide
"In the titular role of Ivanov, Sam West is a miserably depressed, melancholy Russian with enormous debts, out of love with his dying wife (touchingly portrayed by Nina Sosanya) and with the infatuation of a young girl, Sasha, adding complications. Not the easiest of roles to play but superbly performed."

Whatsonstage.com
"West's Ivanov [is] a riveting portrait of utter emptiness and desolation."

The Guardian
"In Samuel West’s fine performance, Ivanov is a definably tragic hero: a doomed figure intelligent enough to be aware of the danger of surrendering to a Hamletesque melancholy but incapable of preventing it."

The Observer
"Ivanov is sunk in self-loathing, and loathing himself for his self-loathing. Samuel West captures with characteristic restraint the unreachableness of the terminally unhappy."

The Stage
"This inward-looking journey into one man's depression – and its impact on those around him [Ivanov] — is charted with a deeply internalised sense of haunting and haunted despair by Samuel West."

Sardines
"There’s terrific work from Samuel West as Trigorin [in The Seagull]. He’s a smooth talking, self pitying, shallow man. Ruthless too as Chekhov stresses with the central metaphor of the stuffed seagull (or second rate work of fiction) and Nina’s fate – but West articulates him so clearly and thoughtfully that he becomes a rounded character with whom one occasionally feels some sympathy.

The Independent
"Sam West is unforgettably authoritative as the clinically depressed Ivanov wrestles with the agonising conundrum of depression: how to disentangle what is pitiable, pitiful and pitiless in the contagion of this condition."

Petersfield Post
"Sam West excelled as the melancholic Ivanov, and a writer who knows he is second rate in The Seagull."

Tuesday 3 November 2015

Samuel West - Frankenstein Chronicles, Great Canal Journeys, Iliad


screencap sources: ITV, Almeida, BBC Arts (the images above are thumbnails - click them for full size)

The Frankenstein Chronicles begins next Wednesday (11 November) on ITV Encore (ITV press centre). A trailer and press pack are also available - the latter contains interviews with principal cast members including Sam.

On 14 January, Sam will read from Rudyard Kipling's work at Burgh House & Hampstead Museum (Andrew Lycett's Twitter @alycett1 - Lycett has written a biography about Kipling).

**********

Sam featured in Sunday's episode of Great Canal Journeys. It is available for 28 more days on 4OD.

His Iliad reading is now available online (#49, Almeida Theatre).

In October, Sam spoke about artistic freedom of expression at I'm with the banned, a concert in Belarus Free Theatre's (BFT) tenth anniversary celebrations (their Twitter, @BFreeTheatre). Click here for a video interview with Sam at the event. The BFT also tweeted a picture of him.