Theatre Interviews with Top West End Stars

Get a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes with our London Theatre exclusive interviews. Read more from West End actors, as well as theatre writers and directors of the biggest shows across London and beyond. Find out more about your favourite London plays and musicals.

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  • Jac Yarrow

    More than one critic - myself included - reached for the superlative "a star is born" when describing the West End debut of Jac Yarrow in the title role of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: "He received a spontaneous standing ovation on the first night at the end of his rendition of "Close Every Door"; but this is a performance that will open every door to him from here on in."Opening night was just four days ago when I met him backstage at the London Palladium, London's premiere...

  • Sweet Charity

    Josie Rourke's final production of her seven-year tenure as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse opens this week, as she directs Anne-Marie Duff in Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Neil Simon's Sweet Charity.Alongside Duff's Charity, an optimistic New York dancer-for-hire with terrible luck with men, is Lizzy Connolly as fellow dancer and friend Nickie. Connolly makes her Donmar debut having previously starred in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Savoy, On The Town at Regent's Park Open Air...

  • Admissions

    Set in the admissions department of an American high school, Joshua Harmon's play Admissions poses a lot of tricky questions around privilege and quotas, and proves that answering these questions isn't as simple as it may seem. The play stars Alex Kingston, the head of the department who is pushing for better inclusion in the school's student body, and better representation across the institution's image. But her morals are put to the test when her own son faces the realities on the other end of...

  • Natalie McQueen

    There's pressure when any performer takes to the stage in a major musical in the West End, that comes with the territory. But it's surely amplified when you're playing a role made famous by the legend whose name is above the door, in the musical titled after her biggest hit?It doesn't bother Natalie McQueen. She's currently playing Doralee Rhodes in 9 to 5 the Musical, the role Dolly Parton played in the 1980 hit movie, and, while she's been paying close attention to the way Dolly walks and...

  • Katy Lipson

    Having written about a fair few season announcements at theatres across London over the past few years, it's almost expected that a programme full of 'new work' and 'world premieres' will be stuffed with plays - musicals often hardly get a look in. However, one producer has made it somewhat of a mission to bring as many new, fresh musicals to stages as humanly possible.Katy Lipson and her company Aria Entertainment have been a recent success story over the last few years, mounting fringe...

  • Tracy-Ann Oberman

    The West End has been lately upping its game when it comes to serious theatre, with recent hits like The Jungle (the astonishing immersive production that took audiences into the heart of a Calais refugee camp) and The Inheritance (offering an intimate and shattering account of gay experience in the wake of the legacy of HIV/AIDS and the generation that was lost to it).But one of the more extraordinarily ambitious seasons of late has been to honour the late, great playwright Harold Pinter, at...

  • This summer's Les Miserables cast change brings Dean Chisnall back to the West End stage, having spent time last year working at fringe theatres for the first time in his career.Chisnall has previously played the title role in Shrek at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and had parts in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White at the Palace Theatre, and Love Never Dies at the Adelphi. He returns to the West End this summer as Jean Valjean, but this comes after his first foray into the fringe, where he...

  • Clare Halse

    42nd Street took the West End by storm when it moved into the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with a flurry of four and five-star reviews. Much of the praise was for Clare Halse, who plays Peggy Sawyer, a dance virtuoso waiting to be discovered,is forced to step in and save Julian Marsh's Broadway show Pretty Lady. We chatted to Halse about her previous experiences as an understudy opposite Imelda Staunton, how she is helping to inspire a generation of young dancers, and performing for Royalty on the...

  • Playwright Duncan Macmillan, one of Britain's brightest writers, openly admits that he had previously lost faith in himself and had given up writing. Facing the realities of paying his rent, starting a family and simply getting from A to B, it's a story that he shares with many creatives of his generation who find themselves locked out of succeeding primarily due to financial and practical reasons, as the industry tightens and getting your 'big break' seems harder and harder. Speaking to him...

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