The WhatsOnStage Podcast

In this guest episode, Sarah talks to playwright Roy Williams and the National Theatre's deputy artisitc director Clint Dyer about the three plays they wrote together that seem to sum up the spirit of the times. As Michael, Delory and Closing Time are performed together for the first time at Soho Place, the writers discuss what promted the plays, their struggles with illness, Covid and sheer bad timing to get them to the stage, and the impact their work has had. Plus why you can be deadly serious and very funny at the same time.

In a week of shock substitutions Alex and Sarah talk about James Corden at the Old Vic, Justine Mitchell at the Almeida and the way that history of theatre is filled with understudies who become the star.

With a new production of Starlight Express taking over the Wembley Troubadour and Jamie Lloyd's radical Sunset Boulevard due to open on Broadway, Sarah and Alex ask whether the British composer is having a renaissance. Plus: does the seat you sit in change your feelings about a show?

Alex has been singing along to Taylor Swift and Sarah has been on a musical theatre adventure with London Theatre at Sea. Which got us thinking about the power of song and how it makes people feel. Why does that make musicals such a potent force and are our emotions being played on - with special reference to Ghost Quartet, Dear Evan Hansen and Next to Normal

In the second WhatsOnStage podcast, Sarah is literally all at sea but still finds time to talk to Alex about the most significant awards in American theatre - and how new thinking and some British input is changing Broadway.

In their brand new podcast the chief theatre critic of WhatsOnStage and the managing editor Alex Wood talk about the ties that bind them to the theatrical world. And to Coventry. Plus their plans going forward.