Phil Willmott

INCIDENT AT VICHY at The Finborough Theatre: How Arthur Miller and Seven Samurai help us understand Trump

By Phil Willmott Monday, April 3 2017, 09:37

Incident at Vichy In the season of two plays and a musical I’ve directed this winter I’ve attempted to programme work in which great writers have reflected on similar issues to those we face today. This January, at the Union Theatre, with many of us feeling politically impotent in the face of dismaying election results, Chekhov’s play Three Sisters felt unusually immediate in its depiction of the obsolete intelligentsia of 1900. This was followed by a rare revival of Sondheim's expressionistic musical Anyone Can Whistle in which one half of the electorate regard the other as dangerously insane, the topicality of which speaks for itself.

30 Mar

Casts

New cast members join Aladdin and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child

By Phil Willmott Thursday, March 30 2017, 17:30

Jamie Glover Two major West End productions have announced cast changes over the last few days.

I'm delighted to hear Jamie Glover will be taking over the lead role at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Hamlet starring Andrew Scott at the Harold Pinter Theatre

29 Mar

New Shows

Move quickly to get tickets for the West End transfer of Andrew Scott’s HAMLET

By Phil Willmott Wednesday, March 29 2017, 16:12

Hamlet starring Andrew Scott at the Harold Pinter Theatre It's no surprise that the Almeida Theatre is to transfer their smash hit production of Hamlet to the West End, starring Andrew Scott and Juliet Stephenson and directed by Robert Ike.

Ecstatically received by critics and those audiences who were able to get tickets for the premiere at the small Islington venue, it's fantastic that more people will be able to see it in the West End.

27 Mar

News

Saigon stumbles on Broadway whilst Paris soars in the West End

By Phil Willmott Monday, March 27 2017, 10:59

An American In Paris Often visitors from New York will ask me what theatre I'd recommend they see whilst in the U.K. And, honestly, that's quite a difficult question to answer. So many hit shows have either already been seen in New York or are about transfer there.

This cross-fertilisation began in the late 1980s, a strange decade in the history of New York musicals when they weren't producing anything of note whilst the British were dominating the world with Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals like Cats and Phantom of the Opera and mega hits also produced by Cameron Macintosh including Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, both of which earned their reputations in the West End before taking American Theatre by storm.