Lynette Linton: Last News

David Benedict Part of the instant appeal of “Friends” was that, from the get-go, the relationships between the members of the gang who hung out in the apartments above Central Perk felt not just likeable but absolutely lived-in. The same is absolutely true of the perfectly meshed cast of Lynette Linton’s beautifully directed National Theatre production of Pearl Cleage’s “Blue for an Alabama Sky” in London. Cleage’s 1930s-set rooming-house drama is far more wide-ranging — it ultimately encompasses tragedy as well as comedy — but its glowing hallmark throughout is its ability to keep audiences basking in its warmth. Glowingly lit by Oliver Fenwick with a palette rising to richly expressionist crimson, Frankie Bradshaw’s towering, vividly atmospheric set goes from the front stoop to the rafters of a down-at-heel Harlem house. It’s here we meet drunk Angel (a birdlike yet commanding Samira Wiley, in her U.K. stage debut), who staggers back to the home of snappy costume designer Guy (hilariously smart-mouthed Giles Terera, London’s knockout Burr in “Hamilton”). A self-styled “notorious homosexual,” he takes pity on his long-time friend who has not only lost her boyfriend but her job singing in a nightclub.

David Tennant will take on the lead role in Macbeth at the end of the year for a new Donmar Warehouse production of the William Shakespeare play.

Peter Morgan (The Crown) was among the top winners at this year’s Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards with his latest production, Patriots, which took home the coveted Michael Billington Award for Best New Play.

Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) won the best actress prize at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her West End debut performance playing a criminal barrister specialising in defending rapists — who is then sexually assaulted herself.

Doctor Who is long overdue.

Gordon Cox Theater EditorFor a theater in the middle of a pandemic, the Bush Theatre in London is keeping remarkably busy. It’s produced a series of timely Monday Monologues online, curated The Protest series of digital pieces inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and posted a number of Master Classes.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorPaapa Essiedu, one of the breakout stars of BBC/HBO’s I May Destroy You, and Gangs Of London actor Joe Cole have joined the cast of ITV’s Black Lives Matter-inspired drama shorts series Unsaid Stories….Deadline last week revealed the four-part anthology series, which will be made by Greenacre Films, the producer behind Netflix’s Michaela Coel-fronted feature Been So Long.Essiedu and Pippa Bennett-Warner (Maxxx) will feature in Lynette Linton’s Look At Me, which focuses on the lives of a young professional couple in the aftermath of them being stopped by police while out driving on a date.