Simon Stephens: Last News

Naman Ramachandran “Sunset Boulevard” dominated the 2024 Olivier Awards with seven wins, including best actor and actress in a musical for its leading duo Tom Francis and Nicole Scherzinger. Jamie Lloyd won the Sir Peter Hall Award for best director and the show also won best musical revival.

Brent Lang Executive Editor With his victory on Monday at the Critics’ Circle Theatre awards, Andrew Scott has made history. The British performer, recognized as best actor for his one-man West End show, “Vanya,” previously was named best actor at the 2024 Critics’ Circle Film Awards for his performance in “All of Us Strangers.” He’s the first person to win lead actor Critics’ Circle prizes in both film and television in the same year. “It’s a thrilling delight,” Scott says.

Naman Ramachandran “Sunset Boulevard” was the big winner at the U.K.’s 24th annual WhatsOnStage Awards, which are decided entirely by the theatregoers themselves. It won seven awards, including best performer in a musical for Nicole Scherzinger, professional debut performance for Grace Hodgett Young, direction for Jamie Lloyd, lighting design for Jack Knowles, sound design for Adam Fisher, video design for Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom and music direction/supervision for Alan Williams.

Pulp have performed an unreleased song titled ‘Hymn Of The North’ at one of their Sheffield homecoming shows.The moment took place at the end of the band’s performance on Saturday (July 15) — the second of their two mammoth homecoming shows at the city’s Utilita Arena.Arriving as the final song of the band’s 20-song setlist, frontman Jarvis Cocker introduced the track as one that no one has ever heard Pulp perform, other than those stood on this stage, and explained that there was some deliberation as to whether they were going to perform it live or not.The track is one originally written by Cocker, as a solo track for the 2019 play Light Falls, which was written by Manchester playwright Simon Stephens.“OK, I can promise you that no one has ever heard this song except for us on this stage… Actually, that was a lie,” said Cocker, speaking to the audience towards the end of the show.

Andrew Scott, the hot priest in Fleabag and Bond villain in Spectre, will dominate the West End in the fall by playing all the roles in Vanya, a new adaptation of Chekhov’s masterpiece Uncle Vanya.

Apple Original Films continues to expand on its diverse film slate as it has landed the rights to Causeway, a new film starring and produced by Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence, and directed by Lila Neugebauer. A24 produced and developed the project. The film will make its global debut in-theaters and on Apple TV+ later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning producer and co-founder of independent production company Nine Stories, Riva Marker, has joined Nicole King and Stacy O’Neil’s Linden Entertainment as their CEO of Productions.

The Shining is going on auction this Wednesday (April 20).In the 1980 horror movie, Jack Torrance (portrayed by Nicholson) delivers the film’s famous line, “Here’s Johnny!” after breaking through a bathroom door to attack his wife amid a psychotic episode.As TMZ reports, the axe from the Stanley Kubrick-directed film is going up for sale through Gotta Have Rock and Roll auction house in a couple of days’ time.The auction house told the publication that the axe prop is still in very good condition and is displayed in a shadow box frame along with some photos of it in action in the movie. It’s expected to fetch at least $100,000 (£76,693).Meanwhile, in other The Shining news, Ben Stiller is reportedly in talks to play Torrance in a stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novel.The actor and filmmaker is in line to play the role in new play by Ivo van Hove that’s coming to the London West End next year.“We can confirm that we are in negotiations with Ben Stiller about his starring in Ivo van Hove’s theatre production of Stephen King’s The Shining, adapted by Simon Stephens, for the West End with dates tbc,” a spokesperson for Sonia Friedman Productions said in a statement obtained by Variety.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterBen Stiller is in talks to star in Ivo van Hove’s upcoming stage adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic “The Shining,” Variety has confirmed. The play is scheduled to open on the West End next year.Should Stiller’s deal close, he will play the lead role of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who is hired as an off-season caretaker in a historic Colorado hotel.Stiller has performed on stage before, in 2011’s Broadway revival of John Guare’s “House of Blue Leaves” with Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

EXCLUSIVE: A major new Ivo van Hove stage adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic The Shining is in the works for a 2023 West End debut, with an A-list creative team in place and Ben Stiller in talks to play the role of the crazed, haunted dad Jack Torrance.

Marilyn Stasio Theater CriticStunning performances from Edie Falco, Blair Brown and Marin Ireland humanize Simon Stephens’ new play “Morning Sun,” an earnest if bland love letter to a kind, selfless but fundamentally unremarkable woman.Falco has some emotionally searing moments that left me weak in the knees with admiration for both the writing and the performance.

Ghosts, says a character in Simon Stephens’ moving new play Morning Sun, aren’t the sheet-covered goblins of a child’s imagining, but rather simply “interruptions.” Of what? That goes unsaid, but the small rifts, lasting hurts, unexpected connections and everyday forgivenesses that make up the life portrayed by the extraordinary Edie Falco suggest that existing without interruptions would be a sad fate indeed.

Blindness should feel like onboarding for a voyage to outer space. The Shakespeare Theatre’s first in-person presentation in over a year — and this critic’s first trip in 14 months to the interior of any theater — represents both a welcome return to the familiar, and in several senses, a bold exploration of a strange new world.Under any circumstances, the international hit sound and light installation, produced by London’s Donmar Warehouse, would promise a thrilling and disorienting ride.

New York theater is tiptoeing its way through the dark with tonight’s Off Broadway opening of the actor-free technological and storytelling marvel Blindness, a sound-and-light excursion into the dystopian hellscape of Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s great allegory of humanity in lockdown.

Greg Evans Associate Editor/Broadway CriticThe Broadway premieres of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s Lackawanna Blues and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive have been set for 2022 and 2021, respectively, with producers at the Manhattan Theatre Club expressing “hopes high that we will be able to return to live theatre.”The nonprofit MTC announced the target openings today, along with plans to present an Off Broadway production of Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun starring Edie Falco and the American premiere of Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield.MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow said, “With hopes high that we will be able to return to live theatre, we have created a season of diverse and exciting Broadway and Off Broadway premieres and we are honored

“The Inheritance” by Matthew López “Sea Wall/A Life” by Simon Stephens & Nick Payne “Slave Play” by Jeremy O.