Category: Dominic Cooke

National Theatre Live presents FOLLIES, book by James Goldman, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Filmed in the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre, South Bank, London. I have not talked about the National Theatre Broadcasts before but felt that one should not pass on mentioning the superlative production by Dominic Cooke of the iconic and monumental, legendary, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman American Musical, FOLLIES, screened this past weekend at some selected cinemas. FOLLIES was first produced in 1971 on Broadway, Directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett. It won some seven Tony Awards but closed after only 500…

National Theatre presents MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, by August Wilson, in the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London, U.K. August Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays spanning the 20th century, often referred to as the Pittsburg Cycle, of which MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, is the second, written in 1984. He was born in 1945 and died in 2005. The plays form a kind of fever chart of the trauma of slavery. Their historical trajectory takes African-Americans through their transition from property to personhood – ‘a profound articulation of the Black Tradition’. I have been fortunate to have seen many of…