Containing over a hundred interviews conducted over the last fifteenyears with leading directors, actors and writers at the NationalTheatre, "Buzz Buzz " is a fantastic compendium that offers unrivalled insight into the work and practice of the best theatre talent.

In these illuminating interviews playwrights such as Michael Frayn, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, David Hare, Pam Gems and TonyKushner and many others talk about the roots of their work, theirmethods of research, and how they collaborate with their directors, while actors from Fiona Shaw to Kenneth Branagh, and...

New in paperback, John Gielgud: Matinee Idol to Movie Star is the most authoritative and comprehensive account of the finest classical actor of the twentieth century. This entertaining but critical biography charts the ups and downs of Gielgud's long and glittering career, from his young ground-breaking Hamlet to his later success in plays by Pinter, Storey, Bond and Bennett, and his recognition as a major movie star following his role in Arthur. It also reassesses his complex relationship with his great rival Laurence Olivier and throws fresh light on his personal...

King Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America. It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence of the modern world.

Performing King Lear offers a very different and practical perspective from most studies of the play, being centred firmly on the reality of creation and...