Chris O'Dowd and Anna Maxwell Martin in Constellations at the Vaudeville Theatre directed by Michael Longhurst. Photo Marc Brenner

Constellations - plays branching and switching - and fragmentary Tolkien

I’d heard great things about, but never got to see, Nick Payne’s two-hander play “Constellations” featuring a cosmologist, a bee-keeper, and branching scenes to show the many alternative ways their story could have gone. (The Guardian explains more in its review of the original production.) So I was excited to see it appear for streaming on National Theatre at Home, with Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O’Dowd… ...

7 May 2024 · 2 min · 379 words · Terry

The History Boys, and teachers real and archetypal (August 2004)

[This post - on Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys when it was still new, my own French and maths education, and comedian Adam Bloom’s narrative maze-hedging - was originally published on LiveJournal on 4 August 2004 and is re-posted here as part of a migration from Livejournal. It has some minor editing, interjections from 2022, and fixing/replacement of broken links - not everywhere has been able to follow Tim Berners-Lee’s 1998-and-still-there advice that Cool URIs don’t change.] ...

9 Sep 2022 · 5 min · 978 words · Terry

A Tom Stoppard riddle

As my mind wandered while assembling some flat-pack furniture, I was (perhaps inordinately) pleased with myself for coming up with a riddle about one of my favourite playwrights. ...

21 Apr 2021 · 1 min · 52 words · Terry

A Tom Stoppard riddle - with answer

As my mind wandered while assembling some flat-pack furniture, I was (perhaps inordinately) pleased with myself for coming up with a riddle about one of my favourite playwrights. ...

21 Apr 2021 · 1 min · 96 words · Terry