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Royal Lyceum

After the triumph of Krapp's Last Tape, Michael Gambon is back in a crueller Beckett piece about an elderly man being tormented for his sins

Written for TV in 1965, Samuel Beckett's 30-minute play – about a man endlessly forced to confront his past – has shades of Krapp's Last Tape, a role already excavated with ravaged power by Michael Gambon. This is the crueller piece. In Atom Egoyan's staging for Dublin's Gate theatre, Gambon plays an elderly man alone in a bare, monastic room, who is clearly afraid of something unseen. His hands tremble as he moves about the cell-like space, enacting a well-worn twilight ritual. He locks the door and checks in the cupboard. He peers under the bed like a nervous child looking for monsters. Only when satisfied that he is safe does he perch on the bed.

But he's not safe. In sealing the room he has created a prison,...

Disco Pigs made a star of playwright Enda Walsh and his lead, Cillian Murphy. Now, 15 years on, the pair have reunited for a drama about a crazed smalltown preacher

The first time I met Enda Walsh was in the summer of 1997 at a writers' retreat in County Monaghan. Back then, he was working on the first draft of a new play, the proposed follow-up to the phenomenally successful Disco Pigs, which made his name. Fifteen years later, that same play, called Misterman and starring Cillian Murphy, is about to open on the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre in London, having played to packed audiences and rave reviews in New York. What happened, I ask him, in the years in between?

"Oh, it drove me mad," he says, laughing his oddly demonic laugh. "I tried to make it work with me acting in it, then I just put it aside...

The distinctive and beguiling Irish actor David Kelly, who has died aged 82, was as familiar a face in British television sitcoms as he was on the stage in Dublin, where he was particularly associated with the Gate theatre. But he was perhaps best known in recent years for playing Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), an engaging performance that was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Film and Television Academy; Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka, paid a touching tribute on a video link from Hollywood to Dublin.

Kelly was a tall and flamboyant figure who was often cast as a comic, eccentric Irishman, notably as Albert Riddle, an incompetent, one-armed dish-washer in the late 1970s British sitcom Robin's Nest; he...

"One of the major works of Jean-Luc Godard, the eight-part essay film Histoire(s) du Cinéma has revealed itself slowly over a period of more than 30 years, as a sort of intellectual striptease." In the New York Times, Dave Kehr traces the histories of the making, reception and distribution of Histoire(s), which sees a release this week on two discs from Olive Films. For Kehr, Histoire(s) "is a sort of associational machine, as dense and obscure as any of the Symbolist poetry that also serves as one of Mr Godard's reference points, but one that also solicits the viewer's participation in connecting the dots and filling in the blanks." The work is also "a tragic account of the 20th century: a century of staggering atrocities, which the aesthetic glories of the motion picture medium (or any other art form) were unable to prevent, and may, in Mr Godard's view,...

Leading light of the British stage once seen as Gielgud's successor

John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.

He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...

His Jerusalem is a Broadway hit – now director Ian Rickson is back with a star-studded Betrayal. He talks to Andrew Dickson about his debt to Pinter, coaching Pj Harvey – and why he's finally ready for Shakespeare

Never let it be said that Ian Rickson lacks range. This week, the director opens a new production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, starring Kristin Scott Thomas; it turns out that he has also found time to direct Pj Harvey's current tour. "We talked about staging and lighting, should she talk between songs, things like that," he explains, before adding, not wanting to take too much credit: "Director in inverted commas."

I'm not sure he needs the rider. In the four years since Rickson stepped down as artistic director of the Royal Court, there seems to be little he hasn't turned his hand to. His farewell production there, The Seagull, was the first...

Kim Cattrall has been nominated for a coveted theater award. The "Sex and the City" star's turn as Amanda in "Private Lives" sees her considered for the Best Actress in a Play prize at the 11th Whatsonstage.com Awards.

She will face competition from "End of the Rainbow" star Tracie Bennett, Helen McCrory for her role in "The Late Middle Classes", "Ruined" star Jenny Jules, Nancy Carroll from "After the Dance" and "All My Sons" actress Zoe Wanamaker.

The Best Actor in a Play award will be contested by Benedict Cumberbatch from "After the Dance", Kim's "Private Lives" co-star Matthew Mcfadyen, "Hamlet" and "Measure For Measure" star Rory Kinnear, "Deathtrap" and "London Assurance" actor Simon Russell Beale, "The Real Thing"'s Toby Stephens and "All My Sons" star David Suchet.

"All My Sons" received more nominations than any other production, being considered for accolades in six different categories. The most...

Krapp, 39 is extending once again, recent Drama Desk nominee, Michael Laurence's Krapp, 39, inspired by Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, and directed by George Demas, will be extended again now through August 2, 2009 at the SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam Street). A highlight of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival, Krapp, 39 was invited to be part of the Fringe Encores Series; it was then offered a legit Off-Broadway run at the SoHo Playhouse presented by Darren Lee Cole. Krapp, 39's Off-Broadway run began performances on January 13th, and officially opened on January 20, 2009 and has been extended several times since.

The New York Times reports that the upcoming Goodman Theater double bill of Eugene O'Neill's "Hughie" and Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape," both starring Brian Dennehy and directed by Robert Falls and Canadian director Jennifer Tarver and will come to Broadway. The two plays had been expected on Broadway next season, but now it's official according to The Times. The production, which will open first at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in January, will start performances on Broadway the week of April 12, 2010, at a theater to be announced.

Selecting breakout talents from the lineup of this year's New York International Fringe Festival (running through Aug. 24) is a daunting task. Consider the numbers: Now in its 12th year, the festival calls itself "the largest multiarts festival in North America," presenting more than 200 companies from around the nation and the world. Competition to gain entry is keen. And in many instances, fair comparisons between shows cannot be made — it's the proverbial apples versus oranges. Still, here's a sampling of actors whose names you'll want to remember.Bill ConningtonIt's no easy feat making a sexual psychopath understandable, if not sympathetic. In his solo show Zombie, adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novella, Bill Connington plays Quentin P., a Jeffrey Dahmer-esque serial killer. In graphic detail the character recounts the torture, rape, and murder of his young male victims. Quentin's purpose, he explains, is to create zombie slaves who will serve him.