Visit the Front Row website to listen to a ten-minute interview about La Bête with David. It’s a great interview (with a great new photo!) but man, I wish journos would stop referring to him as “Hyde Pierce”! It’s like referring to SJP as “Jessica Parker” or NPH as “Patrick Harris” or SMG as … you get the picture. :)

Interesting interview in today’s Metro in which David discusses the new play, and also his anger at Proposition 8 – which prompted a follow-up article in Digital Spy.

I’m half expecting David Hyde Pierce to be trying to iron his trousers. At the very least I’m hoping for a bit of super-neurotic horseplay. But in a south London rehearsal room, the former Frasier star is almost unrecognisable. He is small and very still. He has a clipped moustache and is sporting an ugly pair of shiny black tracksuit bottoms. Niles would have had a heart attack.
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Here’s our first look at David in character as Elomire in La Bête! BroadwayWorld has photos of all three leads from the rehearsals. I’m thinking David’s got the best wig!



David will be in studio for BBC Radio 4′s Front Row programme at 7.15pm tomorrow evening.

Check out the website where hopefully a podcast will appear later this week!

Huzzah! The full episode is up on Youtube in four parts. Click ‘Read the rest of this entry’ for the rest!


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… in Time Out London. A bit low on quotes for our liking, but some interesting stuff nonetheless.

As George Osborne’s age of austerity looms over the UK like a raincloud, those seeking a bit of consolatory sunshine should head to the Comedy Theatre. There a rather strange little play written in iambic pentameters is threatening to be the hit of the summer. La Bête is set in the Languedoc and takes its comic tone from Molière, but in fact didn’t land on the page till more than three centuries after his death when it sprang from the mind of a young New York playwright called David Hirson. Broadway was unkind to it: it closed after 25 performances, but its producers had enough faith in La Bête to bring it to London where its subsequent critical and commercial success won it the 1992 Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
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And with a great new photo of the cast! Go here for the original article.

One of this year’s most anticipated productions opens here in London before transferring straight to Broadway. La Bête stars the extraordinary, multi award-winning Mark Rylance; David Hyde Pierce, best known as for his brilliant portrayal of Niles Crane in the best-ever TV sitcom Frasier and a seasoned theatre performer; and Joanna Lumley, who also achieved TV sitcom immortality as Patsy Stone in Ab Fab. David Hirson’s 1991 play – a battle between Valère, a lowbrow street clown, and high-minded dramatist Elomire to win the theatrical favours of a princess, all in rhyming couplets – won an Olivier award when it was staged here with Alan Cumming at the Lyric Hammersmith. It failed to transfer, but Cumming went on to success on the back of Cabaret. Rylance will no doubt rise to the challenge here, too.

Here’s a short clip of David’s hilarious appearance on Graham Norton’s show last night. UK residents can watch the full episode on BBC iPlayer.


Here’s a great new interview with David in the Culture section of today’s Sunday Times. Enjoy!

Forty-six years ago in Saratoga Springs, New York, a five-year-old boy named David would stand at the top of the stairs and pretend to be shot. His parents, at breakfast, would hear the thudding of their youngest child crashing down the staircase. “I loved the idea of performing death scenes,” he explains. “It is the most dramatic thing you can do.” About 30 years later, David was acting in a television sitcom. He was in a kitchen and, in an attempt to impress the woman he loved, was trying to look cool by hoisting himself onto the counter top. He kept failing. Then he tried so hard, his head crashed into some hanging pans and he toppled over and fell to the floor.
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From the official site. Neat, eh?