About Plays International & Europe

Plays International & Europe

Plays International & Europe is a British theatre magazine carrying reviews, interviews and features, with photographs, on theatre in London and across the United Kingdom, and internationally — with an emphasis on other European countries and the United States. It began as a paper magazine, Plays International, and since January 2022 it has continued as an online magazine under its present title, edited by Jeremy Malies, who is based in the United Kingdom. Its International Standard Serial Number is 0268-2028.

Roots in Plays and Players

The origins of the magazine go back to Plays and Players, a monthly magazine first published in 1953 as part of the Hansom Books Seven Arts Group of magazines. Plays and Players provided regular reviews of theatrical events in Great Britain, and over three decades it became one of the defining records of post-war British theatre culture. Its importance was such that two anthology volumes were later published under editor Peter Roberts: The Best of Plays and Players 1953–1968, published by Methuen in 1988, and The Best of Plays and Players 1969–1983, published in 1989, with photographs by Zoe Dominic and Donald Cooper.

Peter Roberts edited Plays and Players for many years, between 1963 and 1975. When that magazine's run ended, the tradition it had established — serious, regular reviewing of British theatre, illustrated with production photographs — was the inheritance that its successor was created to carry on.

Peter Roberts and Plays International

In 1984, Peter Roberts became editor of a new magazine modelled on the same format, called Plays International; publisher accounts of the title's history describe it as founded by Roberts in 1985 and call it the best-known British theatre magazine with an international outreach of its time. The new magazine continued the tradition of publishing theatre reviews alongside photographic illustrations of the shows and the actors involved, but widened the frame: where Plays and Players had concentrated on theatrical events in Britain, Plays International set out to report on theatre beyond Britain as well.

That combination — reviews, interviews, features and photographs, covering London and the regions as well as stages abroad — became the magazine's settled format, and it is the format the present-day online magazine still describes as its own: reviews of plays in London, across the UK and around the world, interviews with directors, actors and technicians, features about theatre history, book reviews, and coverage of youth and fringe drama and of the major theatre festivals.

Takeover by the Theater Research Institute of Europe

In 2016 the magazine, then in its 31st volume, was taken over by the Theater Research Institute of Europe, based in Luxembourg. Its title was amended to Plays International & Europe, retaining the same ISSN, and its frequency changed from monthly or bi-monthly publication to quarterly publication. The change of owner brought the magazine's European emphasis into its name for the first time.

Under the Institute's ownership, the magazine also built a digital archive. Working with Exact Editions, its back issues were made available as a searchable digital edition across web, iOS and Android platforms, with subscriptions for individuals and institutions. The archive contained the magazine's reviews, interviews and extensive "What's on in London" listings, and its publisher presented it as a resource for theatregoers and for people working in the industry. At the time of the archive's expansion the magazine was in its 34th volume.

The editorship of Dana Rufolo

Dr Dana Rufolo, a Luxembourgish-American author who had contributed to the magazine, took over as editor-in-chief under the Theater Research Institute of Europe. She sought to make the magazine more critical in outlook and more politically engaged. She continued to write theatre criticism for the magazine herself, and reported on theatre festivals in Europe, including the International Meetings of the Theatre in Cluj, in Romania, across the period of the Cluj Theatre Festival from 2018 to 2023, and the Festival de Almada in Portugal. Her reporting on the Almada festival earned her the Prémio Carlos Porto–Imprensa Especializada, awarded in October 2019.

Reviewing the magazine's Autumn 2020 issue in an academic journal, a specialist article considered how that issue reflected the consequences of the 2020 pandemic for the theatre world; an editorial from the magazine discussing those consequences was also translated for a Romanian theatre magazine. Those citations illustrate the position the quarterly had reached under Rufolo: a British theatre title being read, translated and reviewed within European theatre scholarship.

Recognition in theatre scholarship

Plays International & Europe is quoted in academic and general theatre anthologies, including Aleks Sierz's Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today and A Director's Theatre by Robert Cohen. Its antecedent, Plays and Players, is referenced in other anthologies, among them Steve Nicholson's Modern British Playwriting: The 1960s. For a review magazine, that scholarly afterlife matters: its notices were written as journalism, but they have endured as primary evidence of how productions were received, and researchers continue to use them as such.

Relaunch as an online magazine

In 2022 the magazine was relaunched as a purely digital edition with open access, and the paper magazine era came to an end: the online Plays International & Europe succeeded the paper version as of January 2022. Ownership and editorship passed to Jeremy Malies, a British theatre critic who had written for Plays International since its inception and who lives in the United Kingdom. Malies had also been a desk editor, working closely with Rufolo and her team during the period when the magazine was owned by the Theater Research Institute of Europe, so the transition kept an editor with a connection to the title reaching back to its first years.

Most of the critics already writing for the magazine continued to write for Malies's online edition. Its reviewers include academics, authors and contributors to British and international media. The online magazine also kept the interview tradition of its print predecessor: Malies has conducted many interviews with notable directors for the magazine, including the late Sir Michael Boyd, David Lan, Barrie Rutter, Rupert Goold and Phyllida Lloyd.

Festival and fringe coverage today

The current magazine retains the breadth its title promises. Malies covers the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival every year, as well as festivals in Brighton, and its contributors report on theatrical events and personalities across Europe and beyond. Youth and fringe drama are stated priorities, and its reporters cover the major theatre festivals. Features about theatre history and book reviews sit alongside the reviewing of current productions in London, the wider UK and other countries, with the emphasis the title declares on European countries and the United States.

Continuity across three titles

Viewed as a whole, the story of Plays International & Europe is one of unusual continuity in British arts journalism. A format established by Plays and Players in 1953 — regular reviews, photographs, interviews and listings — was carried into Plays International by that magazine's own long-serving editor, Peter Roberts; was given a European name, a Luxembourg-based owner and a more politically engaged editorship under Dana Rufolo; and was then carried online by a critic, Jeremy Malies, who had written for it since its inception. Titles, owners, frequencies and formats all changed — monthly paper magazine, quarterly, digital archive, open-access website — but the editorial task the magazine set itself in the beginning, recording theatre as it happens, in Britain and beyond, remained the same.

Plays International & Europe today

Today Plays International & Europe operates as an open-access online theatre magazine from the United Kingdom, publishing reviews, interviews and features with photographs. It no longer appears in print, and its back issues survive through its digital archive, but its lineage — from a 1953 Hansom Books monthly, through the best-known years of Plays International, to a European quarterly and then a website — makes it one of the longest-running continuous traditions in British theatre criticism.