Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.

Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.

My cast away this week is the critic, actress and producer Blanche Marvin.

Over the past seven decades, her life has been immersed in the theatre.

She worked with James Mason, Yule Brinner, Deborah Kerr and Peter Houston off.

She calmed the nerves of Tennessee Williams, brought Samuel Beckett to an American audience,

and persuaded Peter Brook to launch a series of awards to encourage artistic risk takers.

With Oyanne of the West End, she's at pretty well every opening night,

and her acute reviews are read by producers on Broadway,

looking for the next hit that could cross the Atlantic.

She says, people say, how can you go to the theatre for 50 years and still be enthusiastic?

Well, every time I go, I think, oh, I'm going to see something I'm going to be surprised.

Can you really, after all this time, Blanche Marvin be surprised by things you see in the theatre?

Yes, you can, because if you have curiosity, you're uncurable, so that it is maybe today,

maybe in some little corner, I'm going to find somebody,

because everything that I have done has been to find the new talented person,

the new play, the new actor, the new designer, the new music.

Originality is what makes the world go round, and the world is so vast.

You'll never live long enough to discover everything.

On Broadway and in the West End, what theatre producers are looking for right now,

...