Theatre review: In Praise of Love

1973's In Praise of Love is one of Terence Rattigan's last plays, a time when his star was in the descendant, and at times it does feel like we're going to be in for the work of a playwright whose best days are behind him. But like its characters, it's got hidden depths to take you by surprise. Sebastian Cruttwell (Dominic Rowan) is a literary critic for a Sunday paper, a vocal Marxist with undisguised contempt for anyone who doesn't share his belief in the theory, but not particularly keen on discussing how the USSR worked out in practice. After the end of WWII he met Estonian refugee Lydia (Claire Price) in Berlin's British quarter, and married her so she could come back to England, with the intention of divorcing once she got her citizenship. Decades on they're still married, and have a 20-year-old son, Joey (Joe Edgar,) who to his father's disgust campaigns for the Liberal Party.

Theatre review: The Frogs

Director Georgie Rankcom seems to have established a very specific niche: Revivals of Stephen Sondheim obscurities that I'd previously seen at Jermyn Street Theatre, given bigger, better productions at Southwark Playhouse that still aren't enough to rehabilitate them. After Anyone Can Whistle it's the turn of The Frogs, Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Burt Shevelove's (book) short 1974 adaptation of the Aristophanes satire, expanded to a full Broadway musical by the composer and Nathan Lane in 2004. In a setting that's simultaneously Ancient Greece and the present day, the god of wine and theatre Dionysos (Dan Buckley) enlists his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale) to help him travel to the underworld to bring back the deceased playwright Bernard Shaw: He believes Shaw's no-nonsense brand of wisdom is the solution to a modern world he despairs at.

Theatre review: This Is My Family

First seen in Sheffield in 2013, Tim Firth's (book and music) This Is My Family has taken twelve years to make it to London, and after seeing Vicky Featherstone's production at Southwark Playhouse I have to wonder: Why the rush? Nicky (Nancy Allsop) is a 13-year-old girl who's entered a competition to explain why her family is perfect, and has told the truth, but left out a few salient details: Parents Steve (Michael Jibson) and Yvonne (Gemma Whelan) have been together since they were 16, but they're drifting apart and Steve is considering taking a job in Abu Dhabi. Older brother Matt (Luke Lambert) used to be very close to her but now he's having a teenage druid phase and obsessing over his girlfriend. And grandmother May (Gay Soper) has the mischievous side she describes, but she's now also got fast-encroaching dementia.

Theatre review: After the Act

Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation whose phrasing is so vague it seems to have been drafted by people who don't understand any of the words in it may be recent news in the UK, but unfortunately it's hardly without precedent: That sense of déjà vu comes from Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which passed on a wave of "won't somebody think of the children?" moral panic and ended up, in practice, banning teachers from acknowledging to their students that gay people existed, even when those students were clearly dealing with a crisis of their own sexuality. The latest of David Byrne's (not that one) transfers from the New Diorama to the Royal Court deals with Section 28's toxic legacy, but while it's a subject I think is always worth revisiting and educating people on, for me Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens' After the Act, a play with music composed and performed (with Calie Hough) onstage by Frew, feels the strain of expanding to a bigger stage.

Theatre review: Marriage Material

Split between the late 1960s and the present day in Wolverhampton, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's Marriage Material, based on Sathnam Sanghera's 2013 novel, makes a connection between the politics of the two times that's hard to miss: In the first act, Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech is still fresh in everyone's memories, both the white racists who felt emboldened by it, and the immigrant communities who had to deal with the consequences. In the second act there's no single obvious instigator mentioned, but disenfranchised young white men are once again being encouraged to blame their problems on anyone with a different skin colour. These scenes are hard to miss, and they provide an important background to everything that happens to the central characters. What's impressive though is how this comes across without ever becoming what the story is really about.

Theatre review: The Comedy About Spies

Mischief Theatre return to the London stage, and to their trademark incredibly literally-titled shows with The Comedy About Spies, a 1960s-set espionage spoof that sees Soviet spy Elena Popov (Charlie Russell) stake out a London hotel to meet a British double agent who's going to hand over state secrets. She prefers to work alone but she's been given a partner in Sergei (understudy Niall Ransome,) who's way too invested in his own cover story as a spleen doctor. Trying to stop them making the exchange are CIA agent Lance Buchanan (Dave Hearn,) who's accompanied by his mother Janet (Nancy Zamit,) who wants to ensure he doesn't get his cover blown again like in every other mission. Meanwhile hotel manager Albert (Greg Tannahill) thinks all the suspicious behaviour is because a mystery shopper is in the building to assess him.

Theatre review: Radiant Boy - A Haunting

Nancy Netherwood's Radiant Boy is subtitled "A Haunting," and is framed as the story of an exorcism. But horror fans will probably be disappointed as this is a gentler, more elusive kind of haunting, more Emily Brontë than William Peter Blatty. It's 1983 and Russell (Stuart Thompson) has returned from London, where he's been studying singing at a conservatoire, to the home where he grew up in a small town in the North-East of England. He and his mother Maud (Wendy Nottingham) are awkward and chilly around each other, and while Russell claims to be ill, he seems wary of whatever cure his mother might have in mind, to the point of making you wonder why he's come back in the first place. It transpires he's had a kind of fit that's affected him before, and this time it almost caused him to hurt someone he cares about.