Theatre review: The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde's famous comedy about an imaginary friend who seems to have a busier social life than any of the "real" characters is one I do think is very funny, but it's produced so often and the aphorisms are so famous that it's hard to be surprised by it. So I need a good excuse to see any particular production. Max Webster's new revival of The Importance of Being Earnest has a big selling point in that it's always a big deal when the current Doctor takes to the stage, but what sold it for me was that Ncuti Gatwa was just part of a cast heavy on openly LGBTQ+ stars. The rather dubious "fact" that keeps getting rolled out for this play's title is that "Earnest" was a private Victorian code for gay people to identify each other, like an early version of Polari. The fact that I've never seen this referenced in any other context makes me suspect the only real pun in the title is the one that's right there in the last line of the play, but I did think we might be in for a version that focuses on the campness of the characters, and the metaphor in their double lives.

Stage-to-screen review: The Piano Lesson

Maybe we should change the theory that most playwrights secretly just want to write a ghost story, and accept that all of them do. America's great chronicler of the 20th century August Wilson did so in the 1930s instalment of his play cycle, and while by all accounts Malcolm Washington's film version has edged more into horror movie tropes than the original suggests, Wilson's The Piano Lesson does centre on a literal ghost as a way of dragging up a whole lot of metaphorical ones. The literal ghost is that of Sutter, last descendant of a slave-owning family, who's recently died in vaguely suspicious circumstances. Boy Willie (John David Washington) brings news of his death to his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) in Pittsburgh. Their own ancestors were slaves owned by Sutter's family, and while it's been decades since their emancipation a grim connection to their former owners has continued through the generations.

Theatre review: All's Well That Ends Well(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

The latest winter season at Shakespeare's Globe will include a major playwright who's never appeared in the Swanamaker before, but first two Shakespeares both of which have already made a previous appearance in the candlelit Playhouse; and from my own experience All's Well That Ends Well for one certainly seems to work better indoors than outdoors. Chelsea Walker's production is an edited, speedy one that comes in at a little over two hours, and if it loses anything in clarity of storytelling it gains in clarity of character development. It doesn't make the leads any less icky, but it does eliminate some of the tonal whiplash in the way they're portrayed. Helen (Ruby Bentall) is the daughter of a recently-deceased doctor, who travels to Paris to treat the dying King (Richard Katz) with one of the miracle cures she inherited from him.

Theatre review: Barcelona

Taking two Netflix stars closely associated with Madrid and Paris and throwing them together in a third European city, Bess Wohl's Barcelona is an entertaining story so full of red herrings that even trying to describe a genre for it feels like a spoiler. Its plot does hinge on quite a lot of elements that probably don't bear too much close inspection - I hear that hen dos have got a lot more expensive and elaborate since we took Alex to an Eighties disco night, but was a 12 hour+ flight each way for a hen weekend considered normal a decade later in 2009, when the play is set? Well that's what's brought Irene (Lily Collins) to Barcelona, where she's slipped away from her group to hook up with the man she'd been flirting with in a bar, Manuel (Álvaro Morte.) He's brought her back to a small apartment with a great view of Sagrada Família, a beautiful horizon like a jewel in the sun.

Theatre review: King James

After being very disappointing in 2023, Hampstead Theatre has been getting back into my good books this year, and a strong autumn season continues with King James. Hot on the heels of the Guards at the Taj revival, Rajiv Joseph gives us another two-hander about a platonic male friendship, although while this one also reaches a crisis it's a mercifully bloodless one. We also get to see the relationship right from its inception, as it begins in the Cleveland wine bar where Matt (Sam Mitchell) works. His wages there certainly don't cover the amount of debt he's in, because he's having to sell the remaining games on his season ticket for the local basketball team, the Cavaliers, seats he and his father have sat in all his life. What makes it particularly heartbreaking is that this is the 2003-4 season, in which after decades without any silverware the team has signed teenager LeBron James, a player who went on to become so famous even a British audience is likely to have heard of him, even if we couldn't tell you his full history with the "Cavs."

Theatre review: Wolves on Road

Following Beru Tessema's well-received House of Ife, the playwright returns to the Bush for another story with family at its heart, but this time also taking in much wider social and financial themes, as Wolves on Road dips its toe into cryptocurrency - and suggests that's probably as deep into that particular world it's safe to get into. Manny (Kieran Taylor-Ford) is looking to get rich quick, but so far his instincts to resell designer goods online have just resulted in him being saddled with a pile of fakes even the local market stalls won't take off him. His best friend Abs (Hassan Najib) gets him into a crypto app, and after his initial reservations Manny gets sucked into the seemingly limitless possibilities for growth. But the big money will come if they can get in on a new currency at the start, and a local boy done good has come up with a new app that combines crypto with a money transfer service.

Theatre review: The Duchess [of Malfi]

Poor the Jodie Whittaker, they keep doing her dirty. I still maintain, based on what I've seen of her in interviews, that she could have been an absolute natural as The Doctor, but she spent her entire run on Doctor Who surrounded by so many companions you could blink and miss her. Now she returns to the stage in one of the most iconic roles in theatre, but in a translation that's neither the original nor quite a reinvention, leaving her flailing in an evening that feels little more than just a bit skewwhiff. Zinnie Harris' play, originally announced under the title The Duchess, had by the time it opened been quietly retitled The Duchess Open Square Brackets of Malfi Close Square Brackets, perhaps to help attract school parties: The website says this play is studied in the A Level English Literature curriculum.

Theatre review: The Fear of 13

The Donald and Margot Warehouse celebrates the start of its Timothy Sheader era by hiking the price of my preferred seats by almost 150%, so I was in a slightly worse seat than usual for a mere 50% or so rise for the opening show, Lindsey Ferrentino's The Fear of 13. Though at times an onslaught of implausible events it's firmly in the "truth is stranger than fiction" camp as, with the exception of the character of Jackie who we're told is partly fictionalised to protect her identity, it's based on a documentary film covering true events: Jackie (Nana Mensah) is a graduate student interviewing inmates of a Pennsylvania high security prison on behalf of an advocacy group, and is eventually drawn to the story of quietly charming Death Row inmate Nick Yarris (Adrien Brody,) convicted in 1982 of a particularly grisly murder. Nick has become a prolific reader in prison, and has educated himself to become a compelling storyteller.

Theatre review: The Devil Wears Prada

For the second week in a row Phill and I went to a show we'd had tickets to for over a year, and after that wait we can now definitively say that Elton John (music,) Shania Taub & Mark Sonnenblick (lyrics) and Kate Weatherhead's (book) The Devil Wears Prada is a thing that happened on a stage, while we were facing in its direction. Based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger and particularly the 2006 David Frankel film adaptation, it's a Ronseal musical: It does exactly what it says on the tin, no more, no less. Georgie Buckland plays Andy, the aspiring journalist who's been unable to break into the industry in the way she'd hoped, so as a last-ditch attempt somehow wangles a job many young women are fighting over: Second Assistant to Miranda Priestly (Vanessa Williams,) fearsome editor-in-chief of fashion magazine Runway.

Theatre review: The Ungodly

Transferring to Southwark Playhouse's Little from Ipswich, Joanna Carrick's The Ungodly starts during the Civil War, continuing through England's years of Puritanical rule, and essentially serves as a villain origin story for The Witchfinder General. But unlike most stories about witch-hunts, whether literal or metaphorical, it spends very little of its time on people who use the persecution of others to further their own agendas: For the most part these characters are true believers. At the centre of the story is Nadia Jackson as Susan, and her relationship with Richard (Christopher Ashman,) who we first meet proposing to her at an inopportune time - she's just buried the child her late sister had asked her to raise. The pair will eventually marry, but their generally happy relationship will be clouded by them losing four children of their own.

Theatre review: One Man Musical

One of this year's best-reviewed Edinburgh shows gets a limited London run as musical comedy duo Flo & Joan take on writing duties, but a back seat in performance as they provide musical support and cede centre stage to the most influential man in musical theatre history (he assures us,) His Brittanic Excellency, The Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB. One Man Musical sees George Fouracres as ALW go over his life story, from his perfectly normal childhood as an obsessive fan of gothic architecture, to his first marriage to Sarah One, whom he met while she was at school and he... wasn't, but everything was definitely above board. She was old enough to drive at the time, anyway.

Theatre review: Guards at the Taj

As well as being one of the most famous man-made landmarks on Earth, Taj Mahal in Agra, India is known as something of a romantic symbol of love, built as it was by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a tribute to his favourite wife after her death. But there's also an enduring legend that he decreed no other structure should ever match its beauty, and to ensure this had the hands cut off the 20,000 workers who built the monument so they could never work on anything else. Rajiv Joseph's 2015 play Guards at the Taj deals with this contrast of profound beauty and extreme cruelty that the Taj represents, and Adam Karim revives it at the Orange Tree as this year's JMK Award winning director. During the 16 years of construction, the monument was hidden from public view behind a wall, and the play opens a few hours before dawn comes and the Taj is finally revealed.

Theatre review: Dr. Strangelove

Welp, October's been a busy theatrical month for me and certainly one with a certain prevailing tone - the odd dud among a very high rate of great shows, but good or bad there's definitely been a pretty dark side to everything I've seen. Even the funnier shows have had a touch of bleakness to them, so it's fitting that I end on the play with easily the biggest hit rate of laughs this month; but it gets them from the total annihilation of all life on earth. A long-awaited West End event - tickets went on sale over a year in advance - Armando Iannuci and Sean Foley adapt Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove, with Steve Coogan one-upping Peter Sellers in the film by playing all four roles Sellers had originally been slated to play: Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, Major Kong and the titular character, a German scientist who's definitely glad to have changed sides after the War - the fact that his bionic right arm keeps trying to do a Nazi salute is neither here nor there.

Theatre review: A Raisin in the Sun

As the first play by a black female writer ever to be staged on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun gets an automatic entry into the history books, and has inspired at least two response plays that I've seen, the farcical Clybourne Park and darker Beneatha's Place. So it feels well overdue to get the chance to see the original, and in Tinuke Craig's production the 65-year-old play proves itself worth the attention for more than just getting there first. In an overcrowded Chicago apartment that shares its bathroom with several other families, the Youngers are led by matriarch Lena (Doreene Blackstock,) although her son Walter Lee (Solomon Israel) would dispute who gets to be head of the family. Their lifestyle is about to change, although they don't know quite how: A $10,000 cheque from her husband's life insurance is due in the post any day now, but Lena has so far been tight-lipped about what she plans to do with it.

Theatre review: Othello (RSC / RST)

After a soft-launch of comparatively rare plays in generally fun productions, the Evans/Harvey era of the RSC gets its first big-ticket Shakespeare revival, and all I can say is I hope the opening six months are a more accurate sign of what's to come than Tim Carroll's interminable, dusty go at Othello. Judith Bowden's costumes put us squarely in the original setting of Renaissance Venice, enjoying a period of sustained military success in large part thanks to the black general Othello (John Douglas Thompson.) As such, when Turkey invades the Venetian colonies in Cyprus, he has to interrupt his honeymoon to lead the counter-attack, but he takes his new wife Desdemona (Juliet Rylance) with him, and they remain there for the handover of power. But unbeknownst to him Othello has an enemy in his most trusted lieutenant, Iago (Will Keen.)

Theatre review: Oedipus (Wyndham's)

The same plays or themes do sometimes crop up several times in quick succession - particular stories will strike multiple people as topical after all, and theatres can be too far into their own production by the time they find out someone else has had the same idea - but earlier this year two competing productions of Sophocles' Oedipus were announced within minutes of each other, which has to be some kind of record. At least they're not quite overlapping, and first motherfucker out of the gates is Mark Strong, who plays the tragic king for adaptor-director Robert Icke. It's a return to Greek Tragedy after Icke's epic Oresteia, but while there's a lot that's powerful about the performances, the overall show didn't live up to its predecessor for me. We're in a modern political story, in a state that isn't named, but the Greek writing on the screens suggests it's a version of the original's Thebes.

Theatre review: Reykjavik

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I caught Reykjavik's final preview performance before they invite the press in.

Add Richard Bean to the ever-growing list of playwrights who really just want to write a ghost story: It's fair to say I've had mixed reactions to his plays, but while the writer's biggest hits have been with comedy, the mournful, haunted Reykjavik is probably the best of his plays that I've seen. Set in 1976, with the Cod Wars (Iceland demanding, and invariably getting, an increasingly large area of exclusivity for fishing its waters) nearing their end, the fishing industry that makes up a huge proportion of Hull's economy looks under serious threat. But for Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth,) whose company owns several boats, there's a more immediate problem: One of his trawlers has sunk in the freezing waters off Iceland, and all but four of the crew are dead. It's something all the trawlermen know is a possibility, and the city has traditions for dealing with it.

Theatre review: Eurydice

How to tell an unconventional Eurydice story all the way to the end without Netflix cancelling it? Stella Powell-Jones' answer is of course to stick to the stage, and revive Sarah Ruhl's 2003 version of the Greek myth that sees it through the eyes of its doomed heroine. Eurydice (Eve Ponsonby) is in love with Orpheus (Keaton Guimarães-Tolley,) but their happy wedding party is overshadowed by the fact that her late father can't be there. But since he died her Father (Dickon Tyrrell) has been writing her letters from the Underworld, and on the wedding night a Nasty Interesting Man (Joe Wiltshire Smith) arrives promising to let her read one. It's of course a trap, and Eurydice is reunited with her father in the land of the dead much sooner than expected. And while the dead are meant to forget their lives, father and daughter together manage to remember, and rebuild their relationship.

Theatre review: Statues

Azan Ahmed's Statues, which he also performs in, starts with his character Yusuf entering the flat he grew up in, that he hasn't spent much time in as an adult: His mother moved to Pakistan after his parents divorced, and his father Mustafa, who lived there alone, was an emotionally distant man whom his son remembers as barely even speaking. But as he clears out the flat after his father's death, Yusuf discovers some tapes left behind. After the necessary comedy sequence about anyone younger than Gen X not being able to operate a cassette player, he discovers that when he was younger Mustafa had been a rapper, with witty lyrics covering both his love life and experiences as a British Muslim, and some very catchy tunes (composed by Holly Khan.)

Theatre review: Land of the Free

simple8's return to the stage in 2024 saw them revive an old hit, and now premiere a completely new play - although I'm not sure Land of the Free will have quite as much call for revival as Moby Dick. Sebastian Armesto (also directing) and Dudley Hinton's play looks at a classic American villain, John Wilkes Booth, the first successful presidential assassin. Wilkes (Brandon Bassir) was an actor who we first meet as a teenager with his siblings, rehearsing the assassination scene from Julius Caesar behind their father's back. Junius Booth (Owen Oakeshott) was a successful Shakespearean actor who forbade his children from following him into the profession, but he was also an alcoholic and bigamist whose career, and family reputation were ruined when these secrets were exposed, somewhat undermining his authority.