Theatre review: Rhinoceros

Omar Elerian continues to be a big advocate of Eugène Ionesco's work, returning to the Almeida after The Chairs to adapt and direct Rhinoceros, a play whose wildness, chaos and horrors mirror the real-life situations it satirises. A quiet Sunday in a small village that may or may not be in France is disrupted when a rhinoceros charges through the square, later followed by a second one (or the same one doing a loop.) Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù plays Berenger, who's already got problems with alcohol before the play starts, and is unlikely to find it easier to cope once the rhinos start arriving - particularly as everyone else in town seems to view them as a minor inconvenience at most. But as the week goes on and everyone tries to get back to work, things are further disrupted as it becomes apparent this isn't an incursion of pachiderms from outside: The human residents are, one by one, turning into rhinos.

Theatre review: A Face in the Crowd

Kwame Kwei-Armah's final directing job at the Young Vic is a new musical by Elvis Costello (music and lyrics) and Sarah Ruhl (book,) that adapts the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd. Judging by the Wikipedia summary of Elia Kazan's film, some liberties have been taken with the plot to make it even more topically relevant, but it certainly seems like this was a story that called out for revisiting in a year full of high-profile elections. Marcia Jeffries (Anoushka Lucas) is a small-town radio host whose show focuses on regular people whose voices don't usually get heard - like the inmates of the county jail, where she finds Lonesome Rhodes (Ramin Karimloo,) being held for drunk and disorderly behaviour. When he sings a song that charms both her and her listeners she invites him to become a regular contributor, and within weeks his hokey folk wisdom has made him the star of the show.

Theatre review: Elephant

Another short writer-performer show premieres in the Bush's Studio space as Anoushka Lucas puts an Elephant in the room in a more literal way than it might first appear. Lucas plays Lylah, a young singer-songwriter who showed promise a few years ago, but whose career appears not to have taken off as well as hoped. Her story bounces around three periods, beginning with her childhood in the 1990s, growing up in a working-class London family with middle-class aspirations, who squeezed a piano into their small council flat to nurture her talent. Thanks to her French mother, she also manages to get a music scholarship to a French private school that will eventually help her get into Oxford. Her skin colour makes her an outsider and a target for bullies, but she succeeds in creating a more middle-class identity for herself even as her family move up in the world, buying and remodeling their flat.

Theatre review: Oklahoma!

Regular readers of this blog will both know I traditionally have certain reservations about musical theatre pioneers Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II - namely that if it weren't for the famous and beloved tunes, their work would fall somewhere between "horribly dated" and "nightmarishly distressing" and not get staged anymore. One of their shows I hadn't seen before - I don't think I've even seen the film - is their original, genre-defining hit Oklahoma! But Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein's production, which transfers to the Young Vic from New York, promised to come with a radical, twenty-first century reimagining of the musical Western about farmers trying to squeeze a bit of singing and dancing in between the relentless dry-humping. Because Fish and Fein's approach to the show is to dispense with any euphemisms and cuteness, and strip it down to a story about people who just want to have sex with each other (whether or not the other party is entirely consenting, because Hammerstein.)

Theatre review: Henry V (Donmar Warehouse)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Yet another show where the press night has been pushed back due to some preview performances having to be cancelled.

Welp, a grimly appropriate day to go see a show about a country being invaded because a neighbouring ruler has a sense of entitlement to it. The first Shakespeare production under the Donald and Margot Warehouse's current team sees Max Webster take on Henry V, with Kit "Christopher" Harington in the title role. Webster's production actually begins by taking us back to the Henry IV plays that precede it, and showing us Harington's Hal partying with thieves and cutthroats, before receiving news of his father's death. Foreshadowing events in the play itself, we see him refuse to make the promises of leniency for thieves his friends ask for, before ascending the throne and coldly rejecting his former close companion Falstaff (Steven Meo.) Once in power Henry wastes no time in making it clear his interests as king lie in expansion, specifically in building a spurious case for being rightful ruler of France. He makes demands that are inevitably rejected, and begins his invasion.

Theatre review: Chiaroscuro

After the explosion of new female artistic directors of London theatres earlier this year, this month sees the start of them all debuting in their new roles with productions that will inevitably be seen in part as a mission statement. It's something Lynette Linton acknowledges at the Bush: It's overwhelmingly a new writing venue but being the opener for a new regime can put a different kind of pressure on a premiere so I can understand Linton's motives for kicking off with a revival. In her introduction to the show, the director says she wants an ongoing theme at the Bush to be the stories of queer women of colour, so Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay's 1986 play Chiaroscuro fits the bill. Meanwhile integrating the music that formed part of the play, so that the women performing are also making their own music - something that becomes integral to the play's themes - gives the show its own identity.

Theatre review: Jesus Christ Superstar

We're going way back through the mists of time for this one, back to a time when Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) actually came up with more than two tunes per show, and Jesus Christ Superstar is all the better for it. Originally a concept album, it means that although it's staged fairly frequently, it's usually as a concert, so Timothy Sheader's full staging in Regent's Park is something of a rarity. Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice created a musical passion play with a sympathetic slant on the reviled figure of Judas (Tyrone Huntley.) Jesus Hector Christ (Declan Bennett) has been building a following for the last three years, and although Judas still believes in his teachings, he has three main concerns: That Jesus Horatio Christ doesn't quite practice what he preaches, especially in the case of Anoushka Lucas' (strong-voiced but not all that impactful) Mary Magdalene; that they're not helping the poor directly any more; and the refusal to deny rumours of being the actual son of God.

Theatre review: Klook's Last Stand

There's a film noir-ish feel to Klook's Last Stand but it's a tongue-in-cheek one, as the snappy back-and-forth in the bar where the leading man picks up the leading lady is present and correct, but it's a juice bar and Klook (Ako Mitchell) is buying Vinette (Sheila Atim) a carrot juice (hold the ginger.) An ex-con who's drifted around the USA getting fired from a number of jobs, Klook's journey has led him here to a much younger woman, who may be his soulmate or even his salvation. Ché Walker's play with songs follows the pair's spiky but mutually supportive relationship, the two actors backed by Rio Kai on guitar, keyboard and double bass. The skeletons in both their pasts threaten their relationship but those in Klook's could present a much more literal threat when his creepy boss takes a shine to Vinette.