Theatre review: Romeo & Juliet(Empire Street Productions / Harold Pinter Theatre)

What if, instead of giving a written instruction to a servant who can't read, you gave it to one who can? If Capulet (Clark Gregg) had handed the invitations to his ball to the Nurse (Clare Perkins,) she could have found the guests herself. Instead the illiterate Peter (Jamie Ankrah) needs help from a stranger in the street, who invites himself along to the party to stalk a girl he fancies. Once there Romeo (Noah Jupe) falls for Capulet's daughter Juliet (Sadie Sink,) who enthusiastically returns his interest. This teenage infatuation is given an entirely unnecessary sense of peril and urgency by the fact that the pair's families have an unexplained, deadly rivalry, leading them into an elopement within hours of their first meeting. A number of other avoidable accidents and violent acts interfere over the next couple of days, and trying to navigate them while keeping their big secret sees the affair end in tragedy.

Theatre review: KENREX

My online Show of the Year 2021 and even better live in 2022, nobody could accuse Cruise of lacking in ambition, but that's how its creator Jack Holden's follow-up makes it feel. Less obviously personal but with much more of an epic scope, KENREX takes Holden's monologue-with-songs format and applies it to a true crime documentary, one of those violent stories of isolated and twisted Americana. The isolated place in question is Skidmore, a Missouri town so small and remote it doesn't have a sheriff - if anyone makes a 911 call it'll take an hour for the police to turn up. This is something that local bully Ken Rex McElroy has taken advantage of throughout the 1970s, and his reign of terror has included violence, physical and sexual assault, arson, killing pets, theft of livestock, and general menace and intimidation of the town's population.

Theatre review: The Dumb Waiter

"It's not like Pinter where you can more or less say what you like so long as you leave enough gaps."

In what I suspect will be a pretty short window of time to catch live theatre in London before we get bumped up a tier, a classic Pinter makes a surprisingly swift return to the stage - it's less than two years since The Dumb Waiter was in the West End, but Hampstead Theatre were keen to mark the 60th anniversary of a show that premiered there in its own debut season. Planned to run last spring as part of the theatre's 60-year retrospective season, it does of course also feature a bubble-friendly cast of just two, with Alec Newman as Ben and Shane Zaza as Gus, a pair of mobsters who've been holed up all day in a basement room waiting for the instruction to carry out a hit on an unknown target. But when instructions do come, via the titular miniature elevator, they're confusing and increasingly extravagant food orders, seemingly intended for a restaurant kitchen that's long since closed.

Theatre review: Yen

Another Bruntwood Prize winner comes down to London, to the Royal Court Upstairs this time, with Anna Jordan's Yen taking us to a dark council flat in Feltham. 16-year-old Hench (Alex Austin) and his 13-year-old half-brother Bobbie (Jake Davies) are shirtless, barefoot and filthy, fending for themselves after their alcoholic mother Maggie (Sian Breckin) moved in with a new boyfriend who doesn't want them there. They left their clothes at their grandmother's to be washed, but she also ran off with a man so now they're down to one T-shirt between them for when they make a special trip outside - usually to shoplift some food. Hench sometimes has night terrors and wets the bed they share, while Bobbie has unspecified behavioural issues and is meant to go to a "unit" in the daytime; but it's the summer holidays and the boys spend their time in the flat drinking stolen beer, playing Call of Duty, watching porn and shouting at the dog, Taliban, they've got locked up in a bedroom. It's Taliban who brings a new face to the flat when concerned teenage neighbour Jenny (Annes Elwy) comes round to threaten to call the police if they don't stop mistreating the dog.