Theatre review: The Go-Between

"How long is the show?" I heard another audience member ask an usher. "It ends at ten past ten." "But that's FOREVER!" How prescient an appraisal that turned out to be of The Go-Between, David Wood (book and lyrics) and Richard Taylor's (music) chamber musical that would probably have been dull enough in an actual chamber, but dies a slow, agonising death on a West End stage. Based on the L.P. Hartley novel famous for the line "The past is a foreign country - everyone in it's dead now and you'll wish you were too if you're watching this" (I may be paraphrasing slightly,) Michael Crawford returns to the stage to play Leo Colston, who looks back through his diaries from the summer he turned 13, and spent three weeks of his holidays at the house of school friend Marcus (Samuel Menhinick, alternating with Archie Stevens and Matty Norgren.)

Theatre review: A Further Education

A shaky start could resolve itself in great things or a complete nosedive; true of many people's first year at university, and of Will Mortimer's debut play about a mature student, A Further Education. At an unnamed (more on this later) university, new tutor Chris (Oliver Hembrough) has three first year students in his tutorial group. Straight out of school are Lydia (Isabella Laughland) and Joshua (Makir Ahmed,) while Charlotte (Stella Gonet) is a local, much older but sharper than any of them when it comes to dissecting the classics. Her grades are high and her fellow-students quickly accept her in their social circle as well, and she even ends up becoming friendly with the strident but scatty new Vice-Chancellor Rachel (Issy van Randwyck.) There's more than just her age and the breadth of her knowledge that sets Charlotte apart from the rest of the students though, and Joshua and Lydia soon stumble upon a secret about her.

Theatre review: Raving

Actor Simon Paisley Day turns playwright with a familiar comic setup: Three couples go on what is meant to be a relaxing weekend together, but end up in one catastrophe after another, their friendships, and sometimes their relationships, tested. Ross (Robert Webb) is a PR man whose orange wife Rosy (Sarah Hadland) takes him at his word that he's blameless on the various occasions she's caught him with a half-naked au pair. They've rented a Welsh cottage and invited their friends Briony (Tamzin Outhwaite) and Keith (Barnaby Kay) to spend the weekend with them, in the hope that it'll help Briony, a fretful mother, relax. But her chances of calming down aren't helped when she realises that the braying Serena (Issy van Randwyck) and Charles (Nicholas Rowe) have also been invited, and when the latter couple's sexually-forward teenage niece crashes the party as well, the results range from awkward revelations to slapstick violence in Raving.

Theatre review: The American Clock

In recent years a number of theatres have commissioned new plays looking at the current financial crisis, its causes and historical precedents. True to form, Neil McPherson at the Finborough has instead done some digging to find a theatrical great who'd already written such a play, only for it to fall into obscurity. Arthur Miller's The American Clock was nominated for an Olivier in 1986 but hasn't been seen in London since. Arthur A. Robertson (Patrick Poletti) was a wealthy businessman who predicted the Great Depression, put all his money into gold and managed to hold onto his wealth as a consequence, able to observe the chaos the USA fell into in the 1930s. Robertson acts as narrator, as Miller uses Studs Terkel's book of interviews Hard Times as inspiration to tell the stories of dozens of people who faced financial ruin.