Theatre review: Habeas Corpus

The Menier Chocolate Factory tends to feel like London's most conservative, if not most Conservative theatre, and as such some of its safe programming choices for a coffin-adjacent audience base can translate to disinterring creaky old farces that should have stayed buried in the 20th century. But if the farce in question is an early Alan Bennett play (early, I mean he was forty but these things are relative,) and it's directed by the prolific but usually reliable Patrick Marber, I'm prone to think it might be worth checking out anyway. Unfortunately both writer and director seem to have made a colossal error of judgement where Habeas Corpus is concerned: With a plot set in a doctor's surgery and an approach that tries to dig up the darker side of farce's obsession with sex, the play feels like it could be paying homage to Joe Orton's What The Butler Saw*. Except that play's genuinely sexy, shocking and funny.

Stage-to-screen review: What the Butler Saw

A second virtual trip to Leicester, where the Curve Theatre has actually been ahead of the curve so to speak as one of the first venues to get its online alternative to live performances up and running. As with Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual the next show they've made available has a Leicester connection, as it was the birthplace of Joe Orton (I don't think he had much good to say about the place, but in fairness he was Joe Orton, he didn't have much good to say about anything.) What the Butler Saw was his final play, in which he delivers every beat of the perfect farce while breaking all the genre's unwritten rules. The setting is the Hampstead mental health clinic run by Dr Prentice (Rufus Hound) and his wife, and as the curtain rises the doctor is "interviewing" prospective secretary Geraldine (Dakota Blue Richards,) a process which involves making her strip for a medical examination with a view to sexually assaulting her.

Theatre review: The Libertine

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Despite already having had a full run in Bath, this doesn't seem to have invited the newspaper critics in yet.

A comedy about the Restoration, as opposed to a Restoration Comedy, although we do see something of that genre's creation in The Libertine, a 1994 play by Stephen Jeffreys first seen at the Royal Court and now getting a West End revival from Terry Johnson. George Etherege's best-known work The Man of Mode* is reputed to have been based on the real-life 2nd Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, and it's Rochester (Dominic Cooper) that Jeffreys puts centre-stage, a favourite of Charles II (Jasper Britton) which is probably the only reason he managed to avoid execution. A regular at London's playhouses, except when he's been banished to the country for pissing off the king, at the start of the play Rochester returns from one such involuntary trip to find a new actress in town: Lizzie Barry (Ophelia Lovibond) is routinely booed off the stage for what, compared to the highly stylised acting style of the time, seem like incredibly unenthusiastic performances.

Theatre review: The Jew of Malta

Ever since I first read Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta a few years ago I've been keen to see it on stage; not necessarily because of its virtues as a piece of writing, but to see how a 21st century production would cope with the aggressive antisemitism and racism that is even more at the heart of this story than it is in The Merchant of Venice. I thought it might crop up on the fringe at some point but in the event it was one of the country's biggest companies that took on the challenge, with Justin Audibert getting a baptism of fire on his RSC directing debut. The solution he's come up with is an interesting one, particularly in light of the fact that Merchant's LOLantisemitism attitude is often dealt with by ramping up the play's dark side: The opposite happens here, Marlowe's bloodthirsty and vicious revenge tragedy revealed as a black comedy.

Theatre review: Henry IV Part 2 (RSC / Barbican)

Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 2 follows straight on where Part 1 left off: King Henry's forces have beaten the rebels led by Hotspur, but the unrest hasn't died with him, and the Archibshop of York (Keith Osborn) plans to lead a fresh wave of rebellion. But unlike the battle scenes of the first play, this insurgence will be beaten down with politics, and the machinations of Prince John of Lancaster (Elliot Barnes-Worrell.) His older brother Hal (Alex Hassell,) meanwhile, is about to show his own true colours as well: Henry IV (Jasper Britton) is dying, and while Hal is still keeping up the image of the playboy prince slumming it in an Eastcheap tavern, his mind is already on what kind of king he's going to be. As for Falstaff (Antony Sher,) more civil wars on the horizon mean more opportunities to line his own pockets under the pretext of recruiting soldiers.

Theatre review: Henry IV Part 1 (RSC / Barbican)

Antony Sher takes on his new mantle as First Lady of the RSC by playing Falstaff in Shakespeare's two most acclaimed Histories, the Henry IV plays. Following on from last year's Richard II in Gregory Doran's complete History sequence, Part 1 reminds us of quite how tenuous the new King Henry's (Jasper Britton) hold on his crown is, his coronation haunted by the ghost of Alanis Morisette. And Britton continues to play him as a man with little that's royal about him, more of a politician with a touch of the warrior than a true-born king. The Percys of Northumberland helped him claim the throne, but when he offends them they mount a new rebellion. The support of the Prince of Wales will be essential to help crush it, but Hal (Alex Hassell) shuns his father's court, spending all of his time getting drunk in Eastcheap with Poins (Sam Marks) and committing petty crime with Falstaff.

Theatre review: Race

At some point David Mamet must have decided that dealing with a single inflammatory topic in 85 minutes wasn't enough for him, hence Race which covers both rape and racial politics in a legal drama that never actually sets foot in a courtroom. Following an ongoing sexual relationship with a much younger black woman, white millionaire Charles Strickland (Charles Daish) has been accused by her of rape. Having left his original lawyer, Strickland turns up at the offices of Jack Lawson (Jasper Britton) asking him to take on his case - the fact that Lawson's business partner Henry Brown (Clarke Peters) is black will, he hopes, stand in his favour with the jury. The lawyers aren't keen to take him on but an error by Lawson's protégée Susan (Nina Toussaint-White, who regenerated into River Song on Doctor Who) sees them legally bound to represent him. The race is now on to second-guess how the case's racial makeup will affect the jury, and find the one piece of evidence so compelling it'll override it.