Theatre review: A Doll's House

Anya Reiss' adaptation of A Doll's House is a faithful one in that it follows the story beats and motivations of Ibsen's original, but also a modern one in that it identifies an archetype we can all recognise and agree is the villain of the piece: Finance bros. At the beginning of Joe Hill-Gibbins' production Nora (Romola Garai) has prepared for Christmas by maxing out her husband's credit card on decorations and gifts for their family, to make up for a pretty miserable time the previous year. She's not worried about paying off the debt: Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is selling his investment company and they'll be millionaires by January. Her excitement seems indistinguishable from anxiety though, as their successful year has come after Torvald's addiction issues almost brought their family down, and only very expensive rehab got him out of it.

Theatre review: Ghosts

The Swanamaker's tenth anniversary season opens with the venue's first venture into Ibsen - a classic playwright but still thoroughly modern by the standards of a Jacobean theatre. Thoroughly modern by most standards in fact - it's often commented how ahead of his time Ibsen was, and after the show Ben checked with me if this was a revival or a new play. Ghosts, which Joe Hill-Gibbins adapts and directs, was actually first seen in 1881 - well, seen in any territory that didn't immediately ban it. Oswald (Stuart Thompson) has returned to the remote Norwegian home he didn't actually spend much of his life in, having been sent off to study as an artist abroad - most recently he's been living a Bohemian life in Paris. The occasion is the tenth anniversary of his father's death, and his mother Helene (Hattie Morahan) is opening an orphanage in the name of a man remembered as a great moral force.

Theatre review: The Tragedy of King Richard The Second (Almeida)

Simon Russell Beale first made his name as a Shakespearean actor taking on roles that didn't always seem immediately obvious fits for him (I first saw him as Edgar in King Lear, then Ariel in The Tempest.) By contrast Richard II seems like a part he was born to play, but in recent years he's often said he regretted never getting the chance while he was young enough (the real king died aged 33, inasmuch as historical accuracy ever matters where Shakespeare's Histories are concerned.) If someone was going to come along and give him the chance to play the part in his fifties, it makes sense for it to be Joe Hill-Gibbins, never a director to get too hung up on the literal. Hill-Gibbins has restored the full original title The Tragedy of King Richard The Second but elsewhere he and Jeff James have ruthlessly cut down the text so the play comes in at a little over 90 minutes.

Theatre review: Absolute Hell

It takes a certain amount of confidence to call a play Absolute Hell, given the likelihood it’ll end up doing the reviewers’ job for them; of course Rodney Ackland’s 1945 play, not produced until 1952, was originally called The Pink Room, which is only going to result in people like me saying something vague and misinformed about vaginas, so maybe titles were just never his forte. Set shortly after VE Day and either side of the General Election that would put Labour in power, Absolute Hell takes place in the Vie En Rose Club, a private members’ bar run, nominally – her staff regularly grumble about doing all of the work for none of the credit – by Kate Fleetwood’s Christine. A seemingly gregarious hostess with a penchant for men in uniform who tends to get as drunk as any of her customers, she really cuts a painfully lonely figure who needs the club and its clientele to keep her from despair.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Young Vic)

My first two Shakespeare productions of the year fell on consecutive nights, and while both are comedies they couldn't present more of a contrast, even before I got to their respective theatres: Where I'd been looking forward to Twelfth Night, last year saw A Midsummer Night's Dream even more overexposed than usual, so I was approaching it with some trepidation. Added to that was the publicity promising a particularly dark approach to the play, a cliché that can usually be taken as meaning "we failed to actually make it funny," and in any case the nightmare flipside of the Dream is frequently-explored territory. In the runup to a royal wedding Hermia (Jemima Rooper) and Lysander (John Dagleish,) whose love is forbidden, escape the threat of death by fleeing to the forest. They're pursued by Demetrius (Oliver Alvin-Wilson,) in love with Hermia, and Helena (Anna Madeley,) in love with Demetrius.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure (Young Vic)

My third, and presumably last Measure for Measure of the year, and after a typically caustic, physical and anti-naturalistic one from Cheek by Jowl's Russian arm and an unsuccessful attempt to ramp up the bawdy comedy at the Globe, the Young Vic's production pitches it somewhere in the middle. Joe Hill-Gibbins returns to the venue where he made his name, although instead of the jelly that featured heavily last time he was here, he brings along the video cameras from his Edward II at the National. Miriam Buether's set is a plain wooden box that, when the curtains go back, is piled high with blow-up plastic sex dolls. This, it seems, is what the people of Vienna have been reduced to in the eyes of the Duke (Zubin Varla.) The city's morality laws are actually incredibly strict, so he's let them slip during the 19 years of his rule. He now feels this was a mistake, but he'd feel hypocritical enforcing them now himself. So he pretends to leave the city, posing as a friar to see what happens when he leaves the puritanical Angelo in charge. What could possibly go wrong?

Theatre review: Little Revolution

Alecky Blythe's biggest hit, the verbatim musical London Road, debuted in 2011, but away from the theatre that year's biggest news story was one that Blythe was out recording as the basis for her latest play. Little Revolution debuts three years on from the riots and looting that followed the killing of Mark Duggan by police, and focuses in particular on Hackney. Joe Hill-Gibbins' production goes back to Blythe's trademark performance style, which sees the play's "script" edited as an audio file from original interviews; the actors perform with earpieces through which this is played, so their performances retain the pace and cadences of the real people they're portraying. In keeping with the chaotic events it deals with the play has a particularly rough-and-ready feel, Ian MacNeil's design seeming to have almost blasted the Almeida apart to form a chipboard in-the-round set.

Theatre review: Edward II

Some shows generate a Marmite buzz right from the first preview, and that was definitely the case with the National's new Edward II, right up to the official reviews, which ran the gamut from one star to five. Described as "rarely-performed," I've actually seen Marlowe's play twice before, albeit in zero-budget fringe productions, and I've found it to be the strongest of his plays that I've seen. So I didn't see playing it on the National's biggest stage as a particularly big risk, and surely whatever you think of this production the play itself comes out of it very well. Having been a "rising" stage name for ages, John Heffernan finally gets top billing as Edward, the newly-crowned king whose first act is to recall from exile his lover Gaveston. Hated by the court, and distracting the king from the small matter of war with Scotland, Gaveston's presence inspires the barons into all-out rebellion against Edward.

Theatre review: The Changeling (Young Vic)

It's apparently double-barrelled name week at the theatre for me: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett on Monday, Harry Hadden-Paton last night and a triple dose tonight with Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and director Joe Hill-Gibbins - even the anti-heroine of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling is called Beatrice-Joanna. Contracted by her father (Howard Ward) to marry Alonzo (Duncan Wisbey,) Beatrice-Joanna (Jessica Raine) has her eye on Alsemero (Holdbrook-Smith) instead. Her solution is to charm detested servant De Flores (Daniel Cerqueira) into murdering Alonzo, but she hasn't counted on De Flores being obsessed with her, and demanding a reward she's not prepared to give willingly. Designer Ultz has created an industrial in-the-round set with seating on both levels of the Young Vic's Maria; I initially went in downstairs, but got the feeling parts of the set would block some of the action so went upstairs. From there, looking down on the action from behind netting, the feeling is of being at some kind of secret fight to the death.

The chaotic set is a reflection of Hill-Gibbins' production, which goes for a sense of surreal hysteria. Somewhat tenuously connected to the main plot is a subplot set in a lunatic asylum, where Lloyd-Hughes' Antonio pretends to be a patient so as to get to the asylum-keeper's wife (Charlotte Lucas.) If not so much the story, it's the tone of insanity about the subplot that ties in to the rest of the production, and James Farncombe's lighting is used to good effect in differentiating the play's various worlds.

Jacobethan tragedy can be so OTT as to be funny, and in marked contrast to the recent Southwark Playhouse production (frankly, far from the only way in which this production has the edge) the director has embraced its extremes. Jelly, punch and trifle feature both in the violence, and in the sex during the bed trick that gives the play its title. Although if the chocolate sauce was meant to signify what I thought it was, someone ought to see a doctor. The production's full of ideas, which is good, even if they don't always work - it takes quite a while for the story to take shape, and one very clever visual device is used a couple of scenes after it could have provided a helpful shorthand to what had happened offstage. It's a well-acted production though, and one whose energy and tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter makes it memorable.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley is booking until the 25th of February at the Young Vic's Maria (returns only according to the website, although tonight I could see about a dozen empty seats.)

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.