Theatre review: Eurydice

How to tell an unconventional Eurydice story all the way to the end without Netflix cancelling it? Stella Powell-Jones' answer is of course to stick to the stage, and revive Sarah Ruhl's 2003 version of the Greek myth that sees it through the eyes of its doomed heroine. Eurydice (Eve Ponsonby) is in love with Orpheus (Keaton Guimarães-Tolley,) but their happy wedding party is overshadowed by the fact that her late father can't be there. But since he died her Father (Dickon Tyrrell) has been writing her letters from the Underworld, and on the wedding night a Nasty Interesting Man (Joe Wiltshire Smith) arrives promising to let her read one. It's of course a trap, and Eurydice is reunited with her father in the land of the dead much sooner than expected. And while the dead are meant to forget their lives, father and daughter together manage to remember, and rebuild their relationship.

Theatre review: The Merry Wives of Windsor(RSC / RST & Barbican)

I'd been fully expecting the RSC to announce that Antony Sher would return to the role of Sir John Falstaff "by" "popular" "demand" when the complete works got round to The Merry Wives of Windsor, but apparently King Lear marked the First Lady's retirement from Shakespeare so instead it's another RSC stalwart who gets a crack at one of the most popular characters, albeit in his least popular appearance. David Troughton plays Falstaff in a play rumoured, somewhat dubiously, to have been commissioned by Elizabeth I herself when she wanted to see more of the breakout star of the Henry IV plays. It's this legend Fiona Laird's production takes as its starting-point, with a Terry Gilliam-style animation of the Queen demanding Shakespeare get out of bed and write her a spin-off in two weeks (a timescale that, let's face it, isn't rendered entirely implausible by much of what follows.)