Theatre review: Mad House

A few years ago Bill Pullman gave a memorable performance at the Old Vic in All My Sons, and now he returns to the West End to play a more grotesque, but no less scene-stealing character. And he's clearly not a star name who wants all the limelight for himself: After sharing top billing with Sally Field last time, he now shares it with David Harbour at a time when he must have known the latest season of Stranger Things would give him most of the attention. This time Pullman plays Daniel, the patriarch of a dysfunctional family in a small Pennsylvania town, whose wife died of cancer a year earlier, and who's now slowly dying of multiple organ failure himself. He doesn't want to die in a hospice so, with the help of palliative care nurse Lillian (Akiya Henry,) his primary caregiver is eldest son Michael (Harbour.) He's the only one of Daniel's children willing to do it, and it may just be because he needs somewhere to live after spending a year in a mental institution.

Theatre review: Hand to God

A pretty speedy transfer from Broadway to the West End - with the original creative team but a new British cast - for a show that's quickly gained a Marmite reputation, but ended up with me having no strong feelings either way. In Robert Askins' Hand to God, recently-widowed Margery (Janie Dee) is distracting herself from her grief by running a Christian puppetry class in the local church's basement, with the intention of getting teenagers to perform Bible stories at services. There's only three kids in her class though, and very little enthusiasm for the project, except from her son Jason (Harry Melling,) who's a bit too enthusiastic: Timid and bullied by classmate Timothy (Kevin Mains,) everything Jason has been repressing gets let out by his sock puppet Tyrone, who speaks to him even when they're alone, threatens violence if the boy tries to take him off his hand, and quickly becomes the dominant personality.