Theatre review: Twelfth Night or What You Will(Shakespeare's Globe)

Despite its wintery title the season Twelfth Night is most commonly associated with is Autumn, usually accompanied by some variation of the dreaded phrase "Shakespeare's melancholy farewell to comedy" in the blurb. Well there's certainly something autumnal about Robin Belfield's production at the Globe, but it's more pagan harvest festival than sad falling leaves. Under a gold wooden sun and featuring a wicker man, Jean Chan's design is all brashly colourful carnival outfits. It's a mood that's infected almost everyone in Illyria, including its Duke who's often seen opening the play lounging moodily on cushions. Instead Solomon Israel's Orsino is definitely up for the party, and is just a bit annoyed that the girl he fancies isn't joining in, or returning his interest - and all because she's still in mourning for all the men in her family dropping dead over the course of a couple of months, honestly some people, such drama queens.

Theatre review: The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare's Globe)

Despite being a spin-off for one of Shakespeare’s best-loved characters, The Merry Wives of Windsor’s main claim to fame is a highly dubious story about Queen Elizabeth I wanting to see “Falstaff in love” (which if it were true would surely have seen Shakespeare at the very least spend some time in the stocks because love… ain’t really what Falstaff’s in here*.) Not that the play’s one of the harder comedies to get a laugh out of, but it’s rarely one of the big hitters either. Now Elle While’s production for Shakespeare’s Globe comes along to make a solid case for this proto-sex farce as, if far from the subtlest of comedies, one that can deliver reliable laughs all evening. It doesn’t hurt that While has brought back, from last year’s rep company, someone whose name in the casting announcement instantly makes a production a must-see: Pearce Quigley plays Sir John Falstaff, the viciously amoral but strangely likeable knight from the Henry IV plays.

Theatre review: As You Like It (Shakespeare's Globe)

The second show from the Globe’s new Michelle Terry-led ensemble is As You Like It, nominally paired with the Hamlet they’re playing it in rep with as “sibling” plays; to be honest what connections the company have found between the plays aren’t too obviously apparent, but if it doesn’t really come across as a double bill that’s no bad thing because where Hamlet was underwhelming, As You Like It is, well, much more like it. Although the idea of gender-blind casting has been gaining traction in recent years, it’s not often it feels as natural as in these ensemble shows – there tends to be the feel of it mainly being male roles assigned to women to redress the gender imbalance, with the odd recasting the other way so it’s not a box-ticking exercise. Not so in these plays, and particularly this one, where the casting announcement was exciting because it seemed more genuinely gender-blind than anything I’ve seen before: Regardless of gender, the roles assigned seemed like ones I thought would be an interesting match to that particular actor.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Shakespeare's Globe)

After the “teaser” of the touring Twelfth Night and Shrew, it’s time for the main season as Michelle Terry takes over as Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Not only has the venue gone back to having an actor in charge (the first one to hold the post will be returning later in the summer) but the idea of the productions being “actor-led” has been heavily promoted leading up to her first season; in fact the new Globe Ensemble’s first pair of productions were originally announced as being put together without a director, although Federay Holmes and Elle While have since been brought in to fulfil that role. This reliance on actor input is apparent, in both positive and negative ways, in the opening show of the Terry era, and she’s come straight in to take on a challenge, playing the title role in Hamlet*. The Prince of Denmark is in mourning two months after the sudden death of his father, but the royal court around him has already moved on.

Theatre review: The Beaux' Stratagem

I can't remember when I last saw a Restoration comedy at the National, but it feels like it's been quite some time. Simon Godwin makes up for this with George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, which takes up residence in the Olivier with an impressive cast. Aimwell (Samuel Barnett) and Archer (Geoffrey Streatfeild) are a pair of noblemen whose love of the high life has left them close to penniless. Their stratagem is to travel the country, Aimwell posing as a wealthy lord and Archer as his footman, until they can find a pair of heiresses to marry. Aimwell finds one in Lichfield, but of course he falls for Dorinda (Pippa Bennett-Warner) for real. Archer also soon has eyes for her sister-in-law Mrs Sullen (Susannah Fielding) but she's still unhappily married to Dorinda's waster brother Sullen (Richard Henders.)

Theatre review: The Changeling

Love and lust are indistinguishable, and the purest of intentions don't stay that way for long in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. Beatrice-Joanna (Hattie Morahan) and Alsemero (Simon Harrison) fall for each other at first sight; unfortunately for them, this coincides with a marriage being arranged between Beatrice-Joanna and Alonzo (Tom Stuart.) Desperate to get rid of her unloved fiancé, she enlists a servant she's always feared and hated to get rid of him. De Flores (Trystan Gravelle) murders Alonzo, but the payment he demands of his mistress is higher than she expected, and puts her new engagement to Alsemero at risk. Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated story is playing out at a nearby madhouse. Antonio (Brian Ferguson) and Franciscus (Adam Lawrence) have both disguised themselves as lunatics in an attempt to seduce the warden's wife Isabella (Sarah MacRae.)

Theatre review: The Wolf From the Door

Revolution comes in the form of a black comedy fantasy in the first show of the Royal Court's new season, Rory Mullarkey's The Wolf From the Door. 25-year-old Leo (Calvin Demba) is jobless and homeless, but claims to be able to survive without eating, drinking, sleeping or sweating. When he meets eccentric aristocrat Lady Catherine at a train station and she takes him home, he assumes she wants him for sex, but her plans for him are much grander, and odder. Catherine (Anna Chancellor) is a leading light in an underground network of rebels and terrorists who've been meeting for months in innocuous-seeming groups to plot the overthrow of society. Discovering Leo, with his lack of apparent ties to that society, is the final piece of the puzzle, a figurehead for the revolution who will lead the country when the dust settles.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

Never let it be said that Dominic Dromgoole doesn't like the jig that ends every performance at Shakespeare's Globe. For his new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream he's not just reserved it for the end but given us one to open the show with as well - in this case it's a dance representation of the battle between Athenians and Amazons that sees Theseus take Hippolyta as his queen. And since we have Michelle Terry as Hippolyta you can be assured the conflict hasn't quite ended there - she may have accepted him but right from the start Terry makes it clear she won't be sitting back and letting him make all the decisions. This prickly brand of affection between her and John Light's Theseus is one the two actors carry over to their other roles as the Fairy King and Queen of the forest, Oberon and Titania - here a very earthy, animalistic pair of deities, the animal heads of the fairies not making it that much of a stretch to see Titania fall for Bottom when he gets one of his own.

Theatre review: The Winter's Tale (RSC / RST & tour)

Lucy Bailey's history at the RSC seems mainly to involve directing some of my least favourite Shakespeare plays. And Jo Stone-Fewings', for some reason, always requires him to lounge barefoot on piles of scatter cushions. Both memes are present and correct as Stone-Fewings plays Leontes in Bailey's production of The Winter's Tale. Leontes is the King of Sicilia, and has been friends with Bohemian King Polixenes since childhood. Despite years of happy marriage to Hermione, Leontes is gripped by am irrational jealousy (here strongly implied to be the result of a sudden mental illness) that his wife and best friend are having an affair, and that the baby Hermione is carrying is Polixenes'. The latter is warned in time to escape, but the Queen is subjected to a humiliating show-trial, and when Leontes' doubts are proven groundless he's punished by a series of personal disasters - which only the play's notorious lurch into magical pastoral fairytale can make better.

Theatre review: The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare's Globe)

It's far from being one of my favourite Shakespeares but The Taming of the Shrew has been cropping up a lot lately and now comes to Shakespeare's Globe in a production I was mostly looking forward to because Samantha Spiro would be taking on the role of Katherina. An incredibly tricky comedy to stage for a modern audience, it's one I always feel has to be overcome rather than simply interpreted. All the eligible bachelors of Padua are after the beautiful heiress Bianca, youngest daughter of Baptista. But before any of her suitors can win her hand, Baptista insists that his older daughter Katherina be married off first. This will be harder than it seems, as Katherina is famed for her bad temper. Enter Petruchio (Simon Paisley Day,) who says he'll not only marry the "Shrew" for her hefty dowry, but also tame her (through starvation and sleep deprivation) into the perfect wife.