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

I hope what I've seen so far of the 2026 summer season at Shakespeare's Globe isn't a sign of things to come, as it could spell the beginning of the end of my relationship with one of my favourite venues: After avoiding it for years due to the original management's insistence on original practices sounding a bit theme parky, once I started going I loved the genuine exploration of how the space helps actors play with the text, as well as it becoming one of the few companies where you could count on catching the odd Shakespearean rarity. The latter has been stymied to the point of non-existence recently by economic demands, and the venue has depended a lot on the four most popular comedies - AMND, As You Like It, Much Ado and Twelfth Night.

Theatre review: Reykjavik

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I caught Reykjavik's final preview performance before they invite the press in.

Add Richard Bean to the ever-growing list of playwrights who really just want to write a ghost story: It's fair to say I've had mixed reactions to his plays, but while the writer's biggest hits have been with comedy, the mournful, haunted Reykjavik is probably the best of his plays that I've seen. Set in 1976, with the Cod Wars (Iceland demanding, and invariably getting, an increasingly large area of exclusivity for fishing its waters) nearing their end, the fishing industry that makes up a huge proportion of Hull's economy looks under serious threat. But for Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth,) whose company owns several boats, there's a more immediate problem: One of his trawlers has sunk in the freezing waters off Iceland, and all but four of the crew are dead. It's something all the trawlermen know is a possibility, and the city has traditions for dealing with it.