Theatre review: Please Please Me

As the title gives away, Tom Wright's Please Please Me deals with the Beatles - or at least with the outsider credited with making the world sit up and pay attention to them, their gay, Jewish manager Brian Epstein. That's Brian Epstein. We first meet Brian (Calam Lynch) working in his family's department store, nominally in the closet but with his various encounters with rough trade (all played by William Robinson) often proving dangerous, his father (Arthur Wilson) is well aware of what's going on. Following the advice of one of his regular hook-ups, he visits the Cavern Club to catch the band that's got Liverpool's teenage girls screaming, and despite having no experience in the field decides he has to become their manager - and convinces them to give him a go.

Theatre review: The Pitchfork Disney

Max Harrison, the latest of the select group of directors who seem to specialise in Philip Ridley's twisted fantasies, now takes on the writer's first, and one of his most famous works for the stage: The Pitchfork Disney sets for tone for Ridley's worlds that live somewhere at the intersection of a very recognisable East London and a surreal apocalyptic wasteland. Presley Stray (Ned Costello) has just returned from a daily trip to the shops, to bring back supplies of chocolate for himself and his twin sister Haley (Elizabeth Connick,) seemingly the only time that either of them ever leaves the run-down flat where they grew up. Ten years previously when they were eighteen, their parents both died in mysterious, suspicious circumstances, and since then they've cocooned themselves, finding a twisted kind of comfort in telling each other tales of an apocalypse that only they survived.

Theatre review: All's Well That Ends Well(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

The latest winter season at Shakespeare's Globe will include a major playwright who's never appeared in the Swanamaker before, but first two Shakespeares both of which have already made a previous appearance in the candlelit Playhouse; and from my own experience All's Well That Ends Well for one certainly seems to work better indoors than outdoors. Chelsea Walker's production is an edited, speedy one that comes in at a little over two hours, and if it loses anything in clarity of storytelling it gains in clarity of character development. It doesn't make the leads any less icky, but it does eliminate some of the tonal whiplash in the way they're portrayed. Helen (Ruby Bentall) is the daughter of a recently-deceased doctor, who travels to Paris to treat the dying King (Richard Katz) with one of the miracle cures she inherited from him.

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (RSC / RST & tour)

Continuing both the year's major Shakespearean theme of plays that only survive because of the First Folio, and my personal one of traipsing around the country to see Shakespeare plays I don't particularly like, the RSC's 2023 season moves onto Julius Caesar. Like Romeo and Juliet, this is one of the plays I find starts well enough then resolutely loses steam in its second half, and my favourite productions tend to be those that play without an interval, allowing the tension of the early conspiracy scenes to keep the more muddled later battle scenes going. The script is also pretty ambiguous about the validity of the conspiracy and the accusations against Caesar, allowing directors to explore a variety of possibilities in different productions. Atri Banerjee's production in the RST and on tour does have an interval; and while it certainly has a visual identity, what it's actually using it to say about the story is much less obvious.

Theatre review: Bacon

Teenage codependency at the Finborough where Sophie Swithinbank's Bacon sees two 15-year-old outsiders find a kind of escape with each other - before discovering they're as bad for each other as anything they're escaping. Middle-class Mark (Corey Montague-Sholay) has moved to a Catholic boys' school after his parents' divorce, and quickly finds he won't break into any of the established friendship cliques in any hurry, especially as a rather quiet, fussy and studious boy. Darren (William Robinson) has the swagger and intimidating talk of a bully, but fewer social skills than even that would suggest: He's suspended from school so often, he has as little a friendship circle there as Mark. They clash on Mark's first day, but then at every one of his attempts to socialise Darren seems to be around. When Darren frames Mark so they end up in detention together, one of the boys at least starts to admit to himself that this is becoming a weird kind of friendship, and that he's excited about it.