Theatre review: Hamlet (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

From Sir Andrew Aguecheek straight to Hamlet is an unusual career progression but it's the one George Fouracres has taken since joining the Globe's ensemble cast last summer. After two standout comic turns the announcement he'd be playing Shakespeare's most famous tragic lead was welcome news to me, especially after the last Hamlet I saw actively played against any trace of humour or likeability in the character. Sean Holmes' production is the first time the play's been tackled indoors in the Swanamaker, and the first in the venue since the current Artistic Director played the role in her opening season. And there's some similarities between this and the Michelle Terry version in a general approach that avoids one overarching conceit; but Holmes' production both takes this experimentation with ideas several steps further, and results in, for my money at least, a much more entertaining - if far from cohesive - evening overall.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure (Young Vic)

My third, and presumably last Measure for Measure of the year, and after a typically caustic, physical and anti-naturalistic one from Cheek by Jowl's Russian arm and an unsuccessful attempt to ramp up the bawdy comedy at the Globe, the Young Vic's production pitches it somewhere in the middle. Joe Hill-Gibbins returns to the venue where he made his name, although instead of the jelly that featured heavily last time he was here, he brings along the video cameras from his Edward II at the National. Miriam Buether's set is a plain wooden box that, when the curtains go back, is piled high with blow-up plastic sex dolls. This, it seems, is what the people of Vienna have been reduced to in the eyes of the Duke (Zubin Varla.) The city's morality laws are actually incredibly strict, so he's let them slip during the 19 years of his rule. He now feels this was a mistake, but he'd feel hypocritical enforcing them now himself. So he pretends to leave the city, posing as a friar to see what happens when he leaves the puritanical Angelo in charge. What could possibly go wrong?