Theatre review: The Red Lion

When the two-and-a-half-hour Rules for Living got an 8pm start time in the Dorfman, word was this was an accident, caused by underestimating the run time. Well either that was a lie and shows are going to stick to the later time slot there regardless of how late that makes the finish, or the National have got really bad at judging running times because The Red Lion has an 8pm start time for a show of similar length. This is the centrepiece of Operation Get As Much As Possible Out of Patrick Marber Before His Writer's Block Returns, his first new play in 9 years. It's partly inspired by Marber's experience helping a failing football club avoid closure, and suggests he finds as much to dislike in football people as he does in humanity in general. The red lion is the logo of an unnamed non-league club not all of whose players get paid, leaving them open to the risk that as soon as they find a decent player, a professional club can easily swoop in to poach him with a better offer.

Theatre review: Teddy

Another new British musical, although playwright Tristan Bernays and composer Dougal Irvine have gone for the more accurate description "play with songs" for Teddy, set in the 1950s but right in the middle of where Southwark Playhouse is today, at the Elephant and Castle. It was then an area full of Teddy boys and girls, the first post-war teenage rebels who'd grown up with rationing and defined themselves as Edwardian dandies to indicate that there was more to them than their poverty. But the places they hang out are bomb sites that haven't been cleared yet, and Max Dorey's set design reflects the grubby environment that the likes of Teddy (Joseph Prowen) and Josie (Jennifer Kirby) bring their own brand of glamour to (costumes by Holly Rose Henshaw.) The pair meet in a makeshift nightclub in a bombed-out church, when Teddy helps Josie escape the attentions of a thuggish admirer.

Theatre review: King John (Shakespeare's Globe & tour)

Following runs at Temple Church and in Northampton one of only two standalone Shakespeare histories, King John, finally makes it to Shakespeare's Globe. It's part of the Magna Carta-themed Justice & Mercy season, and James Dacre's production does drop in a reference to that most famous - and unwanted - legacy of the king, even if Shakespeare himself famously didn't. Instead we follow King John (Jo Stone-Fewings) from his (first) coronation to his death, a reign whose every battle, treaty or political machination seems to instantly flop when chance throws a spanner in the works - usually in the form of a smug Papal Envoy (Joseph Marcell,) who likes to pop up occasionally to remind the various princes that the Vatican trumps their authority. With candles, incense and chanting hooded figures dominating Jonathan Fensom's design from the start, it's clear this is a world where the Church is a presence that's not to be messed with.

Theatre review: Duncton Wood

There's a number of new British musicals popping up on the fringe at the moment, and first for me is what will hopefully be the oddest offering, an adaptation of William Horwood's first novel Duncton Wood, about violent gangs of moles fighting over territory in and around the titular wood. I wouldn't want to try and be more specific than that about the story, as exactly what's going on is pretty much impossible to follow. Certainly the central couple are Bracken (Josh Little) and Rebecca (Amelia-Rose Morgan,) who don't actually meet until quite late in the show and both shag other people (/moles) but they do smell each other's scent around the wood often and are sure they're destined to be together. But Rebecca's father Mandrake (Anthony Cable) is the tyrannical leader of the mole gang. I think they're actually the Duncton Moles, which technically means Bracken is on their side, but I think it's the fact that he worships a magic stone that looks like a ball of string that makes him unpopular with Mandrake.

Theatre review: The Harvest

Michael Boyd never did get round to completing that Russian season he kept announcing when he was running the RSC, and he doesn't seem to have got it out of his system now he's back to freelance directing: The Harvest is by Pavel Pryazhko, originally from Belarus and apparently the current darling of Russian theatre. Boyd also brings with him a familiar face from the Ensemble^TM to keep him company: Dyfan Dwyfor plays Valerii, the informal leader - because he's done the job before - of a quartet making a bit of cash picking apples in a large orchard. Valerii instructs the others on how best to store the apples, while competing with Egor (Dafydd Llyr Thomas) for the attentions of Ira (Beth Park) and Lyuba (Lindsey Campbell.) This particular kind of apple is meant to be left to ripen for some months after picking, so a single bruised fruit in a crate is not to be allowed.

Theatre review: The Dogs of War

A programme note by author Tim Foley mentions that while The Dogs of War wasn't written as a political play, it's taken on some of that significance in light of the new Conservative majority. Certainly this Government isn't one likely to be friendly even to disabilities that are visible and obvious, and those that are invisible have often struggled to be taken seriously anyway. So mental health seems to be a subject matter the arts are increasingly trying to remind people exist, and it's certainly there to be seen in Foley's play, even if something else is invisible. Mam (Maggie O'Brien) has been mentally ill for many years, and when she had to leave work Dad (Paul Stonehouse) took early retirement to care for her. When their son Johnny left for university, they moved from Yorkshire to a remote little house in rural Northern Ireland.

Theatre review: The Elephant Man

A Broadway transfer that, unusually, comes to the West End with its entire original cast, The Elephant Man has of course had a lot of attention because if features that bloke who played Dr Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs, giving it his best Dick Van Dyke. But it turns out it also has Bradley Cooper from off of Alias in the title role of Joseph "John" Merrick, whose numerous physical deformities made him the star of a freak show. Once he's served his purpose there and is left to die, he's "rescued" by Dr Frederick Treves (Alessandro Nivola) who finds a home for him in his hospital, hoping to be able to study him and discover exactly what combination of illnesses caused Merrick's condition. This also, though, brings out the ordinary human in the carnival freak, and eventually Merrick becomes the fashionable star of Victorian high society.

Entertainment review: James Freedman: Man of Steal

After a short, sold-out run at the Menier Chocolate Factory James Freedman: Man of Steal gets a transfer to Trafalgar Studio 1, where on tonight's evidence it's not playing to houses quite as full - but if the box office takings aren't what what was hoped for, I'm sure Freedman knows a way or two to get a bit more cash out of his audiences. Although by his own promise he'd have to give it all back, as he describes himself as an "honest thief." Fascinated by pickpockets from an early age he became a master of the craft, but although he keeps himself well-practiced on the dummy he brings on stage with him, he uses his abilities to advise the police, and pass on warnings to the public in an entertaining way, in shows like this one. And it's definitely fun to watch, although chances are it'll leave you not so much entertained in the long run as paranoid.

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: Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby

Welcome to this year's installment of "Nick never learns his lesson about Beckett." I have, in fact, had a Beckett rule in place for some time, that rule being "no Beckett, ever," but I still seem to keep finding excuses to break it, whether it be Juliet Stevenson or the prospect of unusually attractive tramps. Lisa Dwan's performance of Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby, three short plays dealing in some way or other with women reflecting on their lives, has been knocking around for a couple of years, starting at the Royal Court then spending some time in the West End before touring extensively. I'd avoided it, but what finally changed my mind was a story about the production causing audience members to have panic attacks: Like the prospect of getting splashed with stage blood, this is the sort of thing I find a perverse kind of selling point.

Theatre review: Stony Broke in No Man’s Land

Many theatres took time in 2014 to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War beginning, but the Finborough's THEGREATWAR100 is an occasional series of programming due to keep returning until the centenary of its end. It means that in a few years' time we're sure to get a return of the theme as theatres mark the Armistice and the way the dead were memorialised, but the Finborough's current season steals a march on them as far as the latter subject goes: The main show took us to Australia for ANZAC Day, and the Sunday-Tuesday rep show brings us closer to home for John Burrows' Stony Broke in No Man's Land. David Brett and Gareth Williams play two old buskers who, some years after returning from the front, look back at the promises that the survivors' old jobs would be waiting for them, and the reality that saw them feel their sacrifice had been swiftly forgotten.

Theatre review: Shock Treatment

Famous flops are, of course, often revived years later to great acclaim, so that isn't what kept me away from Shock Treatment so long - especially since Julie Atherton leads the cast. But the King's Head's scheduling of the show at 10pm or midnight showings put me off until now, when the show's success has seen its run extended, and I could make a Sunday matinee performance. Richard Hartley, Richard O'Brien and Jim Sharman's sequel to The Rocky Horror Show took the opposite path to the original by being made into a film first - it was a critical and box office failure, meaning it hasn't turned up on a stage until now, with a new book by Tom Crowley. Brad (Ben Kerr) and Janet (Atherton) are now a married couple settled into small-town American anonymity, but Brad losing his job and Janet becoming the breadwinner has put a strain on their marriage.

Theatre review: Sunspots

Family drama mixes with romantic comedy in the latest play Downstairs at Hampstead, and the best show in either of the venue's theatres in some time. In David Lewis' Sunspots Catholic siblings, lapsed to varying degrees, are reunited after their father's death. Clare (Clare Burt) never moved more than a few blocks away from her parents but eldest brother Joe (Robert Hands) has lived in California for the last couple of decades. Having struggled with his sexuality well into his thirties, he finally came out to his mother, but now that Olive (Gwen Taylor) has mild dementia he finds he has to come out to her again on an almost daily basis. Joe keeps muttering about returning to America, but youngest brother Tom (Laurence Mitchell) doesn't have as many options: Having lost the latest in a long line of jobs, he's had to move back in with his mother, settling into the attic room where his amateur astronomer father kept his telescope.

Theatre review: Temple

Following his Lear last year Simon Russell Beale has said he's not quite ready to find a way of topping that challenge in the classics, so this year he's appearing in two new plays instead. First up is Temple, Steve Waters' fictionalised version of the Occupy London movement in 2011, which ended up camped outside St Paul's Cathedral. Among safety fears, the Cathedral was closed - an unprecedented event in a church that stayed open throughout the Blitz, and a place of worship that predates the City of London itself. SRB plays an unnamed, fictional version of the Dean of St Paul's, on whom responsibility for every decision taken eventually falls. It's St Jude's Day - patron saint of lost causes - and after a fortnight closed to the public, the Cathedral will be reopening its doors, with the Dean himself leading the morning Eucharist.

Theatre review: Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage

An interesting day to see Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, as today director Max Stafford-Clark has been interviewed for an article about how, despite great reviews, his latest touring show has played to dwindling audiences, blaming arts funding cuts for the regions losing their taste for new theatre. Of course, last year's offerings from Out of Joint were This May Hurt A Bit and Pitcairn, so people may just have been wary of getting burned a third time. Robin Soans' verbatim play (with a few reconstructed scenes) about openly gay rugby player Gareth Thomas is, though, a much better proposition; and if tonight's audience at the Arcola is anything to go by, it's coming a lot closer to filling the house on this final London leg of its tour. Gay audiences will surely find a lot of interest in the story of the first major international sportsman to come out, but Thomas isn't the sole focus of Soans' play.

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

Between Thea Sharrock's near-perfect 2009 production, two helpings of the touring version and most recently a charming visit from Georgia, As You Like It must be the play I've seen the most times at Shakespeare's Globe. All those past productions have established their own identity in my memory despite being in the same setting, but I'm skeptical that Blanche McIntyre's new production will prove quite as memorable. The big deal this time around is the casting of Shakespearean star and Globe regular, Michelle Terry in Shakespeare's biggest female role, Rosalind, daughter of a banished Duke, and herself banished when her usurping uncle takes against her on a whim. She flees to the Forest of Arden disguised as a boy, accompanied by her cousin Celia (Ellie Piercy.) There they encounter Rosalind's father (David Beames) and the exiled court who've made themselves at home there.

Theatre review: The One Day of the Year

I guess it's a big month for Australians: Last night they fulfilled their collective national ambition of competing in the Eurovision Song Contest despite the restrictions of, you know. Geography. Meanwhile the Finborough is staging Alan Seymour’s The One Day of the Year, evidently a frequently-revived play in Australia but not seen here since 1961. I can see why Australian theatres would be so drawn to it, as it both celebrates and criticises what it means to be Australian, by looking at its annual memorial, ANZAC Day. Now a more general tribute to those who died in wars, it gets its name from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps of the First World War, who spent nine months in Turkey on the notoriously unwinnable assault on Gallipoli; the few survivors returned to Australia national heroes.

Theatre review: McQueen

Tapping into a general fascination with the designer Alexander McQueen that's only become greater since his death in 2010, James Phillips' play McQueen doesn't offer a straightforward biography. Instead it takes inspiration from a fairytale McQueen made up - and the resulting collection themed around it - about the 600-year-old elm tree in his garden, and a princess who lived in its branches. Stephen Wight plays Lee (the designer's real name; but he couldn't be called Lee McQueen or he'd have to speak about himself in the third person. And be CONCERNED,) who is having a bad sleepless night, unable to come up with a theme for his next collection. He catches Dahlia (Dianna Agron) when she breaks into his house; she claims to have been watching the house from the tree, and to have come in, thinking Lee was out, because she wanted to steal a dress for a special occasion.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Ninagawa Company)

With Billyclub Grumbleduke due to start skull-gazing at the Barbican in a couple of months' time, other London venues haven't been in any hurry to compete, so Hamlets are thin on the ground this year. One exception comes at the Barbican itself, which precedes the main event with the 80th birthday celebrations of leading Japanese Shakespeare director Yukio Ninagawa. This is a new production, but not the first time Hamlet's been tackled by Ninagawa - in fact this is his eighth, and the second one to star Tatsuya Fujiwara. The setting this time, in designs by Setsu Asakura and Tsukaka Nakagoshi, is a run-down, poor province in the 19th century, around the time the play was first taken to Japan. Behind the rickety wooden walls, King Claudius (Mikijiro Hira) enjoys the trappings of wealth and power he stole from his brother. The old king's son Hamlet suspects something, but it's only when his father's ghost appears that he finds out Claudius murdered him, and vows to plot revenge. Mainly plot it, not so much do anything about it.

Theatre review: Klippies

Continuing the unplanned "African women" theme running through London theatre this year, actress Jessica Siân takes us to South Africa for her impressive playwrighting debut, the coming-of-age story Klippies, A pair of Johannesburg teenagers, poor, white Yolandi (Samantha Colley) and rich, black Thandi (Adelayo Adedayo) are in a couple of the same classes at school, but only really speak once a week, when they both have a long wait to be picked up by their parents from the swimming pool. They slowly build up a friendship that retains a spiky, confrontational edge throughout, even though their mutual affection is real and obvious. Over a long drought season, Thandi tries to help Yolandi out of trouble at school, while Yolandi in turn helps Thandi find a more rebellious side, as they sit by the rich girl's pool smoking and drinking stolen Klipdrift "Klippies" brandy.