Theatre review: Othello (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

Othello's a part that can be played as quite a young and dynamic soldier who's risen, through skill, quickly through the ranks to become a decorated general. There's also a couple of throwaway lines about him being older than his wife, that have helped foster a different tradition of him being a much older man. So among Shakespearean leading roles it's perhaps the one that's least likely to raise eyebrows when David Harewood revisits, at 59, a part he first played 28 years ago at the National, famously becoming the first black actor to do so there. This time he's in the West End, paired with an equally popular star, Toby Jones, as his Iago. The latter is his long-standing friend and brother in arms, or at least so he thinks; Othello's overlooking him for promotion has brought to the surface long-held resentments, and he now plans to take a convoluted revenge involving the general's new wife.

Theatre review: The Producers

The last show I was able to reschedule from my most recent bout of Covid is the Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of The Producers, now settling into a West End run. I was a fan of Mel Brooks' film long before Brooks (book, music and lyrics) and Thomas Meehan (book) adapted it into a musical, saw the original West End production and have listened to the songs many times over the years, so this was one of those cases where I was looking to see if Patrick Marber's production would do something new with a show I was already very familiar with. In the end Marber doesn't attempt any kind of reinvention but offers up a solid version that hits all the classic comic notes. Max Bialystock (Andy Nyman) is a Broadway producer who was once, he insists, a success, but in recent years his career has consisted entirely of him acting as an unlikely gigolo to wealthy old ladies, who fund his invariably disastrous shows.

Theatre review: Macbeth (RSC / The Other Place)

Macbeth is one of the Shakespearean big hitters that can generally be relied upon to sell well in the RSC's biggest auditorium, so it's interesting to see a comparatively starry production get consigned to the studio space. Maybe it's a tribute to the famous McKellen/Dench production that also played The Other Place in the 1970s; more likely it's that Daniel Raggett's production didn't want to sacrifice the intimacy that becomes a major feature of its single setting. That setting is a Scottish pub run by Sam Heughan's Macbeth and Lia Williams' Lady Macbeth, the base of operations for a violent '80s criminal gang run by Duncan (Gilly Gilchrist,) who makes his intentions clear about who should eventually replace him: Early on his son Malcolm (Calum Ross) is made, possibly as a sort of initiation, to slit the throat of the treacherous Cawdor with a box cutter. But a supernatural trio has other ideas.

Theatre review: The Line of Beauty

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Oh no wait, it says Beauty.

  

Actor Jack Holden's second career as a playwright is really picking up steam this year, and after his breakthrough Cruise you can see why the Almeida might go to him to adapt Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 Booker-winner The Line of Beauty, another story of hedonistic gay life in the early '80s beginning to be haunted by the spectre of AIDS. But here the way the politics of Thatcherism tied into and affected that pandemic is even more explicit: In 1983, middle class Oxford graduate Nick Guest (Jasper Talbot) is transferring to London for a PhD, where he moves in with the family of his best friend Toby (Leo Suter.) His father Gerald (Charles Edwards) is a newly-elected Tory MP, tipped to rise quickly in Thatcher's government. The lodger is welcomed into the family, although there's a tacit understanding that he's expected to repay this by acting as a babysitter for Toby's sister Cat (Ellie Bamber,) who's bipolar and self-harms.

Theatre review: The Unbelievers

It's a bit too vague for me to put my finger on as a meme of the year, but I definitely feel like there have been a lot of shows recently where the overall tone has been at odds with the subject matter, but in a deliberate way that works surprisingly well. Nick Payne's return to the stage is one of the clearest examples of this: We can use the word "hysterical" to mean two very different things, and the way The Unbelievers applies it to the story of a traumatised mother is unexpected and unpredictable. FD Nicola Walker plays Miriam, whose 15-year-old son Oscar didn't show up at school one day, and was never seen again. Payne's story jumps backwards and forwards seven years, from the days shortly after the disappearance when the police are mobilising a task force, to the point where the rest of the family are trying to persuade her that holding a memorial for Oscar might be a good idea, and various moments in between.

Theatre review: Hedda

Tanika Gupta throws Ibsen's proto-sociopath Hedda Gabler into a blender with the real-life story of silent screen star Merle Oberon, an Anglo-Indian woman who passed for white to make it in Hollywood, not being found out until after her death. In Hedda the title character is the daughter of a British General during the Raj and his Indian servant, who's bought her way out of a studio contract at great expense after becoming fed up with their control over her. In 1948 the War is over and India has been partitioned and given independence, and Hedda (Pearl Chanda) has just married her third (or possibly fourth) husband George Tesman (Joe Bannister,) a minor film director who's had to go into significant debt to keep his glamorous new wife in the style she's become accustomed to. This includes employing Rina Fatania's Shona, the maid who's been with Hedda all her life because she is, of course, actually her mother.

Theatre review: Hot Mess

Keeping things short and, for a while at least, sweet at Southwark Playhouse's main house is Jack Godfrey (music and lyrics) and Ellie Coote's (book) two-hander musical imagining the relationship between the Earth and Humanity as a rom-com: Inevitably, it's a Hot Mess. Earth (Danielle Steers) is on the lookout for a new dominant species after things got a bit dull with the amoebas, and the hot and heavy relationship with Tyrannosaurus Rex ended in meteor-related tragedy (he was never much good at hugs anyway.) Hu (Tobias Turley) is interested in her, but with his obsession with growing wheat he seems a bit nerdier than the apex predators she's used to. He manages to charm her though and they begin a millennia-long romance in which she helps him become all that he can be - largely by offering him access to her many resources.

Theatre review: Fanny

Felix Mendelssohn is the 19th century German composer best-known for the Wedding March, but he's just the most famous talent in his family, not the only one. Calum Finlay's Fanny sets out to correct that, putting his older sister centre stage. Fanny Mendelssohn (Charlie Russell) is at the very least an equally talented composer, perhaps the secret behind her brother's success as they often consult each other when stuck on a composition. But his erasure of her contribution may go beyond not acknowledging their collaborations, as he's also published some of her work under his own name, including a piece Queen Victoria famously pronounced her favourite. For now, though, the family's concerns are more domestic, as an old flame of Fanny's has returned to Berlin.

Theatre review: Ragdoll

Following the surprise success of her debut Farm Hall, Katherine Moar returns to Jermyn Street Theatre for her follow-up. This time she doesn't have real-life recordings to use verbatim, but if her story is technically fiction it's no secret that it also has a real-life inspiration: If the blurb didn't already mention it, Ragdoll is full of overt clues that the character of Holly is based on Patty Hearst. In 1978 the Heiress (Katie Matsell) is on trial for her role in a string of robberies, and her lawyer (Ben Lamb) is convinced he can make the extenuating circumstances catch the jury's sympathy: Kidnapped by a cult-like criminal gang, she was sexually assaulted and brainwashed until given the option of joining in the crime spree in return for being released. But his confidence is misplaced, and the best result he can get her is that she only serves two years of a prison term.

Theatre review: Cyrano de Bergerac

My last encounter with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac was Jamie Lloyd's rap battle reinvention, a version that won't be forgotten in a hurry. But while Simon Evans' production for the RSC is more traditional - nose and all - it proves striking and emotional in its own way. Adrian Lester plays Cyrano, who leads a troop of 17th century French army reserves, and is a curious mix of extremes. He's confident to the point of arrogance in his abilities both with a sword and with words, and with good reason: He can fight off a hundred men at a time, or take a man down in verbal combat instead. He's as likely to do either to any man who dares mention his unusual appearance, the reason for the contrasting, wildly insecure side of his personality: Since childhood he has been bullied for his unusually large nose.

Theatre review: Hamlet (National Theatre / Lyttelton)

The new Artistic Director has launched the season by reminding us of the National Theatre's close connection with Ancient Greek Tragedy, now her new deputy gets to do the same for Shakespeare: Robert Hastie's take on Hamlet stays on dry land, but if it's not overtly high concept it's still full of ideas, and little nods to past productions. Hiran Abeysekera's Hamlet is a stroppy prince, performatively wearing black clothes and nail polish at his mother's wedding in protest at how soon it's come after her first husband, Hamlet's father's, death. But if there's something of the attention-seeking, overgrown teenager to him, the front becomes reality when his father's ghost starts haunting the palace: The dead king's spirit (Ryan Ellsworth) tells him he was murdered by his brother Claudius (Alistair Petrie.)

Theatre review: Bacchae

Long before he even announced he was leaving the National Theatre I was arguing that RuNo should be succeeded by InRu, so when I actually got what I wanted I wasn't going to let a little thing like Covid keep me from seeing the results: A couple of weeks later than originally planned I'm at the Olivier for Indhu Rubasingham's debut as Artistic Director, and the current front of house exhibition is all about how Ancient Greek theatre has always been a major part of the venue's DNA, not just in the amount of adaptations staged over the years but in the very architecture of the largest auditorium. But Rubasingham has always been more of a specialist in new writing than classics, so if Euripides' Bacchae already seemed a gory start to a new regime, it was always going to come with a twist or two as well.

Theatre review: Mary Page Marlowe

For one of his last productions at the Old Vic Matthew Warchus directs the UK premiere of Tracy Letts' 2016 play Mary Page Marlowe, in which several actresses play the title character from soon after her birth, to not long before her death. We get to meet her as a baby, with her PTSD-suffering father (Noah Weatherby) and alcoholic mother (Eden Epstein,) the latter also seen undermining a 12-year-old Mary (Alisha Weir.) The casting of Warchus' former Matildae continues with Eleanor Worthington-Cox as the 19-year-old, being read her tarot cards by friends trying to foretell her romantic future but hoping she can define herself in terms that don't just revolve around men. But by Rosy McEwen's twenties and thirties version, she's largely defined herself as someone who cheats on her husband, including with her boss (Ronan Raftery.)

Theatre review: Troilus and Cressida(Shakespeare's Globe)

If Hamlet's most famous question is asked by the title character, Troilus and Cressida's is asked by the audience, shortly after the play ends with the playwright bestowing a wish for sickness upon them: Will, u OK hun? Owen Horsley makes his Globe debut directing Shakespeare's most misanthropic, uncategorisable play, that uneasily mixes broad comedy with imagery soaked in disease, disappointment and decay. Taking The Iliad as its starting point, the play opens seven years into the Trojan War, with a stalemate exacerbated by the Greeks' indestructible warrior Achilles (David Caves) disillusioned and refusing to fight, instead staying in his tent with his demon twink boyfriend Patroclus (Tadeo Martinez.) When the Trojans' best fighter Hector (Oliver Alvin-Wilson) challenges the Greeks to send their own best against him, Ulysses (Jodie McNee) sees an opportunity to trick Achilles into rejoining the war.

Theatre review: The Weir

Before nabbing that big franchise cash with The Hunger Games Conor McPherson rounds out his big year of paying the bills by directing his own plays with a revival of The Weir, the 1997 play that made both his name as a playwright, and his reputation as someone who should just write an unambiguous ghost story and get it the hell out of his system. In a rural corner of Ireland, most of whose community are struggling, Brendan (Owen McDonnell) runs the makeshift local pub that has Guinness on tap but only if the pump's working (it's not,) requires him to dig out old Christmas bottles if someone orders a wine, and only has room for a handful of customers but is unlikely to ever need more (except in the summer when the German tourists, who might actually be Norwegian, descend on the area.)

Theatre review: Entertaining Mr Sloane

Nadia Fall moves from Stratford to Southwark, and launches her time at the Young Vic with Entertaining Mr Sloane, Joe Orton's first full-length play that feels like Pinter played as farce. It's a comparison that Peter McKintosh's design particularly calls to mind: The in-the-round set is surrounded by junk, not just around the stage but hanging perilously over it, reminding us that this twisted version of a 1960s suburban house stands alone in the middle of a scrapheap. Kath (Tamzin Outhwaite) brings back Mr Sloane (Jordan Stephens,) a young man she met in a library and offered to let out the spare room to. When she was very young Kath had a husband and a baby son, and lost both of them; she's decided that the new lodger is going to be a replacement figure for both, and the fact that she tries to seduce him while asking that he call her "mama" isn't the only creepy thing that'll happen while he's there.

Theatre review: Clarkston

After an unplanned week away from the theatre thanks to my latest brush with Covid, I'm back at Trafalgar Theatre, whose corridors have been decorated with Americana - maps, dusty photos and pictures of bulk retail store Costco. Although could there be anything more American than a weird collective national boner for Lewis and Clark, the 19th century explorers who mapped the West, and the latter of whom provides Samuel D. Hunter's play with its title? Clarkston is an industrial town in Washington State named after William Clark, who camped out there for a while to write some of his much-loved racist diatribes about the indigenous people. Jake (Joe Locke) is a distant relative of the explorer's raised on his journals, and it's this connection that was, he claims, the reason he decided to take a break on his road trip across America and stay there for a while.

Theatre review: Reunion

Transferring to the Kiln after a hit run at the Galway International Arts Festival, writer-director Mark O'Rowe's Reunion is a look at a family that appears close but don't actually all end up in the same place together all that often - and why that's probably a good thing. Elaine (Aislín McGuckin) hasn't had her whole family in the same room since her husband's funeral a couple of years earlier, but now her son and two daughters have come back to her home on a small, remote island off Ireland for a meal and a few drinks to remember him. In fact Janice (Venetia Bowe) and her husband Stuart (Stephen Hagan) weren't expected, but they've come as a surprise, and brought with them Elaine's sister Gina (Catherine Walker,) whose long-term partner has just dumped her in the middle of a midlife crisis.

Theatre review: Romans, a Novel

I have to say that after some of Alice Birch's previous work, Romans, a Novel was a show I considered skipping; Kyle Soller's return to the stage was the reason I gave it a go, and the weird but thought-provoking epic proves to be worth the gamble. Soller plays Jack Roman, eldest of the three titular brothers, who we first meet as a ten-year-old on what turns out to be the night his mother will die, giving birth to his youngest brother. But first he will meet a blood-soaked soldier, apparently an uncle long since thought lost, who will instil in him a desire to live a certain kind of man's life, full of adventure and exploration. The subtitle "a Novel" is an unusual one to see attached to an original play but Birch's story and Sam Pritchard's production justify it in a sweeping family saga that feels very much like it's immersing the audience into a detailed, intricate story.

Theatre review: The Lady from the Sea

Simon Stone is known for his versions of classic plays, that are sometimes not so much loose adaptations as tangentially connected to the originals at best, and I've found the results very mixed in the past. For The Lady from the Sea he strikes a better balance though, in something with very distinct and current themes but a structure and basis that still feels recognisably by Henrik Ibsen. Five years ago celebrated neuroscientist Edward (Andrew Lincoln) lost his first wife to suicide, and is still dealing with the fallout with their two daughters Asa (Gracie Oddie-James,) a gay postgraduate student who's secretly saving up for a PhD at Yale by opening an OnlyFans, and blunt, brooding teenager Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike.) Egg has managed to move on and find some stability in his life though, with his second marriage to the younger Ellida (Alicia Vikander.)