Theatre review: BRACE BRACE

My last trip to David Byrne's (not that one) first season at the Royal Court is for Oli Forsyth's BRACE BRACE, the story of a young couple surviving a hijacking only to face unexpected consequences in the rest of their lives, and Daniel Raggett's production which ramps up the tension and twists - but can't disguise the gaping plot holes. Sylvia (Anjana Vasan) and Ray (Phil Dunster*) are flying to their honeymoon when a lone, mentally ill man manages to take over the plane, briefly looking like he'll bring it down. Ray gets knocked out when trying to stop the hijacker but Sylvia manages to defeat him, becoming a popular have-a-go hero in the press. Inevitably it puts a strain on their relationship, and at first it looks like this will take the form of Ray's wounded pride at being written out of the story in favour of his wife as sole heroine, while she takes it in her stride.

Theatre review: The New Real

My relationship with David Edgar's plays has been mixed: I think my still-strong memories of enjoying Pentecost in the '90s make me always want to give his new work a try, but the RSC's most-commissioned modern writer was also responsible for the notoriously dreary Written on the Heart, and after last week's meh Here In America I felt a bit of trepidation towards the second of his premieres this autumn. The New Real is also described by the blurb as both "epic" and "panoramic," so they're really making sure you know it's going to be long. Still, my first show at Stratford's The Other Place since it was serving as The Courtyard twelve years ago turns out to be flawed, but worth checking out. Edgar returns to Eastern Europe and an unnamed former Soviet state, in a story spanning the last 22 years and looking at the question that has been worrying many political playwrights: How did politics move so far to the Right and so far from reality in that time?

Theatre review: Coriolanus (National Theatre)

This year's National Theatre Shakespeare is a fairly rarely-performed one, and one that I'm generally pretty happy to have stay that way; it does though get a big selling point in David Oyelowo making a long-awaited return to the stage to play Coriolanus. Set in the days of the Roman Republic, Oyelowo's Caius Martius is a nobleman and general who earned his titular surname by almost single-handedly sacking the city of Coriolis, stronghold of the enemy Volscians. On his return to Rome, among the honours heaped on him is the expectation that the next stage in his career will be election as Consul, a position of considerable political power. But first he has to gain the support of the public, whose Tribunes Sicinius and Brutus (Stephanie Street and Jordan Metcalfe) are determined to show him up as unsuitable for power.

Theatre review: A Tupperware of Ashes

The Dorfman's about to go dark for a while for another refurb, but it bows out for now in style with a show reminiscent of The Father, both in subject matter and in being something I was very glad to catch, but wouldn't want to put myself through again in a hurry. In Tanika Gupta's A Tupperware of Ashes Meera Syal plays Queenie, a name whose significance is obscure to start with, but which becomes clearer as Gupta gives us a loose reimagining of King Lear, charting the tragic mental breakdown of an independent, successful British-Bengali woman. Queenie is a chef with her own, recently Michelin-starred restaurant, although some of the things we learn about her success early on in the play come into question soon after: Her behaviour has started to change quite a lot, and her doctor daughter Kamala's (Natalie Dew) worst suspicions are confirmed when she sends her off for tests.

Theatre review: White Rabbit Red Rabbit

I've seen Nassim Soleimanpour's second and third plays structured as cold reads for a different performer every night, but had missed his original hit which, out of necessity, created his signature format in the first place. But following the run of ECHO at the Royal Court a couple of months ago, White Rabbit Red Rabbit now returns for an equally starry West End run at @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it's recently invested heavily in Global Hypercolor shares. This afternoon the comedian, actor and rapper Ben Bailey-Smith was the guest reader of Soleimanpour's script, something which threatened to derail what turns out to be a pretty dark tale, as a couple of audience members seemed to think they were at a gig and proceeded to heckle him. Fortunately they soon got the message that Bailey-Smith had a script to stick to. In subsequent shows Soleimanpour has expanded on the concept to add himself to the action remotely, but here we get the format in its purest form.

Theatre review: Here in America

It seems a long time since I saw a David Edgar play and all of a sudden he's got two new ones out; first up at the Orange Tree is Here In America, a look at the friendship and professional relationship between playwright Arthur Miller and his regular director Elia Kazan, and how it was strained by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which called them both to testify with very different outcomes. Although the play makes no disguise of who the characters are, they all go by nicknames: Kazan goes by Gadg, short for Gadget (Shaun Evans,) who's invited Art (Michael Aloni) to his house to look at cheese, and to confess to him that he's about to go in front of HUAC to name members of their theatre company who were communists alongside him. Of the two, Art was never actually a card-carrying party member, but he's the one who's still held onto the strongest anti-capitalist beliefs, as well as the sense of honour in not betraying his friends.

Theatre review: The Real Ones

The creative team behind The P Word return to the Bush for what feels like another autobiographical story from Waleed Akhtar - especially given that both leads are aspiring playwrights - about life as a gay British-Pakistani man. This time the scope feels wider though, as it takes us through the sometimes melancholy story of a close friendship over almost twenty years. Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis) and Neelam (Mariam Haque) were friends at school, but only become especially close at the age of 19, when we first meet them: Zaid has moved away to study, and as her parents have only allowed her to go to a local university so she can stay at home, visiting him (while pretending to be on a getaway for young Muslim girls) is one of the only ways Neelam can expand her horizons. Their parents' expectations are something that follow them for much of the story - Akhtar's play is called The Real Ones, and at times it feels as if it's only with each other that they show their real selves.

Theatre review: Bellringers

Bellringers may answer an eternal theatrical question: What if Beckett, but bearable? I have to say my heart sank early on in Daisy Hall's play, as its two male characters, lifelong, loving friends, ponder the big questions of life, death and the universe in a roundabout, chatty manner - the debt to Waiting for Godot is hard to miss. So it was especially heartening to go on to see Hall hold the attention in a way Beckett's never managed for me. Clement (Luke Rollason) and Aspinall (Paul Adeyefa) are in the belltower of their village's church during a violent thunderstorm, the kind that's been laying waste to all the towns in the area for some time now. Someone has to be up there to ring the bells when the storm comes directly overhead, to scare away the thunder and lightning, but it's the most dangerous job as it's the place most likely to be struck, so the villagers do it on a rota system.