Theatre review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Former Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre Clint Dyer moves down the road to the Old Vic to direct a somewhat reimagined look at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dale Wasserman's play based on Ken Kesey's novel about order versus anarchy - where order comes across very much as the bad guy. In a 1960s New Orleans mental asylum, the patients appear to be steadily and quietly getting on with their treatment under Dr Spivey (Matthew Steer) and Nurse Ratched (Future Dame Olivia Williams.) But when R.P. McMurphy (Aaron Pierre) arrives on the ward, having accepted a diagnosis of psychopathy and committal instead of a five-month prison sentence, his rebellious attitude quickly reveals the real power dynamic in the asylum. He makes it his mission to bring some fun and unpredictability to the inmates, but has no idea the lengths Ratched is willing to go to to stop him.

Theatre review: A Doll's House

Anya Reiss' adaptation of A Doll's House is a faithful one in that it follows the story beats and motivations of Ibsen's original, but also a modern one in that it identifies an archetype we can all recognise and agree is the villain of the piece: Finance bros. At the beginning of Joe Hill-Gibbins' production Nora (Romola Garai) has prepared for Christmas by maxing out her husband's credit card on decorations and gifts for their family, to make up for a pretty miserable time the previous year. She's not worried about paying off the debt: Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is selling his investment company and they'll be millionaires by January. Her excitement seems indistinguishable from anxiety though, as their successful year has come after Torvald's addiction issues almost brought their family down, and only very expensive rehab got him out of it.

Theatre review: The Authenticator

Crumbling country estates have in recent years been at the centre of controversy over the suggestion that maybe the visitors, whose tourist cash is pretty much keeping them standing, might want to know about the darker parts of the building's history, like how much its glory days were supported by the slave trade. They're also the setting for many a gothic mystery, and what Winsome Pinnock's new play The Authenticator does very effectively is bring those two elements together to touch on a hot-button topic in entertaining fashion. Eccentric aristocrat Fen (Sylvestra Le Touzel) is the last descendant of the Harford family, and the first woman to inherit the estate following centuries of male primogeniture. Digging through family history, she's unearthed the previously unseen diaries of 18th century ancestor Henry Harford, the founder of the family's wealth.

Theatre review: Flyby

Oh to be a fly on a rehearsal room wall:

"OK Stuart, so we're going for the big finale now and you're giving us some of your most emotionally-charged vocals and Ian Charleson-nominated acting, really belting the song out, tears streaming down your face, the works. But GET THIS! Nobody will notice any of it, because they'll all be looking at the bloke dressed as a giant space turtle flailing around on the floor trying to get off the stage before the bows. Yes, I thought you'd like it."

Theo Jamieson (book, music and lyrics) and Adam Lenson's (co-creator and director) musical Flyby has, it's fair to say, quite a lot going on. Astronaut Daniel Defoe (Stuart Thompson) disappears from a space station during a mission, hijacking an escape pod in what appears to be an act premeditated and planned for years in advance.

Theatre review: Copenhagen

When Copenhagen was scheduled for a revival at Hampstead Theatre it probably felt like a timely choice because of the recent success of Farm Hall and the film Oppenheimer, but as invariably and depressingly seems to happen, current affairs have delivered another reason for Michael Frayn's play about nuclear physicists to feel topical. In the first six years of me writing this blog I could reliably catch Big Favourite Round These Parts Damien Molony on stage once a year, but he's been absent for nearly a decade before returning to play Werner Heisenberg, the leading nuclear physicist who led the German team attempting to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. His other most famous accomplishment is the Uncertainty Principle, and the play centres on a historical mystery that even the participants seemed uncertain about, with both central figures giving conflicting accounts later in life.

Theatre review: Henry V (RSC/RST)

A Henry V that doesn't feel horribly topical when a foreign war is launched to distract from a domestic crisis must be as rare as one that doesn't co-opt something from the Henry IV plays to build its world. Both themes are present together as 50% of the RSC's Artistic Director reunites with Startled Giraffe Alfred Enoch: Tamara Harvey's production opens with Enoch's Hal mistaking his sleeping father for dead and prematurely taking the crown. It feels notable that he shoos away a servant as the old king (Valentine Hanson) admits his claim to the throne was tenuous, and then goes on to advise his son to solidify his own position by invading France. This becomes pretty much the whole plot of the play that follows, but Hal's statement that the weight of responsibility led Henry IV to his early grave turns out not to be as relevant to him.

Theatre review: Teeth'N'Smiles

The ultimate accolade shouldn't be a gold record, it should be a golden hypodermic. Parklife!

David Hare's play with songs Teeth Apostrophe N Apostrophe Smiles, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1975, is set six years earlier in 1969, when disillusionment with rock music and the counterculture it spearheaded was starting to set in. Maggie Frisby and The Skins are a once-popular group on its last legs, doing tours around UK universities that barely cover their expenses - Rebecca Lucy Taylor Also Known As Self Esteem plays vocalist Maggie, with Michael Abubakar, Bill Caple, Samuel Jordan, Jojo Macari and Noah Weatherby as a band at various levels of frustration at the way their careers have turned out. Maggie is a former heroin addict, but while we're given no reason to doubt that she's given that up, she's still unapologetically and indisputably an alcoholic who may or may not perform on any given night - it's the shows she's really looking forward to that the band know to be most worried about.

Theatre review: Lifeline

At last, the musical about antimicrobial resistance that someone, somewhere has presumably been clamouring for! Alexander Fleming (Alan Vicary,) Phlegm to his friends if Lifeline is to be believed, won a Nobel Prize in 1945 for his discovery of Penicillin, but by 1950 was already warning that the overuse of antibiotics could lead to bacteria developing a resistance, leaving patients as helpless as they were before their introduction. In the present day, Scottish-American musician Aaron (Nathan Salstone) survives a radical operation to cure his colon cancer, only to succumb to sepsis in the Edinburgh hospital where his childhood sweetheart Jess (Maz McGinlay) now works as a paediatrician. The will-they/won't-they of whether they'll get back together has to take second place to the question of whether Aaron will survive at all.

Theatre review: Romeo & Juliet(Empire Street Productions / Harold Pinter Theatre)

What if, instead of giving a written instruction to a servant who can't read, you gave it to one who can? If Capulet (Clark Gregg) had handed the invitations to his ball to the Nurse (Clare Perkins,) she could have found the guests herself. Instead the illiterate Peter (Jamie Ankrah) needs help from a stranger in the street, who invites himself along to the party to stalk a girl he fancies. Once there Romeo (Noah Jupe) falls for Capulet's daughter Juliet (Sadie Sink,) who enthusiastically returns his interest. This teenage infatuation is given an entirely unnecessary sense of peril and urgency by the fact that the pair's families have an unexplained, deadly rivalry, leading them into an elopement within hours of their first meeting. A number of other avoidable accidents and violent acts interfere over the next couple of days, and trying to navigate them while keeping their big secret sees the affair end in tragedy.

Theatre review: Jaja's African Hair Braiding

Like a female version of Inua Ellams' Barber Shop Chronicles, Jocelyn Bioh's 2024 play Jaja's African Hair Braiding spans a working day in the titular Harlem salon where four African immigrant women compete for customers, tell stories and bicker: Miriam (Jadesola Odunjo) is the quiet one on the surface, cheerfully getting lumbered with a complicated job that'll take her all day, but able to open up and show a nuanced inner life when she connects with someone. Aminata (babirye bukilwa) is outwardly confident but her determination not to let her deadbeat husband James push her around is easily dented. Ndidi (Bola Akeju) is temporarily occupying a chair as the salon where she usually works, having clawed her way up to a full-time position, burned down. And Bea (Dolapo Oni) would be the group's mother figure, if she hadn't managed to piss all of them off at some point or other.