Theatre review: Archduke

I've had varied responses to American playwright Rajiv Joseph's work so far, a writer fond of surreal history plays focusing on people at the sidelines of great events. Though not quite as tight and memorable as Guards at the Taj, the latest of his plays to get a UK premiere (it does seem to take them a few years to make it over here) certainly didn't try my patience in the way Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo did. Archduke is named after the most famous person ever to hold that title, although Franz Ferdinand probably wouldn't have been pleased to find out why he got remembered for so long. The play doesn't, though, actually introduce us to the Archduke himself or stage his assassination, remembered as the inciting incident of the First World War. Instead the opening scene feels like Waiting for Godot but bearable, as two down-on-their-luck young men meet in an abandoned train tunnel and exchange gently confused conversation.

Theatre review: Pinter Six - Party Time / Celebration

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This installment of Pinter at the Pinter hasn't invited the critics in yet.

I booked for all the Pinter at the Pinter shows before they'd been retitled to give each anthology a number, so I've ended up with Pinter Six before Pinter Five; as the season is (currently) due to conclude with Betrayal seeing some of it in reverse order seems apt enough. Jamie Lloyd directs the shortest double bill so far, starting with Party Time, which I couldn't help thinking of as what it would be like if Pinter had written The Masque of the Red Death, except the plague outside is all the partygoers' doing, and they're cheerfully set to make things a lot worse. Accordingly, the majority of the characters on stage may be laughing and drinking wine, but Soutra Gilmour's designs keep everything positively funereal, in all-black outfits and a torchlit black box set that could have come out of a vampire movie.

Theatre review: Pity

After the comparative triumph of writing the Olivier’s least-worst new play of 2017, Rory Mullarkey returns to the Royal Court where his somewhat disjointed style of playwriting goes up a notch to fully embrace Absurdism. Pity opens on a generic town square – it used to be the Market Square but there isn’t a market any more – where an ice cream stall has been set up, and Francesca Mills runs a tombola before the show starts. A man named only as Person (Abraham Popoola) starts to narrate his day – unemployed, he people-watches as it’s the only way to spend his time that doesn’t cost anything – and meets a Professor (Paul Bentall) who’s in the middle of a reactionary rant to his daughter when he’s struck by lightning and killed instantly. Person responds by proposing to Daughter (Sophia Di Martino) and the two marry without getting round to learning each other’s names.

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre)

Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre is intended to predominantly showcase new writing, but in only his second production there Hytner can’t resist going back to Shakespeare. This is in part because the opening season is also meant to show off the flexibility of the auditorium, and Julius Caesar is a play that lends itself to promenade staging, or in this case in-the-round staging with a section of the audience in promenade (of sorts.) Making the audience part of the action fills in the play’s reliance on crowds – whether as baying mobs, horrified onlookers, armies or, most crucially, the general populace of Rome in whose name the central characters act. Hytner’s production is modern dress, and David Calder’s Julius Caesar certainly has a visual nod to one current political figure as he shuffles onto the stage wearing a red baseball cap and revelling in the attention as much as anything.

Theatre review: The Secret Theatre

Anders Lustgarten doesn’t seem an obvious fit for the Swanamaker, but in comparing present-day paranoia and manipulation by politicians to the intrigue of Elizabeth I’s court he’s found a subject that doesn’t just suit the time the venue recreates, but also feels at home in the shadows of the candlelit playhouse. The Secret Theatre is about the Queen’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham (Aidan McArdle,) who responded to the numerous assassination plots against her by creating the first surveillance state. He lives surrounded by paper, collecting files on Catholic threats and potential traitors, planting spies everywhere he can - often to spy on each other – and seeding an atmosphere of suspicion that seeps into every corner of the country. His plan is that his secret service should be the world’s worst-kept secret: You don’t actually need to watch everyone if everyone thinks they’re being watched.

Theatre review: Boudica

Closing this year’s Globe summer season is a new play that playwright Tristan Bernays has crafted to fit in very well with the old ones that make up most of the theatre’s repertory. And it’s based around a character who it’s strange to think none of the original Globe’s playwrights tackled, the only reason I can think of being the ban on female actors meaning too big a burden being placed on a young boy; because Boudica has all the elements Jacobethan theatre liked to get stuck into. Set during Nero’s reign, the Roman Empire occupies Britain with the help of some of the former tribal kings. Known as client-kings, they pay taxes and stop their people from rebelling in return for getting to keep their titles and lands. The play begins with the death of a leading client-king, whose widow Boudica (Gina McKee) expects to inherit half his land as per the agreement he made with the Romans.

Theatre review: Othello (English Touring Theatre / Wilton's Music Hall)

Richard Twyman takes over as Artistic Director of ETT with a production of Othello whose stripped-back nature points to the restrictions of a touring production, but doesn't get in the way of atmosphere and dangerous intensity. Othello (Abraham Popoola) has wooed and married Desdemona (Norah Lopez Holden) in secret, and when her father finds out he tries to get the soldier punished. But it's clear Desdemonda acted entirely of her own volition and besides, despite being an outsider to Venice, he's one of their most effective generals, and is needed at a battle in Cyprus. So this plan to take down Othello fails, but its architect remains unsuspected: Iago (Mark Lockyer,) a trusted ensign overlooked for promotion, has developed a violent hatred of his general, and now comes up with a much more complicated and bloody plot, to convince Othello his new bride is cheating on him, and fan his jealousy into a murderous rage.