Theatre review: For King and Country

A First World War scandal that still resonates is the treatment of British deserters, hundreds of whom were executed for cowardice after incidents of what we would now identify as PTSD, and who were only formally pardoned as recently as 2006. So John Wilson’s 1964 hit, which was later filmed, would seem a play that could still hit a nerve today, but unfortunately Paul Tomlinson’s production almost seems to go out of its way to demonstrate why For King and Country has lain neglected for the last 30 years. Private Hamp (Adam Lawrence) has been caught casually trying to leave the Western Front and been brought in front of a Court Martial. One of the few surviving members of his platoon after four years in the trenches, getting trapped in a bomb crater for several hours triggered a sudden change in behaviour, and with Shell Shock starting to be recognised as a real thing, Lieutenant Hargreaves (Lloyd Everitt) thinks he’s spotted a real instance of it.

Theatre review: The Changeling

Love and lust are indistinguishable, and the purest of intentions don't stay that way for long in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. Beatrice-Joanna (Hattie Morahan) and Alsemero (Simon Harrison) fall for each other at first sight; unfortunately for them, this coincides with a marriage being arranged between Beatrice-Joanna and Alonzo (Tom Stuart.) Desperate to get rid of her unloved fiancé, she enlists a servant she's always feared and hated to get rid of him. De Flores (Trystan Gravelle) murders Alonzo, but the payment he demands of his mistress is higher than she expected, and puts her new engagement to Alsemero at risk. Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated story is playing out at a nearby madhouse. Antonio (Brian Ferguson) and Franciscus (Adam Lawrence) have both disguised themselves as lunatics in an attempt to seduce the warden's wife Isabella (Sarah MacRae.)

Theatre review: Hamlet (Hiraeth / Riverside Studios)

Zoé Ford's Hiraeth company came up with a successfully high-concept Titus Andronicus last year, and now she takes one of that show's ingredients, Adam Lawrence, and gives him Shakespeare's biggest role with an even more striking concept applied to it. Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose father has been murdered by his uncle; he wants revenge, but he's held captive by various factors, not least of all his own contradictory thoughts. Ford takes Hamlet's metaphorical imprisonment and strips it of the metaphor: Her production takes place inside a prison, where Lawrence's Hamlet has just been incarcerated for an unspecified crime. His uncle/stepfather Claudius (Russell Barnett) hasn't so much stolen Hamlet's succession as King, as that of crime kingpin, and he and Gertrude's (Joyce Greenaway) interactions with Hamlet happen in the visiting room.

Theatre review: Titus Andronicus (Hiraeth / Arcola)

Obscure Shakespeares are like buses, you wait ages for one and then two come at once. From my first trip to a Shakespeare play in 1989 it took me 24 years to add Titus Andronicus to my collection, but only three months after that the second production comes along. The best thing is, in dealing with a notoriously problematic play two different directors have used completely different approaches to its tonal difficulties. Titus Andronicus is effectively Elizabethan torture porn - with non-stop bloodshed and sexual violence, a self-inflicted amputation straight out of Saw, and a notorious LOLcannibalism! finale, its horror can tip over into unintentional comedy. One way to solve this is to embrace the play's extremes like Michael Fentiman did in Stratford this summer. But another approach is to couch the horror in something we still find genuinely disturbing, and that's Zoé Ford's take at the Arcola.