Theatre review: Eyam

It's long been a truism that Shakespeare's Globe is a very hard place to write new plays for - Howard Brenton and Jessica Swale are the only playwrights to have succeeded there multiple times - but Michelle Terry started her tenure there well when Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's Emilia was a popular hit. Any hopes she might have helped the venue lift that curse for good are dashed by the final show in her debut season though: Matt Hartley's Plague drama Eyam suffers from many of the classic problems that afflict new writing here. In 1665, with England still feeling the aftereffects of the Civil War, shit vicar William Mompesson (Sam Crane) and his wife Katherine (Priyanga Burford) are sent to the Derbyshire village of Eyam, not being told that the reason they need a new minister is because the villagers lynched the last one. This is a place divided by the wealthy Phillip Sheldon's (Adrian Bower) attempts to claim the common land as his own OH GOD NOT A PLAY ABOUT THE LAND ENCLOSURES ACT, ABORT, ABORT!

Theatre review: The Oresteia (Shakespeare's Globe)

In only its second-ever staging of Greek Tragedy, Shakespeare's Globe goes straight for the big one, and the oldest extant piece of Western theatre, Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia. The Trojan War is over, and Agamemnon (George Irving) is on his way back to his kingdom. But his wife Clytemnestra (Katy Stephens) hasn't forgotten, or forgiven, what he did to get his victory: To guarantee fair winds Agamemnon sacrificed their youngest daughter Iphigenia. Ten years on, he will pay for it with his own life, when his wife's smiles hide a plan for bloody revenge. But in a family that's carried a curse for generations, violence breeds violence. Another decade passes and Agamemnon's son Orestes (Joel MacCormack) returns to the House of Atreus, intent on avenging his father's death in turn.

Re-review: The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Although the launch season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse only ran for a few months, it already provided a hit they deemed worthy of revival, and I was excited to see that the show in question was Adele Thomas' production of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. You can read my original review here, from which you can probably tell I was glad of the chance to revisit it, and most of the original cast have returned with it. New additions are Paul Brendan as the giant, Louise Ford as Luce, and Jolyon Coy as Jasper (sporting what I think may be his actual hair colour, a rare occasion indeed!) Aside from a couple of new faces and the addition of a few Christmassy touches, the major obvious change from earlier this year is that one of the short interludes has been cut, leaving just one in the first half and one in the second; a good choice, as the only major fault with the show remains that it's too long, and already has too many pauses for a musical number.

Theatre review: Unusual Unions

Yet another collection of short plays to include a contribution from the ubiquitous Tom Wells, this is a one-day event playing a total of two performances only, and commissioned by the Royal Court as one of a number of companion pieces to their main-house show The Mistress Contract. Inspired by that piece's unorthodox relationship, five writers have been asked to come up with something on the theme of Unusual Unions, and each one of them has contributed, in my opinion, something far superior to the main event. The way this promenade show works is actually very similar to I Do: The audience is colour-coded into "teams," who are led round the building to various areas, so the order anyone saw the plays in is fairly arbitrary and varies from group to group. So, as part of the green team Phill, Andy and I started by being taken to an unused Downstairs dressing room, for Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Anhedonia, directed by Simon Godwin. We meet a girl (Rona Morison) wearing a hijab, although not for the reasons we might expect. A violent incident has left her in a very dark place and interestingly, in contrast to the dramatic cliche, her encounter with the friendly foreman (Nathan Osgood) of a building site she's walked into doesn't leave her in a good place exactly, but it does make her that one step closer to coping. The subtle use of changing pronouns is a clever way of showing how the story develops in Lenkiewicz's powerful little piece.

Theatre review: The Knight of the Burning Pestle

With The Duchess of Malfi, Shakespeare's Globe explored the possibilities for atmospheric lighting in their new candlelit venue. For the second full production in the Swanamaker, it's the dynamics of the space that are put to the test: Even more than the main house, the indoor playhouse feels as if the actors and audience are on top of each other, so what better way to exploit that than in a play that blurs the lines even further, Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle. It seems post-modernism, despite the name, predates modernism, and was alive and well in the 17th century, when a Grocer (Phil Daniels) and his wife (Pauline McLynn) sit in the front row to watch a light romance called The London Merchant. But the pair have very specific ideas about what they'd like to see, and they go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on go on to wreak havoc.