Theatre review: Churchill in Moscow

Howard Brenton's history plays have an eclectic scope that's previously seen him tackle everything from Ancient Greek philosophers to the Partition of India. He's also dealt with the life of Harold Macmillan, but for his latest play he goes for the British Prime Minister who must have been interpreted on stage and screen more than any other, as Roger Allam plays the title role in Churchill in Moscow (he plays Churchill, not Moscow.) Set in 1942, things look particularly dark for the Allies as the Nazis are making inroads into Russia and approaching Stalingrad. Meanwhile British forces have been depleted to the point that they'd be wiped out instantly if they attempted to invade Europe via the Channel - US troops will eventually supplement them, but they're not really feeling it just yet. Winston Churchill is on a secret diplomatic mission to Moscow to inform Joseph Stalin (Peter Forbes) of the bad news that D-day won't come until at least the next year.

Theatre review: Farm Hall

When looking at the ethics of science, there's no more fertile ground for writers to explore than the atomic bomb. In her impressive playwrighting debut, Katherine Moar explores the issue through six scientists who've already lost the nuclear arms race - they just don't know it yet. Based on a real event and secretly recorded conversations, Farm Hall takes place during the last days of the Second World War, after Hitler's fall and the revelation of the true horrors Germany had perpetrated. The six German men are under house arrest in an English country pile, filling their time playing chess, mending a broken piano, and staging a reading of Blithe Spirit, whose recent success in the middle of the Blitz baffles them. They are Hitler's surviving nuclear physicists who hadn't already defected by VE Day, and nobody seems sure what to do with them, or even if they'll be allowed to survive their comfortable prison.

Theatre review: But It Still Goes On

I think most theatres wore out their commitment to commemorating the First World War in 2014, so it hasn't dominated programming in the centenary of its final year like it did in the first. But the Finborough is still committed to its THEGREATWAR100 strand, and Millennials feeling under constant attack from their grandparents' generation might take some small comfort from But It Still Goes On, in which even those who fought in the trenches are regularly dismissed as feckless wasters. In fact there's a strong feel of "it was ever thus" to much of Robert Graves' play. Best known for I, Claudius, which due to a sacred rule of comedy I have to pronounce "I, Clavdivs," Graves was commissioned to write the play in 1929 but it was never produced - possibly because the producers of Journey's End were expecting a similar story of life in the trenches, rather than one of how the survivors have to move on with very little help from those they fought for.

Theatre review: The Divided Laing, or, The Two Ronnies

The psychiatrist RD Laing's theories were a major influence on Equus, so I was interested in seeing a play about the man himself. Laing's work is now widely discredited but Patrick Marmion's The Divided Laing, or, The Two Ronnies takes place in 1970, when Ronnie Laing (Alan Cox) is in his prime: A minor celebrity thanks to regular appearances on BBC2, and running his own mental institution-cum-hippie commune, The Philadelphia Association. There the line between doctors and patients is hard to see: Aaron (Kevin McMonagle) is his long-standing colleague and the sensible balance to Laing's excess; also there is the intermittently American psychiatrist Joe (James Russell,) and Mary (Laura-Kate Gordon,) the resident nurse, who may or may not have got over her coprophilia. But Laing seems to identify most with David (Oscar Pearce,) a South African with a voracious appetite for drink and drugs, who has to be kept in a medically-induced coma much of the time.

Theatre review: Longing

As well as his better-known work for the theatre, Anton Chekhov was also a prolific writer of short stories, and it's two of these that William Boyd uses to fashion a new Chekhov play, Longing. Successful lawyer Kolia (Iain Glen) has been invited back to a small town where he spent much of his childhood, by two old friends, Tania (Natasha Little) and Varia (Tamsin Greig.) But the women don't just want to catch up - Tania's alcoholic husband Sergei (Alan Cox) has frittered away her fortune on doomed business deals, and mortgaged the estate to the hilt. Everything is due to be repossessed within days, and Tania hopes that Kolia can help come up with a solution. But he has distractions of his own as Tania's teenage sister Natasha (Eve Ponsonby) has fallen for the much older man.

Theatre review: Cornelius

Whenever the Finborough Theatre digs up a play that's languished in obscurity for decades and turns out to be surprisingly good, the natural reaction is to wonder how the work could have remained "lost" for so long. And perhaps the secret of their success is timing: Maybe if this play had been unearthed and staged a few years ago it would have failed to capture anyone's interest. But as with The American Clock, which came to the same theatre earlier this year, J.B. Priestley's Cornelius deals with an earlier economic crisis, and so has unfortunately taken on a relevance to the current one. Written in 1935, it follows the last few weeks in business of a small London company that's dealt in aluminium imports with some success for many decades, but now has the creditors knocking at the door.