Theatre review: The Tempest (RSC / RST)

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the First Folio's publication, and both the RSC and the Globe are using that as the theme for their seasons, predominantly programming plays that don't exist in quarto form, so wouldn't have survived if they hadn't been included in the OG collected works edition. This means there's going to be a bit of overlap between the two major Shakespeare venues, and Stratford-upon-Avon kicks off the year with one of those that's getting multiple productions, and the one that got the opening slot in the Folio itself: Elizabeth Freestone's production of The Tempest uses the titular bad weather as a prompt to theme the play around the climate crisis, and attempt a carbon-neutral, waste-free production - Tom Piper and Natasha Ward's designs reuse props and costumes from past productions, upcycle a lot of plastic rubbish, and rescue a huge distressed mirror from Indhu Rubasingham's bins.

Theatre review: Admissions

Trafalgar Studios is just down the road from The Motherfucker Of Parliaments but while its main house show is highly topical, it’s a current American scandal it links into – that of Ivy League Universities, and the lengths people will go to to get their kids into the best ones, regardless of whether they deserve a place. Although Joshua Harmon’s Admissions looks at a different angle of the story than the outright bribery and cheating that’s been in the news, it could still have coasted on topicality to become a hit – if only it was any good. Sherri (FD Alex Kingston) is the admissions officer, and her husband Bill (Andrew Woodall) the headmaster, at an exclusive private boarding school. The measure of Sherri’s success seems to largely be in how much diversity she can bring to the student body, and in her decade or so in the job she’s managed to get the non-white student populace from negligible to nearly 20%.