Theatre review: The Shitheads

Humans have a number of evolutionary ancestors, with some of the subspecies having co-existed in prehistoric times and fought for dominance. Jack Nicholls' debut play at the Royal Court Upstairs imagines one such time of uneasy meeting between the two, but doesn't call them by names like Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal: Clare's (Jacoba Williams) family of cave-dwellers call themselves the Magic people, as their superior ability to communicate, hunt and survive seems miraculous; they call their nomadic neighbours The Shitheads. They've been known to kill and eat their rivals, particularly their brains as they believe this will pass on all their victim's knowledge, thoughts and dreams to them, but when Clare goes on an elk hunt with Shithead Greg (Jonny Khan,) not only can he speak but he tells her a story, opening her up to the idea that there might be other ways of dealing with the other species.

Theatre review: London Tide

With the exception of Oliver Exclamation Mark and umpteen Christmas Carols, the works of Charles Dickens (Chickens to his friends) have largely resisted the musical theatre treatment. Ben Power (book and lyrics) and PJ Harvey (music and lyrics) haven't been deterred by the idea that there might be a reason for this, so have tackled Our Mutual Friend, well-known among Dickens' novels as being... definitely one of them. Retitled London Tide, this stage version frames the story as being that of two women who never meet until the very end, but are both affected when a body is fished out of the Thames and identified as the missing heir to a dust fortune. From context I think that means dust as in a waste management firm, not Dark Materials. Bella Wilfer (Bella Maclean) had been due to marry the dead man despite never having met him, and is now suddenly considered a widow without ever having actually married or come into the inheritance.

Theatre review: The Good Person of Szechwan

The Lyric Hammersmith's programming is currently giving me flashbacks to my drama degree, and particularly playwrights who, if you'd believed my course, are produced way more regularly than they actually are. After Dario Fo and Franca Rame it's the turn of Bertolt Brecht, and his political morality tale The Good Person of Szechwan. Three gods come to Earth on a mission to find a good person: If there isn't at least one left in the world, they won't be able to avert an apocalyptic flood that will wipe out the unworthy mankind. They've landed in a very poor district, where people are too busy trying to keep themselves and their families alive to worry about anyone else, but prostitute Shen Te (Ami Tredrea) has a reputation for generosity, and is chosen as the experiment's subject. The gods give her $1000 to set her up for the future, and she uses it to buy a tobacconist's shop.

Theatre review: The 47th

Mike Bartlett has played around with pastiche in the past, never more successfully than when King Charles III took Shakespearean themes and language and applied them to an imagined future of the British Royal family. Later this week he'll be premiering his take on Restoration Comedy, but for The 47th he returns to blank verse, also reuniting with director Rupert Goold, and Lydia Wilson on Lady Macbeth duties, although the venue changes to the much larger Old Vic, befitting a lead character who's fond of a rally: As with the previous production, most of the fictionalised characters aren't played as impressions of the real people, but Donald Trump's mannerisms are so pronounced and familiar that it would be odd not to recreate them. And after a few years of TV work where you could actually tell what his face looked like, Bertie Carvel returns to his days as a theatrical chameleon with a comic but creepily uncanny impersonation of the 45th President of the United States.