Theatre review: The Wider Earth

You never know where the next pop-up theatre is going to materialise (which I guess is why they're called pop-ups,) and there's particularly majestic surroundings for the transfer of David Morton's Australian and US hit The Wider Earth. In fact the excuse to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum what must be decades since I last went there was one of the attractions of the play, which has set up shop in the Jerwood Gallery, a space that normally houses temporary exhibitions and now has a custom-built theatre in it. The gallery is right next to the museum's Darwin Centre, so it couldn't be better-placed to house the story of the young Charles Darwin (Bradley Foster) on his two-year journey (that actually ended up lasting five years) circumnavigating the globe on the Beagle.

Theatre review: Comus

It's a strange time to see the start of a new Globe season, given all the current sound and fury over Emma Rice's premature departure (personally I'm sure the situation is far more complex than it initially appeared, but I think the board's official statement suggesting they're now interfering directly in artistic policy was disastrous, whether that's literally true or just a badly-worded press release.) Still, for the couple of remaining seasons we will be seeing Rice in charge, it's starting to look as is there's a theme to what'll end up on the Swanamaker stage: Weird shit, possibly involving Philip Cumbus. For the first time the venue attempts to recreate one of the elaborate masques that were a private treat for the upper classes, with John Milton's Comus: A Masque in Honour of Chastity. As the subtitle suggests, this is a rather po-faced morality tale, but that's not quite what director Lucy Bailey puts on stage.