Theatre review: Born With Teeth

After a quiet start to his time as half the Artistic Director of the RSC Daniel Evans is having a busier second year, following up his role as a Christopher Marlowe lead by directing a play about the man himself. Liz Duffy Adams' Born With Teeth takes as its premise an academic theory that Marlowe might have contributed to Shakespeare's early Henry VI plays, as well as from the persistent rumours that he was murdered for his work as a spy. In a private back room in a pub we see the two playwrights - aware of each other but not yet acquainted - meet for the first time after being asked to complete an unfinished draft of the play that is now known as Part I. Kit Marlowe (Ncuti Gatwa) is the established, bad-boy superstar of Elizabethan theatre, and plays up to this image to the somewhat star-struck Will Shakespeare (Edward Bluemel,) dominating the conversation and making sure he reserves all the best scenes from the outline for himself.

Theatre review: The Time Traveller's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 fantasy romance The Time Traveller's Wife has been so popular it's already been given multiple screen adaptations, in an apparent contest to see how many times you can do a story revolving around a lot of male nudity without ever showing cock. Now it's the, somehow simultaneously inevitable and utterly unlikely, musical theatre adaptation: Lauren Gunderson (book,) Joss Stone & Dave Stewart (music & lyrics) and Kait Kerrigan (additional lyrics) take on the story of a naked man who grooms a young girl over a period of several years, and then his feet fall off. Librarian Henry (David Hunter) meets Clare (Joanna Woodward,) who does papier-mâché professionally, in a library when they're in their twenties, but she already seems to know a lot about him, including his supernatural secret.

Theatre review: The Unfriend

Former Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat goes back to his sitcom roots for his playwrighting debut, and brings along some more TV connections - his regular collaborator Mark Gatiss directs black comedy The Unfriend, first seen in Chichester and now transferring to the Criterion. It mines familiar comic territory by throwing some truly objectionable people on stage together, and some of the characters aren't very nice either. Grumpily-married London couple Peter (Reece Shearsmith) and Debbie (Amanda Abbington) meet brash Denver widow Elsa (Frances Barber) on a cruise, and after a lot of emails invite her to stay for a few days. It's only on the day she arrives that they decide to do a quick Google search on her name, and discover she's suspected of being a serial poisoner who's killed at least six people - but had never left quite enough evidence behind for a case to stick.

Theatre review: Eureka Day

Jonathan Spector's Eureka Day dates from pre-Covid days, and its story would probably play out a bit differently if it didn't, but maybe not that differently: The crux of the plot revolves around vaccination, but its wider themes look at the best intentions of avowed liberals, and whether they can leave the door open for things to go seriously wrong. Rob Howell's bright and colourful set is a classroom in the titular private California primary school, and the scenes are meetings of the five-strong Executive Committee, led by old hippie Don (Mark McKinney,) who runs the school, the rest being parents. Suzanne (Helen Hunt) is such a stalwart of the school, the only half-joking rumour is she had IVF later in life only so she could still be involved with the committee. When she isn't knitting furiously in the corner, single mother May (Kirsten Foster) is having an affair with stay-at-home dad (because he's a millionnaire) Eli (Ben Schnetzer.)

Theatre review: Life of Pi

Another show I've had rescheduled a couple of times over the last 18 months, the stage adaptation of Life of Pi that originated in Sheffield finally gets its West End opening. Yann Martel's novel was a huge bestseller twenty years ago and has already had a CGI-heavy film adaptation, and its fantastical story of animals on the high seas lends itself to stage spectacle - if they could figure out how. Lolita Chakrabarti writes the adaptation and Max Webster directs, but it's puppet designers Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell who ultimately make it possible. Piscine Patel, known as Pi (alternate Nuwan Hugh Perera) is an Indian teenager whose father (Nicholas Khan) runs a zoo. When 1970s politics turns violent and the family get stuck in the middle, they accept an offer from a Canadian zoo to relocate there along with all their animals. But along the way the cargo ship they're on sinks, and Pi is the only survivor.

Theatre review: Kiss of the Spider Woman

Manuel Puig's novel Kiss of the Spider Woman seems to be of endless fascination to theatremakers - I saw a stage version at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007, and there also exists a notoriously Marmite Kander and Ebb musical on the subject. But for the Menier Chocolate Factory production, Laurie Sansom uses another new adaptation, by Motorcycle Diaries screenwriter José Rivera and American playwright Allan Baker. The setting is a jail cell in 1970s Argentina, a time when the junta regularly imprisoned and tortured political dissidents like Valentin (Declan Bennett.) He shares this space with Molina (Samuel Barnett,) a gay window dresser convincted of gross indecency. The two have little in common, but bond when Molina starts to tell his cellmate bedtime stories to help him sleep.

Theatre review: Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse)

"Tom Hiddleston showering on stage." According to my blog stats, I've already been getting hits from people Googling that phrase long before I even saw the show. So there you go, at least now those people will actually find something for their troubles. Yes, Hiddles does take a shower on stage, although it's more like a quick splash. Calm down, he doesn't even take his trousers off, it's not like he's getting his Coriolanus bleached. He does also share a kiss with a man, but that's more of a quick peck on the lips than anything to get the Internet too moist in the gusset. But if these two headline-grabbing moments are nothing much to write home about, it's fortunately because they're throwaway elements of a solid production, as Josie Rourke tackles a simply staged but interesting Coriolanus.

Theatre review: From Morning to Midnight

I strongly suspect the National has served up another helping of Marmite because as I left the Lyttelton after From Morning to Midnight I overheard someone say he'd definitely be recommending it to his friends; I for one won't be though. Georg Kaiser's 1912 play, in a text by Dennis Kelly, follows a cataclysmic day in the life of a bank Clerk (understudy Jack Tarlton) who, after misunderstanding the intentions of a beautiful Italian customer (Gina Bellman) steals sixty thousand marks from the bank. On realising the lady didn't mean for him to run away with him and a stolen fortune, he's left alone, suddenly a criminal, and possessed of a suitcase full of cash. He roams the city, and between his family, the spectators of a cycling race, the prostitutes and clientele of a brothel, and finally the denizens of a Salvation Army shelter, he attempts to find meaning to life, and where his new wealth places him in it.