Theatre review: Troilus and Cressida (RSC / RST)

The thing about committing to doing the entire works of Shakespeare with no repetition is that at some point you have to knuckle down and do Troilus and Cressida. If you're the RSC you've also got the added pressure of hoping it doesn't get overshadowed by the memory of the last time you attempted it. Artistic Director Gregory Doran has taken the job on himself with a bombastic production that plays a few weeks in the middle of the "T" season, the high concept being that designer Niki Turner has taken inspiration from Mad Max (presumably the Tom Hardy rather than Mel Gibson version, as Agamemnon doesn't take time out to blame the Jews for the Trojan War) and composers Evelyn Glennie and Dave Price have created a cacophonous, percussion-heavy soundtrack that's meant to evoke the noise of a war dragging on indefinitely in the background. It's a clanging, crashing noise that Troilus (Gavin Fowler) is not so much haunted as irritated by after seven years of siege.

Theatre review: The Jew of Malta

Ever since I first read Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta a few years ago I've been keen to see it on stage; not necessarily because of its virtues as a piece of writing, but to see how a 21st century production would cope with the aggressive antisemitism and racism that is even more at the heart of this story than it is in The Merchant of Venice. I thought it might crop up on the fringe at some point but in the event it was one of the country's biggest companies that took on the challenge, with Justin Audibert getting a baptism of fire on his RSC directing debut. The solution he's come up with is an interesting one, particularly in light of the fact that Merchant's LOLantisemitism attitude is often dealt with by ramping up the play's dark side: The opposite happens here, Marlowe's bloodthirsty and vicious revenge tragedy revealed as a black comedy.

Theatre review: Volpone

In an RSC summer season that's focusing on often dark issues of prejudice and outcasts, it falls to Ben Jonson to provide the madcap comic relief, as Trevor Nunn returns to Stratford-upon-Avon to revive one of Jonson's classic con-men in Volpone. Henry Goodman plays the immensely rich Volpone who - as the stock tickers dominating Stephen Brimson Lewis' design suggest - made his fortune on the markets. But he's hungry for more riches and wants to have some fun acquiring them, so he turns other people's greed against them: Pretending to be on his death bed, he lets it be known that he has no heir, and soon there's a queue of people at his door bearing gifts, all in the hope of being named in his will. As his pile of gold gets ever-bigger, he also sets his eye on Celia (Rhiannon Handy,) wife of one of his victims, Corvino (Matthew Kelly.)

Theatre review: Love's Sacrifice

The more obscure of this summer's Swan shows have been chosen in part as a reflection of one of the main RST Shakespeares. John Ford's Love's Sacrifice, which is meant to mirror Othello, really is an obscurity: No definite record seems to exist of it ever having been revived after its 1632 premiere, until now. Matthew Needham returns to the RSC and, with no Roman Emperors available in this year's rep, has to make do with the brattish Duke of Pavy, newly ascended to power and just married to Bianca (inter-species space lesbian Catrin Stewart,) a commoner whose beauty alone he fell for. The closest thing to an Iago figure is D'Avolos (Jonathan McGuinness,) the Duke's vaguely disgruntled secretary, who plans to tell his master that Bianca is cheating on him with his best friend. Where Love's Sacrifice differs from Othello is that - thanks in part, admittedly, to D'Avolos' interference - Bianca and Fernando (Jamie Thomas King) really have fallen in love.

Theatre review: The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare's Globe)

This Globe season has taken us  to Troy, Egypt and Jerusalem, so it's in keeping that their final Shakespeare production of the year has also been given a Middle-Eastern flavour. Although Blanche McIntyre hasn't let the Arabian Nights setting of her Comedy of Errors stop her from throwing in all kinds of more recent references from Quidditch to Looney Tunes. This early comedy may be Shakespeare's shortest play but 2 hours 25 minutes still feels pleasingly brisk, especially as McIntyre has added a lengthy silent comedy opening, introducing us to Dromio of Ephesus (Jamie Wilkes) as he clambers perilously around the stage. It sets up this Dromio as the slapstick twin, while Dromio of Syracuse (Brodie Ross) will prove to be the one with more word-play and witticisms in his arsenal.

Theatre review: Ignorance/Jahiliyyah

In 1948-9, the Islamic scholar Sayid Qutb (Jude Akuwudike) spent 18 months studying at a small American university. Already a much-published authority, the reasons the middle-aged Egyptian joined the freshmen in the first place seem a bit nebulous, but on his return to Egypt his writing became increasingly extreme (a quick Google search of Qutb sees him described as "the man who inspired Bin Laden") and he became a leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood, acquiring a martyr's reputation after his arrest and execution. In a present day UK university, Philip (Daniel Rabin) is a lecturer finishing a book on Qutb, when he takes on new postgrad Layla (Laila Alj,) ostensibly writing her doctorate thesis on the same subject. Steve Waters' new play Ignorance/Jahiliyyah, the latest to premiere at Hampstead Downstairs, jumps between the two connected stories as Layla presents some documents that contradict the popular opinion that Qutb became radicalised after his return to Egypt, and suggests that his experiences in America simply confirmed a hatred of Western values that he already held.