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: Macbeth (RSC / The Other Place)

Macbeth is one of the Shakespearean big hitters that can generally be relied upon to sell well in the RSC's biggest auditorium, so it's interesting to see a comparatively starry production get consigned to the studio space. Maybe it's a tribute to the famous McKellen/Dench production that also played The Other Place in the 1970s; more likely it's that Daniel Raggett's production didn't want to sacrifice the intimacy that becomes a major feature of its single setting. That setting is a Scottish pub run by Sam Heughan's Macbeth and Lia Williams' Lady Macbeth, the base of operations for a violent '80s criminal gang run by Duncan (Gilly Gilchrist,) who makes his intentions clear about who should eventually replace him: Early on his son Malcolm (Calum Ross) is made, possibly as a sort of initiation, to slit the throat of the treacherous Cawdor with a box cutter. But a supernatural trio has other ideas.

Theatre review: Reykjavik

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I caught Reykjavik's final preview performance before they invite the press in.

Add Richard Bean to the ever-growing list of playwrights who really just want to write a ghost story: It's fair to say I've had mixed reactions to his plays, but while the writer's biggest hits have been with comedy, the mournful, haunted Reykjavik is probably the best of his plays that I've seen. Set in 1976, with the Cod Wars (Iceland demanding, and invariably getting, an increasingly large area of exclusivity for fishing its waters) nearing their end, the fishing industry that makes up a huge proportion of Hull's economy looks under serious threat. But for Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth,) whose company owns several boats, there's a more immediate problem: One of his trawlers has sunk in the freezing waters off Iceland, and all but four of the crew are dead. It's something all the trawlermen know is a possibility, and the city has traditions for dealing with it.

Theatre review: BRACE BRACE

My last trip to David Byrne's (not that one) first season at the Royal Court is for Oli Forsyth's BRACE BRACE, the story of a young couple surviving a hijacking only to face unexpected consequences in the rest of their lives, and Daniel Raggett's production which ramps up the tension and twists - but can't disguise the gaping plot holes. Sylvia (Anjana Vasan) and Ray (Phil Dunster*) are flying to their honeymoon when a lone, mentally ill man manages to take over the plane, briefly looking like he'll bring it down. Ray gets knocked out when trying to stop the hijacker but Sylvia manages to defeat him, becoming a popular have-a-go hero in the press. Inevitably it puts a strain on their relationship, and at first it looks like this will take the form of Ray's wounded pride at being written out of the story in favour of his wife as sole heroine, while she takes it in her stride.

Theatre review: Rock'n'Roll

Tom Stoppard time, so lots of people overheard in the interval carefully avoiding giving an opinion in case they're exposed as not understanding it. Rock'n'Roll pits Communist idealism against Cold War reality via two Cambridge academics, whose lives it follows from 1968 to 1989. Max (Nathaniel Parker) is a lecturer and vocal Communist who thinks he's found an enthusiastic protégé in Czech graduate student Jan (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd.) When Russia invades Czechoslovakia to curb its apparent intentions for reform, Jan returns to Prague in the vague impression that he can do something to help, but the authorities - who sent him to England to spy on Max in the first place, and see if he can be turned to an asset - are unimpressed. But Czechoslovakia is still seen as a comparatively open, accessible part of the Eastern Bloc, and the fact that it allows foreign bands to play is a plus to the music-obsessed Jan.

Theatre review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist

The Italian satirist Dario Fo is considered one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century, but his work is very rarely seen in London. The new version of Fo and Franca Rame's most famous work, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, both makes it seem incredible that their names aren't better-known, and at the same time provides an explanation for why they're rarely on our stages: Making their stuff work as well as it does here is a Herculean feat that could easily go very wrong. The latest transfer to suggest Robert Hastie's Sheffield Theatres is the venue to watch at the moment, Tom Basden's adaptation takes the 1970 play about police brutality and gives it a painfully up-to-date relocation to the present-day Metropolitan Police, with barely a real-life scandal or damning statistic left unmentioned. Daniel Rigby plays The Maniac, a compulsive liar who takes the quote "All the world's a stage" literally - he believes he's got a permanent audience.

Theatre review: Dear Brutus

J. M. Barrie’s Dear Brutus may take its title from Julius Caesar, but the Shakespeare play it borrows most overtly from is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Lob (Robin Hooper) is a puckish – literally – old man who’s invited a group of strangers with one thing in common to spend the week at his home. As his guests try to figure out what their mysterious common characteristic is, they hear a local legend of a magical wood that appears in a different spot every Midsummer’s Eve; anyone who enters it is never seen again. The enchanted wood does appear, of course, and most of the guests do enter it, but in a three-act structure that’s like a much better-done version of The Passing of the Third Floor Back, they do all emerge again, all changed to varying degrees. This is a play full of wild variations in tone, as what each group of characters discovers in the wood is very different.

Theatre review: The Cardinal

It may be a Troupe production at Southwark Playhouse's smaller space but the Royal Shakespeare Company's fingerprints are all over The Cardinal: The director and many of the cast are RSC regulars, there's a feeling the text has been thoroughly investigated, the programme features both articles from academics and a misleading running time, and there's even a dance break, as was de rigeur during the Michael Boyd years. The fact that James Shirley's play has even seen the light of day again can be traced back to the RSC as well, as it made the final four a couple of years ago when they were looking for an obscurity for the Swan. It lost out to Love's Sacrifice but director Justin Audibert clearly thought it was a shame for it not to reach an audience. On this evidence I would have to agree, it's got its problems, especially in the second half, but has a lot to recommend it as well.

Theatre review: School Play

Alex MacKeith's debut play is a comedy-drama that punctures a situation pressured to the point of breaking: School Play is set in the office of a primary school headteacher and looks at a crisis in education - in particular the almost surreally wrongheaded system in which state schools need to show their students improving if they don't want to lose the very resources that make improvement possible. Lara (Fola Evans-Akingbola) has had to put her teacher training on hold ever since her father got ill, but is keeping her hand in by working as secretary to headteacher Jo (Ann Ogbomo.) Jo's received the students' SATs results and they're decent but not good enough to get the school any additional money next year - and she's just found out they'll be expected to take on an extra 100 pupils as well.

Theatre review: Arthur's World

In the Bush Theatre's Attic space, playwright Helena Thompson wears Philip Ridley's influence on her sleeve as a group of damaged characters clash in a small London flat, while apocalyptic violence rages just outside the window. In Arthur's World, alcoholic pensioner Arthur (Paul Greenwood) seems to have kept himself to himself most of his life, but in the last couple of years he's pretty much become a recluse. This is in part because that's how long it is since a popular mobile phone game somehow exploded into reality, players no longer hiding behind their avatars but seeking out their opponents in reality, resulting in the ongoing, bloody riots known as The Fights. The other reason is that in the early days of The Fights Mikey, the son Arthur raised alone, went missing. Never having quite given up on his son returning alive, Arthur has stayed in the flat despite the violence raging just outside. On Mikey's 20th birthday, he's even baked him a cake, just in case.