Theatre review: Guys & Dolls

After successes with Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Nicholas Hytner applies the Bridge Theatre's signature promenade staging to a musical for the first time. As classic Broadway musicals go, Frank Loesser (music & lyrics,) Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows' Guys & Dolls seems to be permanently ripe for revival - its last West End run was in 2015/16. Weaving together two of Damon Runyon's "Runyonland" short stories of petty crooks and gamblers in 1930s' New York, its central event is a floating craps game organised by Nathan Detroit (Daniel Mays.) With gambling illegal, a new venue has to be found every time to keep the police guessing, and the only spot available for tomorrow night's game will cost him $1000 up front.

Theatre review: Under Milk Wood

A collection of our more sprightly older actors populate Lyndsey Turner's production of Under Milk Wood, which reopens an Olivier Theatre that is wisely playing it safe, and staying in its temporary in-the-round configuration for the next few shows. And, after a year they probably spent shielding more carefully than most, I guess you could do worse as a high concept at the moment than a cast who've all had both their jabs. The reason for the high concept is that Dylan Thomas' beloved play for voices has been given a new framing device by writer Siân Owen, putting the action into the morning routine of a retirement home. After we've got to meet some of the staff and residents, Owain Jenkins (The Actor Michael Sheen) arrives unexpectedly in hopes of speaking to his father, whom he hasn't seen for a long time. So long that he doesn't realise Richard (Karl Johnson) has become almost non-verbal with dementia.

Theatre review: The Ruling Class

Jamie Lloyd opened his first Trafalgar Slightly Rearranged season with James McAvoy, and now he ends the second with him as well. Rather than a tried-and-tested Shakespeare though, this time it's for a class satire that's languished in obscurity for decades. It's no surprise on seeing it, though, that Lloyd managed to lure his leading man back, as Peter Barnes' The Ruling Class features the kind of role that most actors only dream of getting to play. When the 13th Earl of Gurney dies in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident, his title, property and seat in the House of Lords pass to his only surviving son. But Jack (McAvoy) is a paranoid schizophrenic with a god complex, who's spent the last 7 years in a mental hospital. Now he has to be seen in public again, and those fighting for control of his estate have to wonder if his behaviour can be passed off as mere aristocratic eccentricity.

Theatre review: The Captain of Köpenick

I'm not sure what's going on at the National lately - the better the quality of work at the now-defunct Cottesloe, the more questionable the choices in the two bigger houses seem to get. After last year's unmemorable Travelling Light in the Lyttelton, Antony Sher moves to the Olivier for Carl Zuckmayer's farcical satire on bureaucracy and the blind following of orders, The Captain of Köpenick.

Wilhelm Voigt (Sher) is a lifelong small-time crook. Released from prison for the umpteenth time, he finds life on the outside even more of a challenge as he can't do anything without presenting his official papers - documents he's never actually had. As Voigt's very existence is questioned by the authorities, the Mayor of Köpenick (Anthony O'Donnell) is having a new military uniform made - a plot that will (eventually) cross paths with Voigt's.