Theatre review: Teeth'N'Smiles

The ultimate accolade shouldn't be a gold record, it should be a golden hypodermic. Parklife!

David Hare's play with songs Teeth Apostrophe N Apostrophe Smiles, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1975, is set six years earlier in 1969, when disillusionment with rock music and the counterculture it spearheaded was starting to set in. Maggie Frisby and The Skins are a once-popular group on its last legs, doing tours around UK universities that barely cover their expenses - Rebecca Lucy Taylor Also Known As Self Esteem plays vocalist Maggie, with Michael Abubakar, Bill Caple, Samuel Jordan, Jojo Macari and Noah Weatherby as a band at various levels of frustration at the way their careers have turned out. Maggie is a former heroin addict, but while we're given no reason to doubt that she's given that up, she's still unapologetically and indisputably an alcoholic who may or may not perform on any given night - it's the shows she's really looking forward to that the band know to be most worried about.

Theatre review: Scandaltown

All of a sudden we're getting to see everything Mike Bartlett kept himself busy with during lockdown, with his second premiere in the space of a week. I hadn't quite registered that I'd booked them two days apart from each other, but they do show a contrast in a playwright who likes to experiment with style, and has grown fond in recent years of using familiar classic theatrical genres to reflect on the present day. So if The 47th was a tragicomedy so dark it bordered on the apocalyptic, Scandaltown, opening at the Lyric Hammersmith in a production by Rachel O'Riordan, goes for much less ambiguous laughs, applying the convoluted plots and stock characters of Restoration comedy to 21st century concerns. Phoebe Virtue (Cecilia Appiah) and her twin brother were raised in the country, and are considerate, environmentally conscious and unselfish.

Theatre review: The Welkin

After adapting Chimerica for TV Lucy Kirkwood returns to the stage for a play that feels equally epic in ambition, even if instead of spanning continents this one is largely set in a single room. It does have its thoughts on the stars though, as The Welkin takes place in Suffolk in 1759, the year in which Edmond Halley had predicted the comet that would eventually bear his name would appear. It's a scientific discovery that's captured the imagination of people even in remote, small towns like this one, with everyone regularly mentioning it, hoping they might catch a glimpse of the celestial body. But if human knowledge is expanding to include the heavens, women like midwife Lizzy Luke (Maxine Peake) find that progress closer to home is much slower than they would like. Summoned grudgingly away from her laundry, Lizzy's expertise has had her requested by a local judge to take part in one of the few areas of Georgian law left to the judgement of women.

Theatre review: An Adventure

It may only have a cast of six, rarely putting more than three of them on stage at the same time, but coming in at nearly three and a half hours and spanning three continents An Adventure fits the bill if Vinay Patel was aiming to create an epic. Inspired by his grandparents’ journey to the UK, it begins in India where Jyoti (played initially by Anjana Vasan, later by Nila Aalia,) has to pick between four suitors. She doesn’t particularly want to get married but her father wants her out of the house and the only choice she’s getting in the matter is whose arm she’ll be walking out on. Turning up in a borrowed suit and bumbling his way through his interview with her, Kenyan-born Rasik (Shubham Saraf, later Selva Rasalingam) seems an unlikely candidate, but the quick-witted Jyoti has a quip and an answer for everything, and Rasik’s willingness to try and keep up with her verbal sparring puts him at the top of the pile.

Theatre review: Obsession

Toneelgroep Amsterdam's season at the Barbican continues with a new play, based on a film by Luchino Visconti - whose work Ivo van Hove frequently stages - and with a cast half made up of Dutch ensemble members, and half of British guest actors (although at times even the latter seem to have picked up the Dutch accent.) After filling it with furniture and audience members for Roman Tragedies, Jan Versweyveld uses the size of the Barbican stage to leave vast empty spaces for Obsession, which takes place in a bar - one that apparently does have some customers, we just don't get to see them. Instead Gino (Jude Law,) a drifter, wanders in playing the harmonica and looking for something to eat, which he may or may not be able to pay for. He's a mechanic and stays to do a few jobs around the place in exchange for his room and board, but the real reason he's sticking around is because he's fallen instantly in lust with the barmaid Hanna (Halina Reijn,) and the second her much older husband Joseph (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) is gone they start an affair.

Theatre review: punkplay

Last year Southwark Playhouse's Large Theatre hosted a hit (in fact I'm surprised and disappointed it didn't get a further life) production of Xanadu, and this year in the Little space Olivia Newton-John's title song plays on a constant loop before the start of another show largely performed on rollerskates. In theory the song's a symbol of everything this play's characters are revolting against, and a sign that we're in for a very different experience, but in fact Gregory S. Moss' punkplay might turn out to have more in common with that affable piece of '80s nostalgia than it first appears to. It's the mid 1980s in New England - Reagan's America - and Duck's (Matthew Castle) father has kicked him out of the house after an argument over military school. Duck turns up at his best friend Mickey's (Sam Perry) house asking if he can stay there for a while, which turns out to be the best part of a year during which the teenagers discover hallucinogenic cough syrup, some really bizarre porn, and punk.

Theatre review: The Djinns of Eidgah

Kashmir isn't just a disputed zone, it's been disputed since 1948, and is still awaiting the referendum that was promised to decide whether it's part of India, Pakistan or an independent state. India seems to have a clear opinion on the matter, its military presence making the valley the world's most heavily militarised area. The predominantly Muslim local population fights back against this, and the conflict is the backdrop for Abhishek Majumdar's The Djinns Of Eidgah. When she was 10 years old, Ashrafi (Aysha Kala) witnessed her father's violent death and was mentally scarred by it, retreating into a fantasy world that she's still in four years later. Ashrafi's brother Bilal (Danny Ashok) cites her as the reason he's not as politicised as his friends, preferring to hold out hope that someone will spot his footballing talent and give him and his sister a new life.

Theatre review: Farragut North

There's a bit of a crush to get into Southwark Playhouse's Large space at the moment - "no pushing!" barked a woman at me, as she pushed me up against the door-frame so she could get first dibs on the front row. Maybe this excitement is due to the presence of Max Irons, who's pretty much sexually irresistible (at least that's what his dad thinks.) Or maybe everyone just wanted to get up close to Barry off of Eastenders. Irons plays Steve, a 25-year-old who's already press officer for a US Presidential candidate. Farragut North takes place in the runup to the crucial Iowa primaries and the signs are good that Steve's candidate will win the vote to become the Democrats' candidate. But this confidence is shaken with a few days to go when Steve gets a call from a rival campaign's manager (Andrew Whipp) who suggests the polls might not tell the whole story, and it could be time to jump ship.