Theatre review: Run The Beast Down

I suppose if you stage as many shows as the Finborough does, themes will start to emerge in the programming, whether intentionally or not - I'm guessing "the theatre that stages plays with menacingly symbolic foxes" isn't a tagline they'll be putting on the posters, but after Foxfinder and We Know Where You Live there's a sense of déjà vu when the animals turn up again in Run The Beast Down. Director-turned-writer Titas Halder offers up a long monologue for Charlie (Ben Aldridge,) an obnoxious city trader and hipster who, in the opening scene, loses his job and his girlfriend in quick succession. In seven chapters told out of chronological order, he tells us about how things started to fall apart both at work and in his relationship; and once he's stuck at home with nothing to do, his breakdown takes the form of an obsession with the foxes screaming outside at night.

Theatre review: American Psycho

The last two Doctors have both undergone remarkable physical transformations on the London stage at the moment, and while David Tennant's makeover as Alanis Morisette is... special, I reckon it's trumped by Matt Smith's ridiculously buff, frequently scantily-clad regeneration into Patrick Bateman, the titular character of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. Smith's casting has of course been the only talking point ever since it was announced, rather overshadowing the other unusual thing about this premiere production: The songwriter behind Spring Awakening has turned the blood- and sex-drenched 1980s satire into a musical. When Smith's Bateman is first raised onto the stage through the trapdoor, he's perfecting his tan on his own sunbed. The skin, like the muscles under it and the clothes over it, is all part of the image that has to radiate success.

Theatre review: The Lyons

If there's an insatiable appetite for drama about dysfunctional families, The Lyons is here to feed it. Nicky Silver's off-Broadway hit comes to the Menier complete with original director Mark Brokaw, who has a new British cast to play the well-off Manhattan Jewish family. The scene is a private hospital room where Ben (Nicholas Day) has terminal cancer. He and wife Rita (Isla Blair) have known about his illness for months, but have chosen to wait until he has a matter of days left to live before springing the news on their children Lisa (Charlotte Randle) and Curtis (Tom Ellis.) Thrown into this small room together the family waste no time tearing into each other about their many long-standing grievances and disappointments. And once Ben has died we get to see what's left of the children he and Rita raised.