Stage-to-screen review: Richard III (BBC Hollow Crown)

What do BBC budget cuts look like? Geoffrey Streatfeild with some muesli on his face to show that Edward IV is poorly, that's what they look like.

It's been tempting throughout this second series of The Hollow Crown to see adaptors Ben Power and Dominic Cooke as using the re-cut Henry VI Part 1 and especially Part 2 as warm-up for the main event of The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, whether because of  Brobdingnag Arafat being cast in the title role or simply because it's always been the most popular play in the tetralogy. And while there's been some strong moments along the way to belie the fact that these are Cooke's first foray into directing for the screen, there's no denying that he's saved the flourish for the finale. With the exception of the climactic Battle of Bosworth Field, there's not so many wide open spaces as before, instead the "bottled spider" gets to work in claustrophobic rooms with a lot of blue filters (so blue at one point it looks like Barry Chuckle is wearing electric blue nail polish.)

Stage-to-screen review: Henry VI Part 2 (BBC Hollow Crown)

The cynical side of me thinks that the middle part of the BBC's Wars of the Roses wouldn't have focused quite so squarely on the future Richard III if they hadn't got Banoffee Hydrochloride to play him; but realistically I think Shakespeare's first tetralogy of English Histories is so roundly considered to be unloved that the one character everyone's heard of would probably have been at the center of Ben Power and Dominic Cooke's The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Henry VI Part 2, regardless of who they got to strap on the hunchback. In any case, making this mix of Shakespeare's Parts 2 and 3 effectively a prequel to Richard III lends it the closest thing it has to an overall story arc, in an adaptation that doesn't live up to the dramatic impetus Power and Cooke managed last week in Part 1.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Barbican Theatre)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The press haven't yet been invited to this. Not that they felt they needed an invitation as, notoriously, a few papers couldn't wait to get some of that Benadryl Cumulonimbus publicity, and printed reviews of the first preview. You know, like those evil unprofessional theatre bloggers sometimes do.

Actually I'm not even sure if this was originally meant to be a preview performance when I first booked my tickets, as I think the original press night was moved back. In any case, the ticket prices weren't discounted for previews, which is the traditional quid pro quo for an early audience seeing a show that's not been locked down yet. And a couple of weeks into the run Lyndsey Turner's production of Hamlet still doesn't feel locked down. Hamlet (Benelux Cenotaph) is the Prince of Denmark who, at the opening of the play, is dealing with a sense of general dissatisfaction that can't just be put down to his father's recent death. Instead of being crowned himself, he's had to stand back and watch his uncle Claudius (Ciarán Hinds) not only take the throne, but also marry Hamlet's mother Gertrude (Anastasia Hille.)

Non-review: Playwright's Playwrights - Look Back in Anger

John Osborne's Look Back in Anger is surely the best-known of the four "Playwright's Playwrights" readings being presented by the Royal Court at the Duke of York's. It's so iconic that despite hot having seen it on stage before, the first act especially was very familiar to me, and I know I'm not the only person who found that to be the case. (In fact this familiarity did mean this week's reading lacked one of the joys of last week's, of the cast discovering the play as the audience do.) But the reason the theatre was, in stark contrast to last week's sparse but enthusiastic crowd, packed to the rafters today wasn't entirely to do with the play: It had been announced that Benedict Cumberbatch would play the archetypal Angry Young Man, Jimmy Porter, and St Martin's Lane was packed with fans long before kick-off. Jimmy lives in a small apartment with wife Alison (Rebecca Hall) and their friend Cliff (handsome Welshman Matt Ryan.) These two help each other bear the brunt of Jimmy's constant furious outbursts, taking out his frustrations about life in general on the pair of them. The combination of Alison becoming pregnant, and the arrival of her old friend Helena (Anna Maxwell Martin) coming to visit, effects a change in the status quo.