Theatre review: Apex Predator

Hampstead Theatre's prices are getting so high I increasingly need a bloody good reason to fork out for a ticket for the Main House, but the playwright behind one of my past Shows of the Year would fit that bill: In the case of Apex Predator that's John Donnelly, of 2014's The Pass. This time instead of gay men the central pair are straight(ish) women, and instead of starting out at the top of their game one of them at least seems to be spiralling out of control. Mia (Sophie Melville) has recently had her second child, and is suffering from sleepless nights thanks to the baby and an inconsiderate neighbour's loud music. Her husband Joe (Bryan Dick) can't provide much moral support as he works most nights in a special police operation - he's not allowed to discuss it but she suspects it's connected to a grisly recent series of murders.

Theatre review: All of Us

All of Us opens with a neat little reverse: Two women sit opposite each other, Jess (Francesca Martinez) needing some help to get to her chair because she has Cerebral Palsy, Rita (Lucy Briers) apologising for being late and taking out a pad to take notes on the session. But Jess isn't the patient, she's the therapist, who's making slow but steady progress with Rita's OCD. Martinez is probably most recognisable as a comedian but here doubles as writer and star of a tragicomic play tearing into the last 12 years of austerity cuts to vital benefits, particularly to people with disabilities. Jess is busy, productive and independent in everything except her own body, whose "wobbly" nature means she needs help from flatmate Lottie (Crystal Condie) and care assistant Nadia (Wanda Opalinska) to dress herself and cook.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Shakespeare's Globe)

Without the new writing or more obscure revivals that sometimes take us into the autumn at Shakespeare's Globe, it's already time for my last outdoor visit of this summer season (there is one more show scheduled, but it's in the Swanamaker,) and it's the regular onstage appearance of the Artistic Director, as Michelle Terry takes on Viola in Twelfth Night. Shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria - here a scrapyard full of car parts, old neon signs, a jukebox and other clutter of 1950s Americana in Jean Chan's design - Viola makes a beeline for the local Duke, Orsino (Bryan Dick.) Disguised as a boy called Cesario, she falls for him immediately, but he's smitten with the unattainable, grieving Countess Olivia (Shona Babayemi.) When "Cesario" is sent as an envoy of Orsino's love to Olivia, the circle of unrequited love is completed when she's instantly attracted to "him."

Re-review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

I have fond memories of, and emotional connections to, a lot of venues, but in the last year of theatres facing an existential crisis it was the thought of never being able to go to Shakespeare's Globe again that hurt the most. So it's probably for the best, given I might have got a bit emotional, that my first trip back to the main house in two summers was to a production I'd seen there before: Sean Holmes' fiesta-style A Midsummer Night's Dream from 2019 has returned to launch the 2021 season, and though both venue and production have had to make a few changes while COVID-19 restrictions are still in place, both have retained the atmosphere that makes them special. In the audience, along with social distancing in the three galleries, and all shows playing without intervals (to stop everyone crowding to the loos at once,) the most obvious change is in the Yard, where there's usually up to 700 standing groundlings. For the first couple of months of the season these have been replaced with just three rows of temporary seats arranged by support bubbles.

Stage-to-screen review: Great Apes

Remember that time when Will Self was a team captain on Shooting Stars? It's a thing that actually happened (I googled it and it's definitely not just something I dreamed) but feels about as surreal and unlikely as one of the novelist's plots. Great Apes is one his best-loved books but also one based on one of his most bizarre and complex high concepts; essentially unstageable, which in some ways makes it inevitable that someone would attempt to stage it. Two decades after the book's publication the Arcola gave it a go, and director Oscar Pearce has shared an archive recording of the 2018 production to add to the list of lockdown theatre available. Over the millennia human beings have found their way to the top of the evolutionary tree, and with dominance comes a sense of superiority and the assumption that our instincts and behaviours are the ones that make sense.

Theatre review: The Two Noble Kinsmen (Shakespeare's Globe)

A minor way in which Michelle Terry has already differed from her predecessors at the Globe is that this is the first summer season at the venue not to have an official overall theme - just how well past seasons ever really tied in to those themes is a different story. It's been no secret though that there's a very low-key connection between four of this year's shows, and that's "Emilia," a name that crops up in a number of Shakespeare's plays. The theme will culminate in a new play about the woman they may or may not have all been named after, but the first Emilia on stage this summer is the one who inadvertently puts a rift between The Two Noble Kinsmen. Fletcher and Shakespeare's last play together tells a story taken from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, a pretty thin story that's padded out in a way that leaves us with a messy, but in the right hands entertaining, few hours.

Theatre review: Seminar

The publicity image for Seminar shows Roger Allam throwing sheets of papers into the air, leading some people I know to be disappointed when more cast were announced, as they'd been hoping for two hours of Allam throwing paper around. Personally I was glad - after all, he needs someone to chuck the paper at. Of course, the throwing is (mostly) metaphorical, as Theresa Rebeck's play is about the ambitions, pretensions and easily bruised egos of aspiring writers. Allam plays Leonard, at one time a respected novelist, but nowadays better known as a talented and influential editor of other people's work. As a nice little earner on the side he holds exclusive writing courses, tearing into the efforts of the most promising new writers who can afford him - or go into debt to get him. Martin (Bryan Dick,) Douglas (Oliver Hembrough,) Izzy (Rebecca Grant) and Kate (Charity Wakefield,) whose vast flat they meet in, are in for the 10-week course.

Theatre review: Public Enemy

The Young Vic's reinvention of classic texts continues, and after a big hit with A Doll's House last year they turn to Ibsen again. This time though it's the team behind Government Inspector tackling the play, and as that was one of the rare shows I've left at the interval (and I wasn't even the only theatre blogger to do so) I approached Public Enemy with a bit of trepidation. Miriam Buether has once again lent a psychedelic edge to the design, fitting in with the 1970s feel director Richard Jones brings to David Harrower's translation. It's another of the wide, shallow stages Buether favours at the Young Vic, and it's not great for sightlines if you're at the front and particularly the edge of a row like we were - cricked necks are to be had. The general update from the 1880s to the 1970s works, though, and takes Ibsen's characters out of the familiar setting.