Theatre review: A Raisin in the Sun

As the first play by a black female writer ever to be staged on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun gets an automatic entry into the history books, and has inspired at least two response plays that I've seen, the farcical Clybourne Park and darker Beneatha's Place. So it feels well overdue to get the chance to see the original, and in Tinuke Craig's production the 65-year-old play proves itself worth the attention for more than just getting there first. In an overcrowded Chicago apartment that shares its bathroom with several other families, the Youngers are led by matriarch Lena (Doreene Blackstock,) although her son Walter Lee (Solomon Israel) would dispute who gets to be head of the family. Their lifestyle is about to change, although they don't know quite how: A $10,000 cheque from her husband's life insurance is due in the post any day now, but Lena has so far been tight-lipped about what she plans to do with it.

Theatre review: The Chairs

A rare appearance for Eugène Ionesco's absurdist work in a major London production - only the second in the decade I've been writing this blog - also features a more regular sight as Kathryn Hunter appears with husband and regular collaborator Marcello Magni in the first of two planned productions this year. At the Almeida Omar Elerian directs his own adaptation of Ionesco's The Chairs, and for the second show in a row here a revival gives an opportunity to address very modern concerns about climate change, as an impossibly elderly couple watch the world flood outside their windows, and remember a time when everything seemed brighter. But the Old Man (Magni) has a plan: He's been a janitor, or Master of the Mop and Bucket, all his life, but in his spare time he's been preparing and perfecting a speech that holds all the solutions to the world's problems. He doesn't feel able to deliver the message in front of an audience himself, but fortunately he's found a professional Speaker who can do it..

Theatre review: Midnight Movie

The Royal Court has long been at the forefront of trying to put the online world on stage – most recently Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner was an award-winning hit – and now Eve Leigh’s Midnight Movie plunges us into a sleepless night’s distracted browsing. We never meet the play’s protagonist, instead we follow Avatar 1 (Nadia Nadarajah) and Avatar 2 (Tom Penn) as they tell loosely connected stories, some funny, some mystical, many with a creepy edge. The starting point is a YouTube video of a woman in a hotel elevator appearing to fight an invisible monster; when she reached the top of the building she disappeared, only to be discovered months later, drowned in a water tank the laws of physics suggest she couldn’t have got into on her own. It’s a mystery that’s consumed a lot of people’s time, including the narrator’s, who’s obsessed with finding out what really happened; but investigating it online has pitfalls.

Theatre review: Mayfly

If plays about forgotten corners of the countryside have been the low-key growing trend of the last couple of years, then the Orange Tree has been the theatre quietly putting itself at the forefront of it; and even if it's not quite another Jess and Joe Forever, Joe White's Mayfly is the second impressive playwrighting debut of the week (and the second one touching on grief, as it happens.) Cat's (Niky Wardley) horoscope says today is the day a special person will appear out of the blue, and the play's conceit is that it's right: Within a couple of hours Harry (Irfan Shamji) has met all three members of her family, starting when he pulls her husband Ben (Simon Scardifield) out of a river. Ben was trying to down himself because today marks the one-year anniversary of the death of his son.

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 Iphigenia Quartet - Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Two more points of view on the story of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis at the Gate as part of The Iphigenia Quartet; you can read my review of Iphigenia and Chorus here, but tonight Caroline Bird gets arguably the toughest job, of trying to see things from the perspective of Agamemnon. Although it's his brother whose wife has been abducted, Agamemnon (Andrew French) is leading the Greek charge to get her back, and is therefore the man in the spotlight. Bird focuses on him not as a bloodthirsty villain but as a rather weak man buffeted by circumstance and unable or unwilling to stand up to it. As the play begins he's consented to the sacrifice of his daughter but changed his mind, sending a letter to his wife telling her to stay away. It's too late, of course, and besides the Messenger (Louise McMenemy) is brutally pragmatic about the Greek cause and makes sure the letter doesn't reach Clytemnestra.

Theatre review: Harajuku Girls

Irish-Japanese playwright Francis Turnly tackles one of the less salubrious stereotypes about Japan in Harajuku Girls. Tokyo teenager Mari (Haruka Abe) is about to finish high school, and hopes to go to the national theatre school in the new term. As she waits for her results she spends her free time in her favourite way: Dressing up in Sailor Moon cosplay and going to Jingu Bridge in the Harajuku district, where tourists take photos of the girls in costumes. When her father forbids her from going on her drama course and demands she find an office job, Mari decides to fund it herself, and her hobby could turn into a money-spinner: She follows her best friend Keiko (Elizabeth Tan) to an "image club," a quasi-brothel where girls dress as cops, schoolgirls and anime characters, renting out their time to middle-aged salarymen who want to act out their fantasies.

Theatre review: The Mikvah Project

Last year the stage of the Yard Theatre got pretty dirty when Stink Foot flooded it with treacle, so it's understandable if it's due a thorough cleansing. A ritual Jewish cleansing, as it turns out in Josh Azouz's The Mikvah Project, for which designer Cécile Trémolières has put an actual, large heated pool on stage. The Mikvah, our narrators tell us, is a Friday night ritual usually associated with the most Orthodox Jews. 35-year-old Avi (Jonah Russell) has been married for seven years, happily so although his and his wife's inability to conceive is the main source of friction between them. He goes to the Mikvah to pray for a child, and while there strikes up a friendship with laddish 17-year-old choirboy Eitan (Oliver Coopersmith.) Unexpectedly, Eitan makes a pass at him, and even more unexpectedly Avi's protestations of not being interested don't ring that convincing, even to him.

Theatre review: Piranha Heights

The original 2008 production of Piranha Heights was the first Philip Ridley play I ever saw, and in stark contrast to how big a fan of the playwright I've become in the years since, I didn't like it. I know from experience of introducing others to his work, though, that his very particular style can take a while to get used to, and people don't always respond to the first play of his they see. So I was interested to see what I thought of it the second time around, as Max Barton revives it at the Old Red Lion. Piranha Heights layers its characters on one by one, shifting the tone and upping the peril each time. The setting is a tower block flat whose resident of many years has recently died. Her youngest son Alan (Alex Lowe) hopes the housing association will let him have it next, as he plans to leave his wife and wants somewhere to live afterwards. But when his older brother Terry (Phil Cheadle) returns to sign the paperwork, he has plans of his own for the flat.