Theatre review: Macbeth (Donmar Warehouse)

Completing the pair of returning 60th Anniversary Doctor Who stars leading West End shows, David Tennant gets to do his Macbeth at the Donald and Margot Warehouse. And while this is undoubtedly a more successful evening than the one Catherine Tate's lumbered herself with, I also came out of it thinking it could have been scarier. Aside from the star casting of Tennant and Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth, the big selling point of Max Webster's production is the use of binaural technology: The sound design that gives the audience, who wear headphones, a 3D audio experience. I've seen a couple of shows that have used it before, which is why I thought this story of witches and murders might be in for a particularly creepy take when you can potentially have spooky noises creep up on people in the seeming safety of their seats.

Theatre review: My Eyes Went Dark

I don't know if it's the fact that there's multiple Oresteias in London at the moment, but I saw something of that tragedy in microcosm in Matthew Wilkinson's My Eyes Went Dark. Here, too, the death of a child - or children - sets off a cycle of blame and revenge that, in a more heightened theatrical style, would have meant generations of bloodshed. But here the initial tragic events are kicked off by accident rather than cold calculation, and the avenging Fury is a man who allows his grief to become his entire personality. Nikolai (Cal MacAninch) comes from a remote part of Russia, but is working abroad when his wife and children, en route to visit him, are killed in a plane crash. Within hours of the accident, he's seeking someone to blame for his loss, and when it turns out an overworked air traffic controller made a mistake, Nikolai develops an obsession with him.

Theatre review: The Judas Kiss

"Why on earth did you do it?" One of the programme notes, written by his grandson Merlin Holland, asks one of the biggest questions about the trials of Oscar Wilde: He instigated the whole thing with a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry's accusation of being a "somdomite" (sic) knowing all along it was not only true but easily proved. This is one of the two main questions tackled by David Hare in his play The Judas Kiss, which is revived by Neil Armfield at Hampstead Theatre prior to a tour. The second central mystery concerns the other man at the centre of the trials, the Marquess' son Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas: Why did Wilde not only keep coming back to, but willingly allow his life to be ruined because of a young man who (in Hare's interpretation at least) seems to have had no redeeming features whatsoever?