Theatre review: Oedipus (Old Vic)

Oedipus cements his place as London's favourite motherfucker by returning with a new face mere weeks after he finished appearing in the guise of Mark Strong, while the Old Vic continues to pair Indira Varma with Bond villains: She plays Jocasta in Ella Hickson's new version of Oedipus, opposite Rami Malek as the titular king. A couple of decades earlier, the Corinthian prince arrived in Thebes and solved the riddle of the Sphinx that had been tormenting its people. The hero of the hour, he married the newly-widowed queen Jocasta, becoming king of the city and ruling successfully while raising a young family. But now a drought has brought misery back to the citizens and, supported by his queen, he proposes an extreme solution: Abandon the ravaged land completely, and move the entire city to a place that can actually support them.

Theatre review: Is God Is

The Royal Court is currently offering up two shows a night on its main stage, and if What If If Only is concerned with wishing someone would return from the dead, Is God Is opens with just that happening: Twins Racine (Tamara Lawrance) and Anaia (Adelayo Adedayo) thought their mother had died in the same fire that left them both scarred, until they get a letter from her. Even more horrifically burnt, she's been clinging on to life in a convalescent home for 18 years, but now she thinks her time is finally up, and she wants to see her daughters. From her deathbed, their mother (Cecilia Noble) gives them the full story of how their father tried to burn her to death because she "wouldn't hold him," and asks for one favour before she goes: They need to find him, kill him (ideally breaking his spirit first,) and bring her back a bloody trophy to prove that he's gone. The hot-headed Racine and more reserved, thoughtful Anaia head off to California, letting no-one stand in their way.

Theatre review: The Welkin

After adapting Chimerica for TV Lucy Kirkwood returns to the stage for a play that feels equally epic in ambition, even if instead of spanning continents this one is largely set in a single room. It does have its thoughts on the stars though, as The Welkin takes place in Suffolk in 1759, the year in which Edmond Halley had predicted the comet that would eventually bear his name would appear. It's a scientific discovery that's captured the imagination of people even in remote, small towns like this one, with everyone regularly mentioning it, hoping they might catch a glimpse of the celestial body. But if human knowledge is expanding to include the heavens, women like midwife Lizzy Luke (Maxine Peake) find that progress closer to home is much slower than they would like. Summoned grudgingly away from her laundry, Lizzy's expertise has had her requested by a local judge to take part in one of the few areas of Georgian law left to the judgement of women.

Theatre review: Downstate

Whether it’s tackling racism with hilarious consequences, or tackling capitalism with… well, there were definitely consequences, for those of us who had to sit through it at least*, Bruce Norris hasn’t been a playwright to shy away from a tricky subject and an explosive format. Downstate is more low-key than some of his earlier work but subjects don’t get more contentious than convicted paedophiles, or Norris’ - impressively successful - attempt to approach them in an even-handed way. Todd Rosenthal’s set is the shared living room of the four-bedroom Illinois bungalow that serves as a halfway house for sex offenders who’ve served their prison terms, but are still considered dangerous and have to live under severely restricted conditions. Early in the play we discover a new one of these restrictions, as the exclusion zone around a school has ben extended to include the local grocery store – as well as the bus stop that would take them to the next best option.

Theatre review: Nine Night

Actor Natasha Gordon’s accomplished first play Nine Night takes its name from a Jamaican funeral custom: The wake takes place over nine nights, with a series of boisterous parties in honour of the deceased; on the final night their spirit is encouraged to move on. In another case of a play arriving at a time that makes it accidentally topical, we’re in the house of a woman from the Windrush generation, Gloria, who’s just died of cancer. Nine Night is an ensemble piece but at the heart of it is Gloria’s younger daughter Lorraine (Franc Ashman,) who took voluntary redundancy to care for her mother during her final months, and has now been left in charge of the funeral arrangements, and of keeping up with the food and drink demands of a regular stream of guests. We only hear the parties in the background; the action takes place in the kitchen, still done up in 1970s style (set design by Rajha Shakiry.)

Theatre review: Liberian Girl

Martha (Juma Sharkah) is the titular 14-year-old Liberian Girl in Diana Nneka Atuona's debut play, but this isn't a fact most of the characters in the story are privy to: When her grandmother Mamie Esther (Cecilia Noble) realises a rebel army is approaching their village, she cuts Martha's hair off and makes her pretend to be a boy. As she'll soon find out, life for a girl in a war-torn state is brutal, but her new male identity won't make things easy for her either: As they try to flee to safety, Esther and Martha are accosted by child soldiers Killer (Valentine Olukoga) and Double Trouble (Michael Ajao.) Separated from her grandmother, Martha's disguise means she escapes being raped, but Frisky, as she's now nicknamed, is forced to fight on the side of Charles Taylor's rebels, in a civil war she barely understands.

Theatre review: Once a Catholic

The canteen at my work, like every canteen in the country as far as I can tell, always has fish and chips on a Friday; a sign that, although England hasn't been a Catholic country since Henry VIII found himself with more wives than the legal limit, the religion's influence is still felt in all kinds of unexpected places. One place you wouldn't be too surprised to find a supply of Catholic guilt is in a convent school in 1957 Willesden, the setting for Mary J. O'Malley's Once a Catholic. Kathy Fucking Burke revives the story of Mary Mooney, Mary Gallagher and Mary McGinty, three girls going into their O'level year at Our Lady of Fatima, and trying to reconcile the daily diet of fire and brimstone dished out by the terrifying nuns, with the approaching 1960s in the outside world and their own growing sexualities. A strong cast goes some way to bringing O'Malley's once-outrageous comedy into the 21st century, although it's not an entirely successful enterprise.

Theatre review: The Amen Corner

Marianne Jean-Baptiste makes a rare return to the London stage to take the lead in James Baldwin's 1965 play The Amen Corner at the National. She's sister Margaret, pastor at a Harlem church, with very strict rules she expects her flock to live by (despite the fact that one of her parishioners is desperate for work, she refuses to condone him accepting a job driving a whiskey delivery truck, even though he wouldn't be drinking himself.) Her style of preaching seems to have made her popular in the church but the first sign of weakness prompts the animosity of the church elders to come to the surface. Sister Margaret's absence for a week is the first thing to rile them - her trip to visit an affiliate church in Philadelphia makes them wonder why they're paying for it out of church funds. But it's her family life that'll prove the real Achilles heel.

Theatre review: The Comedy of Errors (RSC / RST & Roundhouse)

The last, for me, in the "What country friends is this?" season (although the first written) is The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's silliest play, featuring two pairs of identical twins, a gold chain and a fair bit of extramarital shagging, both intentional and accidental. Antipholus of Syracuse (Jonathan McGuinness) arrives in Ephesus with his servant Dromio (Bruce Mackinnon.) They try to blend in and do so a bit too well, unaware that they're being mistaken for their twin brothers, also called Anthipholus (Stephen Hagan) and Dromio (Felix Hayes.) And yes, it continues to irritate me that Antipholus of Syracuse doesn't put two and two together when he actually knows he has an identical twin out there somewhere, which is why he set sail from Syracuse in the first place, to find him; let's just put it down to him being a massive idiot and get on with the review.