Theatre review: Coriolanus (RSC / RST & Barbican)

Season director Angus Jackson returns for the fourth and last of the RSC's Roman plays, and although Coriolanus is set earlier than the other three, designer Robert Innes Hopkins eschews the togas of the middle two plays, to match the modern dress of Titus Andronicus. In fact this also starts with a rioting gang in hoodies, and since it will actually play first when they all transfer to London, it annoyed me a bit that it'll look there like Blanche McIntyre copied the idea. Fortunately there was less to annoy me about the rest of the production, in which Sope Dirisu takes on the least likeable of Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Caius Martius, later given the title Coriolanus after one of his many military victories, is a one-man Roman army, raised as such by his batshit bloodthirsty mother Volumnia (Haydn Gwynne.)

Theatre review: Sweet Bird of Youth

Tennessee Williams is almost always a hit with me so one of his plays I hadn't seen before, Sweet Bird of Youth, was something to look forward to. The Old Vic's new production is probably guaranteed success anyway as it's coaxed Kim Cattrall back to the London stage to play the drink and drug-addled, faded Hollywood star Alexandra Del Lago. When her attempt at a comeback goes badly wrong, she goes into hiding (although her attempt to go incognito does involve her calling herself The Princess Kosmonopolis, so not exactly hiding very well) along the way picking up a young gigolo, Chance Wayne (Seth Numrich.) Chance drives her around the anonymous towns of America, but when Alexandra wakes up in a hotel room in St Cloud she doesn't realise Chance hasn't brought them there by, well, chance: This is his home town, and he's got a plan to get back his childhood sweetheart Heavenly (Louise Dylan) and find stardom for both of them.

Theatre review: Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun

Set in the freezing West German winter of 1954, John McGrath's Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun, the latest long-unperformed classic to be revived by the Finborough, takes a very personal angle on the frustrations of the Cold War. The Bofors Gun has long since been obsolete but on a British Army base the official line is that it still needs to be guarded in case the Russians try to steal it. Six gunners, led by an 18-year-old Lance-Bombardier, have the pointless task (so clearly only for show that their guns aren't even loaded) tonight - to add insult to injury they've just been paid so the unnecessary duty keeps them from joining the rest of the regiment in celebrating. When Lance-Bombardier Evans allows the volatile Gunner O'Rourke to slip away and pick up his weekly tobacco allowance, things go badly wrong.