Theatre review: The Ugly One

It’s nine years, almost to the day, since I saw the Royal Court’s original production of Marius von Mayenburg’s The Ugly One, and it’s a show I remember surprisingly well. This revival is directed by Roy Alexander Weise, who after last year’s The Mountaintop seems to have similar taste to me in plays from the last decade or so; and I was particularly interested to see what he did with it because the original staging is one thing that particularly stood out in my memory – because it was virtually non-existent. Well Weise hasn’t followed suit, but his production’s still comparatively minimal despite the ubiquitous video element – here it gets projected onto Loren Elstein’s raised stage floor, a sort of enormous desk that sometimes doubles as a platform for the public presentations its characters make. And public presentations are something Lette (Charlie Dorfman) isn’t allowed to make: He’s invented a revolutionary (within his industry; otherwise stultifyingly dull) new plug for car-manufacturing machinery, but his company insists his assistant Karlmann (Arian Nik) present it to customers.

Theatre review: Some Girl(s)

Not actually a Rachel Stevens jukebox musical, Some Girl(s) is a Neil LaBute play whose London premiere starred David Schwimmer - a fact that seems to have been kept in mind when casting Gary Condes' revival at the Park, as a vague resemblance is the only reason I could think of for a crucial piece of miscasting. Guy (Charles Dorfman) is about to get married to a much younger woman, but we never actually meet his fiancée: Instead we follow him around the USA as he visits four ex-girlfriends he feels he has unfinished business with. First up he returns to Seattle where he grew up, to see how his high school girlfriend is getting on - and perhaps to gloat a bit, as he's now a university lecturer starting to make a name for himself as a writer, while Sam (Elly Condron) has married the manager of a supermarket.