Theatre review: Love's Labour's Lost(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

It's great to see Jade Williams back at the Globe, even if it is indoors in the Swanamaker so there's no groundlings for her to vomit on. She and Dharmesh Patel pair up to play Rosaline and Berowne, the proto-Beatrice and Benedick who appear as one of the central three romantic couples in Love's Labour's Lost. That's right, three; Nick Bagnall's production, although not, to my knowledge, touring, has the kind of cast-size you'd expect of a "tiny" touring production, with eight actors covering all the roles. A cerain amount of editing is needed to make that work, and in this case Longueville and Maria have been edited right out of the play altogether. What's left is the story of the King of Navarre (Paul Stocker,) who talks his friends Berowne and Dumaine (Tom Kanji) into joining him in a puritanically strict three-year course of study that includes swearing off the company of women.

Theatre review: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and tour)

The "tiny" touring actor-musician Shakespeare productions haven't quite become a casualty of the Globe's new regime as Nick Bagnall returns to direct The Two Gentlemen of Verona, although the home lap of the tour now has a different venue, being squeezed into the Swanamaker rather than the main house. The candlelit Jacobean playhouse is a bit of an odd fit for Katie Sykes' mini-stage and a 1960s-themed take on Proteus (Dharmesh Patel,) who's sworn undying love to Julia (Leah Brotherhead,) but first has to make a trip to Milan to visit his friend Valentine (Guy Hughes,) who's been serving the Duke there. Valentine is in love with the Duke's daughter Sylvia (Aruhan Galieva,) a match he's not considered good enough for, and so the two have planned to elope, a plan he's shared with Proteus.

Theatre review: Wendy and Peter Pan

Peter Pan gets a feminist makeover from Ella Hickson in the latest RSC family show, but there's also a definite hint of Philip Pullman being thrown in with the J.M. Barrie in Wendy and Peter Pan. And before we even get to these new underlying themes there's a new look to the Darling family right from the start: As well as Wendy, John and Michael, there's a fourth child, Tom (Colin Ryan.) But even as he plays with his sister and brothers he has a nasty case of Period Drama Cough that soon sees Tom dead, and the Darling family plunged into melancholy. A year later, a flying boy enters the children's bedroom and invites them to Neverland. Hearing that that's where the Lost Boys live, Wendy agrees to join Peter Pan on his adventures, believing she'll be able to find their own lost boy there too.