Radio review: The Merchant of Venice

Despite the theatres gradually reopening this will still end up being a very Shakespeare-light year for me, so it's as good a time as any to catch up on a few more of the recent audio adaptations from Radio 3, which remain available on BBC Sounds under the Shakespeare Sessions strand. It's not a particular favourite of mine but it's been a few years since my last Merchant of Venice and the casting for Emma Harding's 2018 production is intriguing, notably that of Andrew Scott as Shylock. Harding has set the story in the City of London during the 2008 financial crash, and to open with a sidebar, I was once interviewed for a theatre job by someone who supposedly specialised in "authentic" Shakespeare, who grumbled a lot about a modern-dress RSC production of this play, saying it was impossible to set it post-Holocaust. Unless you base your interpretation entirely on the fact that the play's antisemitism is openly state-sanctioned (and I've talked elsewhere about my feelings on defining an entire production by one line or scene,) that seems either a naïvely sunny view of modern tolerance, or more likely a restrictively literal-minded approach to theatre: In the years leading up to that particular crash Jews might not have been the bogeyman of choice, but the post-9/11 world wasn't exactly shy about demonising one group of people.

Theatre review: A Number

A Number premiered in 2002, a few years after the Dolly the Sheep story and with the possibility and ethics of human cloning still a subject of much discussion. The amount of times it’s been revived since is a testament to the fact that Caryl Churchill created something out of that story that far transcends topical controversy, finding an enduring human side that Polly Findlay’s production at the Bridge explicitly focuses on. This is the third production of the play I’ve seen, and the first not to cast a real-life father and son, although Roger Allam and Colin Morgan have worked together in ersatz father/son roles before. And despite the genetic material there’s something ersatz about the father/son relationships they play out in A Number as well – I told the people I went to the show with to go in knowing as little about it as possible, and would recommend that to anyone planning on seeing it; in which case save this review until after you’ve been as well, as it’s a hard play to write about without major spoilers.

Theatre review: All My Sons

After a pair of more obscure plays a couple of months ago, this year's second brace of Arthur Miller plays offers up some of his most famous works; once again the Old Vic is involved in this unofficial mini-season, with Jeremy Herrin's starry production of Miller's early hit All My Sons. Bill Pullman (he's the Bill who's still alive) plays Joe Keller, a businessman whose factory became notorious during the Second World War when it was exposed as having provided faulty aircraft parts that led to the deaths of 21 airmen. Bill was exonerated but his business partner is still in jail for it. His own son Larry wasn't flying one of the affected planes but he disappeared on a mission, and three years after the end of the War everyone's accepted he must be dead except for his mother Kate (SALLY FIELD!) who still holds onto the hope that he might return. But her other son Chris (Colin Morgan) had returned home with news that will make her have to confront the facts.

Theatre review: Translations

With the high-profile flops it’s hosted over the last year the usual arguments have come up about how the Olivier’s size and shape make it hard to fit anything but the biggest epic on it, so Rae Smith’s design for Ian Rickson’s production of Translations comes along to comprehensively disprove them: Brian Friel’s play takes place almost entirely in a schoolroom, and that’s what Smith puts downstage, but she surrounds it with foggy moors that suggest the country whose future is being discussed inside it, in ways whose significance is more far-reaching than it may first appear. This is a “hedge school” – a small private school teaching basic literacy and numeracy – in 1833 County Donegal, where a weekly class teaches those of the town’s adults who want to improve their skills. For Sarah (Michelle Fox,) who is almost mute, this can be as basic as building up the confidence to say her own name.

Theatre review: Gloria

I try to write reviews without major spoilers in them but it can be a minefield: Gloria is a play that I could try to talk about without mentioning the twist halfway through, but it’s so crucial to what the play’s about there’d be little point writing about it at all if I didn’t at least allude to it. So I’ll start with the story’s setup in the first paragraph, and after that read at your own risk if you’re planning on seeing the show. We start with a bitter, and not all that funny, office sitcom: Kae Alexander, Colin Morgan and Ellie Kendrick play PAs to various editors in the New York headquarters of a national magazine, with Bayo Gbadamosi as an intern who’s been kept deliberately far from any useful work just in case he develops an interest in working there for real, and gets in the way of the others’ ambitions. But Michael Longhurst’s production sets their realistic cubicles in front of chipboard walls that overtly remind us this is a theatrical setting; and besides the writer is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and anyone who saw An Octoroon will know he likes to play around with form. SPOILER ALERT after the text cut.

Theatre review: Mojo

When Jez Butterworth's debut play was staged in 1995 his style was often described as Pinteresque, and Pinter himself appeared in the film version; so it's apt enough that it's returned to London with a run at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Original director Ian Rickson revives 1950s gangster comedy-thriller Mojo with a cast to satisfy any number of fanbases, from Harry Potter to James Bond, Merlin to Downton Abbey. Ezra's Atlantic is a small-time Soho nightclub, mostly a front for other activities that are never specified, but seem to involve a getaway driver. But the club itself has suddenly become a hot property thanks to the discovery of singer Silver Johnny (Tom Rhys Harries,) a pretty teenager who appeals both to screaming teenage girls and, by the sound of it, the odd middle-aged gangster as well. But a meeting between Ezra and the boss of a rival gang ends with Ezra dead, Johnny kidnapped and the gang dealing with a power vacuum at the top.

Theatre review: The Tempest (Shakespeare's Globe)

This year's Globe season goes under the very vague banner of "Season of Plenty," which might as well be called "Stuff! We have lots of stuff!" But for the three large-scale Shakespeare productions at the heart of the season, there has been a bit more of a specific theme, with the three plays most overtly concerned with the supernatural taking the stage. A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth will follow but first up it's The Tempest. The titular storm has been raised by spirits, to cause the shipwreck of the King of Naples and his party, on the way back from a wedding. Twelve years ago, they wronged Prospero, Duke of Milan, and usurped his throne. Now he's become a sorcerer who rules a deserted island, where his enemies wash up - and Prospero has a plan to regain his dukedom and unite the two royal families.