Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Michael Grandage Company at the Noël Coward Theatre)

One of the big theatrical events of 2013, the Michael Grandage season at the Noël Coward is already nearing its end with the first of the two Shakespeare plays that conclude the residency.

The star casting for A Midsummer Night's Dream sees Sheridan Smith as Titania and David Walliams as Bottom, but the cast also includes a nice bit of continuity with the rest of the season so far, with one cast member returning from each of the previous productions: From The Cripple of Inishmaan, Pádraic Delaney plays Oberon; from Peter and Alice, Stefano Braschi plays Demetrius; and from Privates on Parade, Sam Swainsbury plays Lysander.

Theatre review: Feathers in the Snow

The early part of this year was defined in many ways (by us obsessive theatricals at least) by a surge of Philip Ridley plays, which we christened the unofficial Ridleyfest 2012. So it seems appropriate that he has a second new play premiering as the year ends, and that it should open in the main house of Southwark Playhouse where his plays regularly appear, as the final production in the current venue (Simon Kenny's set and Gary Bowman's lighting making an atmospheric farewell to the railway tunnels.) Ridley's violently poetic plays have a recurring fascination with fairytales, which perhaps goes some way to reconciling his very adult plays with his other career as a children's author. Both of these strings to his bow come together now for Feathers in the Snow, an ambitious (perhaps too ambitious) family show with a scope that spans generations and a story that covers the births and deaths of nations.