Theatre review: Macbeth (Donmar Warehouse)

Completing the pair of returning 60th Anniversary Doctor Who stars leading West End shows, David Tennant gets to do his Macbeth at the Donald and Margot Warehouse. And while this is undoubtedly a more successful evening than the one Catherine Tate's lumbered herself with, I also came out of it thinking it could have been scarier. Aside from the star casting of Tennant and Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth, the big selling point of Max Webster's production is the use of binaural technology: The sound design that gives the audience, who wear headphones, a 3D audio experience. I've seen a couple of shows that have used it before, which is why I thought this story of witches and murders might be in for a particularly creepy take when you can potentially have spooky noises creep up on people in the seeming safety of their seats.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Young Vic)

Returning to the London stage after a few years of fighting The Good Fight and, more dangerously, The Good Wife in America, Cush Jumbo comes to the Young Vic to play Hamlet for Greg Hersov, a director she worked with a lot in the past when he was Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange in Manchester. There's centuries' worth of tradition of women taking on the role, as well as black actors more recently, but I think she might be making history as the first woman of colour to do it in a major London production. There was never much doubt that she was up to the task, and she gives a powerful performance; but while Hamlet remains my favourite Shakespeare play on account of how infinitely flexible it is, it is of course performed very often because it's seen as such a pinnacle of an actor's career. And this was one of those productions that made me wonder - outside of wanting to give an actor their shot at the big role, what was the reason for staging this particular production, at this time?

Non-review: Common

My concerted efforts in the last couple of years to avoid booking for shows I’m not likely to enjoy have been reasonably successful. Failing that, I’ve also let myself feel less self-conscious about leaving at the interval if a show I went for in high hopes turned out to be a dud. So I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed that one of my favourite current playwrights, DC Moore, has choked so badly when let loose on the Olivier stage. His new play for the National and Headlong, Common, is set in the early 18th century, a time when the Enclosures Act took what had until then been common farming land and divided it up into private plots – an early example of privatisation, then. The local Lord (Tim McMullan) is due to start enclosing the land in Hampstead when Mary (Anne-Marie Duff,) who’d left some years earlier and was presumed dead, returns to cause havoc.

Theatre review: Josephine and I

The first of two consecutive playwrighting debuts from popular stage actors at the Bush, Josephine and I also sees Cush Jumbo take to the stage in her one-woman show that's actually about two women: The "I" in the title is a fictionalised version of herself, a young black actress in the present day who's just auditioned (having been recalled seven times now) for an American cop show that could make her a star; and she's often distracted by thoughts of this job opportunity and how it impacts on her personal life, from the story she's actually trying to tell: That of another black performer, except in those days the word would have been "coloured" as we're going back to the mid-20th century to meet a woman who found ways to overcome the limitations put on her race, the vaudeville legend Josephine Baker.

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse)

My final Shakespeare trip of a Bard-heavy year takes me back to one of those plays I've never warmed to, Julius Caesar. Back in the summer, Gregory Doran's Africa-set production was probably the best I've seen the play done, so this one at the Donmar Warehouse had a lot to live up to. And Phyllida Lloyd's is another take to go for high-concept casting, this time an all-female version of the story. We still follow the conspiracy of Brutus (Harriet Walter,) Cassius (Jenny Jules) and a select group of Roman senators to assassinate the hugely popular Julius Caesar (Frances Barber) before his increasing political power leads him to tyranny. But we're now in a women's prison, where the inmates have been given permission to stage the play in the recreation room, and some of the cast are taking it all much more seriously than others.

Theatre review: She Stoops to Conquer

Jamie Lloyd's first production at the National isn't quite the high-speed ride you usually expect from him, coming in at just under three hours. But none of the time is wasted in She Stoops to Conquer, which is packed with incident and detail. Goldsmith's comedy has, on the surface of things, too many madcap plots swirling around - a prospective bridegroom mistaking his future in-laws' house for an inn and getting a bit too comfortable there, his friend trying to steal away their niece, a son from an earlier marriage causing no end of mischief, and a plot (by their rightful owner) to steal a box of jewels. That's without the romantic lead acting like a completely different person depending on whether he's talking to his future fiancée, or the sultry barmaid he's fallen for (who, unbeknownst to him, actually is that fiancée.) But Lloyd marshals the perfect cast around the Olivier stage in one of the funniest shows I've seen in ages.

Harry Hadden-Paton and John Heffernan as Marlow and Hastings, the pair of friends arrived from London, have a foppish chemistry, and each also works well with his leading lady: The oblivious Marlow is led a merry dance by Katherine Kelly's Kate Hardcastle, while The Heff shares lots of amusing glances and desperate gestures with Cush Jumbo as his illicit lover Constance. Steve Pemberton's Hardcastle is suitably flustered and David Fynn's Tony Lumpkin the play's lord of misrule. But while everyone is on top comic form, Sophie Thompson steals the show as Mrs Hardcastle. Her failed attempt at a posh accent to impress her city guests has no right to be as funny as it is but I was crying with laughter. The cheap front-of-stalls seats were particularly good value for a show so full of detail and apparent spontaneity.

Christopher had studied, and hated, the play at school but was willing to give it a go - often the least funny plays on the page are the funniest on the stage - and he was converted as well. I told him I didn't know what I'd write in this review as I'm so used to nitpicking but couldn't find anything to criticise here. I could say it takes a while to warm up but the decision to show up the exposition-heavy opening means I was on-side from the off. The play still works as a satire of snobbery - all the problems are the result of arbitrary class distinctions - as well as just being a joyous event. The National have had a good few months for hit comedies, for my money this is the pick of the bunch.

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith is booking in repertory until the 21st of April at the National Theatre's Olivier.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.