Theatre review: As You Like It (Shakespeare's Globe)

Continuing to suggest Michelle Terry's vision for Shakespeare's Globe is as the most joyously queer theatre in That London, and tying that into the gender-bending embedded in many of Shakespeare's plays, the 2023 summer season closes as it opened, with a production largely cast with LGBTQ+ performers in roles that don't necessarily match their pronouns. Ellen McDougall's As You Like It goes one step further by making its queerness an integral part of how it divides the play's two very different worlds. We begin in the monochrome court of Duke Frederick (Dale Rapley,) who usurped his position from his own brother, whom he banished to the forest. But he allowed his niece Rosalind (Nina Bowers) to remain, as she was so close to his daughter Celia (Macy-Jacob Seelochan.) But a wrestling competition reminds him that his brother's former allies are still around.

Theatre review: Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith)

For the fifth year running it was a big group outing to the Lyric Hammersmith's pantomime, where last year's director Ellen McDougall and set designer Oliver Townsend are back, as is Cinderella's Prince Charming Karl Queensborough in the title role of Aladdin. It's all change elsewhere though, most notably in the script where, after three years, Tom Wells has left (probably because he had two new plays of his own this year to worry about) and former co-writer Joel Horwood has returned without his writing partner Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. Panto of course always has a bit of a topical edge and so here the story's introduced by the villain - Nigel David Donald Theresa Boris Abanazer (Vikki Stone,) who lives in Fulhammerboosh, where the rich have all the power and the poor are vilified.

Theatre review: Larisa and the Merchants

The effervescent Larisa (Jennifer Kidd) is poor but popular with the men of her small port town on the Volga; her lack of a dowry is the only reason she's not yet married. Her relationship with the aristocratic Sergei (Sam Phillips) ended in heartbreak and, on the rebound, she's accepted the proposal of the smitten, penniless civil servant Karandyshev (Ben Addis.) When Sergei returns to town there's clearly still something between the two, but as Larisa is tempted to leave her fiancé for a man who's already betrayed her once, she doesn't know how close she is to its happening again: Having lost most of his money, Sergei has agreed to marry an heiress so he can restore his fortunes, and living in the style to which he's accustomed will always trump any feelings he might have for Larisa.