Theatre review: Measure for Measure(RSC / RST, Barbican & tour)

The current RST season has so far been OK without coming close to blowing me away, and it now limps to an end with Measure for Measure. A Problem Play - so much so that it fits into the narrow original definition of the term that only encompassed three plays - it's admittedly not one I find it easy to like, unless approached with a kind of originality and flair that Gregory Doran's production doesn't have to offer. Vienna - in Stephen Brimson Lewis' design an early 20th century version, the Vienna of the waltzes - has always had prohibitively strict morality laws that have been hard to enforce (because, as the play acknowledges, it would entail expecting people not to behave like people.) The current Duke (Antony Byrne) has been particularly lax in enforcing the law, and the city has become a haven for extramarital sex, whether for fun or profit. The Duke regrets this but after all this time thinks it would be hard for him to enforce it again himself so, pretending to leave the city, he leaves his deputy Angelo (Sandy Grierson) in charge, while staying in Vienna in disguise to see what happens.

Theatre review: As You Like It (RSC / RST & tour)

A chaotic train journey nearly scuppered my first Stratford-upon-Avon trip of 2019, but it's a good job I made it in the end because Kimberley Sykes' low-key metatheatrical As You Like It is at times delightful. Stephen Brimson Lewis' design for the opening scenes is a simple grass carpet on the thrust in front of black curtains, although the court of the usurping Duke Frederick (Antony Byrne) doesn't seem particularly austere to start with - but the back story in which he banished his own brother, the lawful Duke, is an indicator that nobody's safe from his violent whims, not even his niece Rosalind (Lucy Phelps.) He's allowed her to stay on at court for the sake of his own daughter, but a reminder that there are still people loyal to his exiled brother makes him kick her out. That reminder comes in the form of the son of a former enemy, and when Rosalind is banished so is Orlando (David Ajao.) They both end up in hiding in the forest, which would be great for them because they've fallen in love; except neither knows the other is there.

Theatre review: Hecuba

While the Almeida's spent the summer giving us radical rewrites of Greek classics, the RSC has cut Euripides out of the picture altogether and, in what would probably have been a more accurate description of Icke's Oresteia and Cusk's Medea as well, commissioned Marina Carr to write an entirely new play based on the legend - in this case, that of Hecuba. There's a lot of dead children in this story too but Hecuba (Derbhle Crotty) isn't as okay with this as Medea: A mother of eighteen and the former queen of Troy, as the play begins the city has just been taken after ten years of war, and she's not yet quite understood the "former" part of her title. The Greeks have demanded that no male Trojans be left alive, and as most of her children were sons, she sits in her throne room surrounded by their dismembered bodies. Taking comfort from her two remaining children, she stands up to the triumphant Agamemnon (Ray Fearon.)