Theatre review: The Homecoming

Matthew Dunster's production of The Homecoming at the Young Vic sets Pinter's play firmly in the 1960s when it was written: The all-male family of East End gangsters at its heart are an insular group, buried away listening to jazz; the female interloper is a vision of the swinging sixties, up on all the latest fashions and wanting the best of them. What the power balance is by the end of the play is always enigmatic, but Dunster's apparently clear telling of the story may leave it murkier than ever. Max (Jared Harris) is the widowed patriarch who raised his three sons on his own - it's unlikely he'd ever acknowledge that his probably-gay brother Sam (Nicolas Tennant,) who's lived with them for decades, might have helped at all.

Theatre review: Doctor Faustus

Perennially Christopher Marlowe's most popular play, Doctor Faustus gets another revival, this time from Lazarus, the small-scale classics company that returns to Southwark Playhouse after last year's gender-bending take on Salomé. Faustus (Jamie O’Neill) is an arrogant young academic who's decided he's exhausted all the knowledge available to him in books, and will cheat his way to learning the secrets of the universe: He employs a demon to be his servant, to answer any question he may have, and show him the wonders of the world. Mephistopheles' (David Angland) services, of course, come at the highest possible price: In return for 24 years of service, he gets Faustus to sell his soul to Lucifer (Candis Butler Jones.) Faustus manages to convince himself he doesn't believe in the afterlife anyway so it's a zero-risk gamble, until the deal is done and he has to face the consequences.