Theatre review: Solaris

Every time someone puts science fiction on stage the reaction seems to be wondering why it's not done more often; perhaps it's the association with big-budget movies that means nobody expects the story to work without the kind of special effects the stage can't recreate. But there's also a very pared-back side to much sci-fi, a coldly clinical world holding off the unknowable just the other side of the monitor, and that's what David Greig's Solaris taps into so well. Stanisław Lem's novel has been filmed twice but I've not seen either film, which feels like a decided advantage as Matthew Lutton's production - an Edinburgh / Melbourne / London co-production now playing the last of those cities on its tour - unfolds its mystery. A three-person team has spent two years on a space station orbiting the impossible planet of Solaris - entirely covered in ocean, and orbiting two suns, one red, one blue. The story begins as the mission comes to an end.

Theatre review: Europe

I first went to the Donald and Margot Warehouse during the Sam Mendes days, so I'm on to my fourth Artistic Director of the venue as Michael Longhurst starts his tenure by directing Europe, a 25-year-old David Greig play whose original inspiration was the breakup of Yugoslavia but whose nebulous, borderline-surreal setting makes it feel timeless. The town where the action takes place is never named, but it's somewhere in Europe, close to a national border but otherwise pretty remote and easy to ignore. Even easier, soon: Trains going to every corner of the continent pass through, but all of a sudden they don't stop at the local station. Station Master Fret (Ron Cook) can't figure out the new timetable he's been sent, not realising the fact he can't find when the trains are meant to arrive is an underhand way of telling him the station is closing.

Theatre review: The Suppliant Women

The Oresteia is the only complete surviving Aeschylus trilogy, and consequently his most-performed work, but a couple of other individual plays of his are also extant; The Suppliant Women is the first in another sequence the rest of which has been lost. Of course, the same can be said of many of the plays by later writers that are still performed regularly, but Ramin Gray’s production, which goes right back to theatre’s early roots, quickly shows why this one might be seen as less ripe for reinvention than others. The titular women, a community chorus led by Gemma May Rees, are the Danaids, the Egyptian daughters of Danaos (Omar Ebrahim.) They have been ordered by the king Aegyptos to marry their first cousins, and they’ve fled Egypt with their father to escape the forced marriages. They trace their lineage to Argos, and one of Zeus’ various bestiality-themed extra-marital affairs, so that’s where they’ve sailed to seek asylum.

Theatre review: The Lorax

The colourful worlds and wacky rhymes of Dr. Seuss would make him seem a natural fit for stage adaptation, but his books are so short that expanding his stories to make a full-length show can't be easy without losing a lot of their charm. David Greig, though, has succeeded in giving new life to one of the writer's most heartfelt stories, as he brings a musical version of The Lorax to the Old Vic. In this expanded version of the environmental fable, the Once-ler (Simon Paisley Day) is a dreamer who travels the world hoping and failing to invent something amazing, until he stumbles upon a forest of colourful Truffula trees, that produce an incredibly soft and fluffy wool. Knitting it into a shapeless thing he calls a thneed, it becomes a must-have accessory despite nobody being quite sure what it is. He builds a thneed factory and a town supported by its economy, ignoring the warnings of the Lorax (voiced by Simon Lipkin,) a woodland creature responsible for the trees and worried about what'll happen when the Once-ler starts chopping them down.

Theatre review: Creditors

Strindberg's Creditors is about Adolph and Tekla, a husband and wife with some cracks in their relationship that are exploited by a malevolent stranger, Gustav. The immediately obvious high concept in the new production by Rikki Henry - winner of this year's Genesis Award - is to turn it into the story of a gay marriage. Adolph (Tom Rhys Harries) is an acclaimed young artist, married to Tekla (Jolyon Coy,) a novelist a few years older than him, who's been married and divorced before. They're spending some time on a hotel on an island when Tekla needs to go away for a few days on business. In his absence Adolph meets another guest, Gustav (Gyuri Sarossy,) who for reasons that will become apparent is determined to sabotage their marriage. By the time we meet them at the start of the play, he's managed to expose Adolph's biggest insecurities about his relationship.

Theatre review: The Events

David Greig's The Events features just two actors but the stage of the Maria is pretty full as the play calls for a choir - Ramin Gray's production brings in a different community choir every night, tonight the Morris Folk Choir from Islington. They provide, of course, a musical backing as well as reading in additional lines on occasion but their presence takes on a greater significance as the story unfolds. Claire (Neve McIntosh) is a lesbian vicar running a multicultural choir, and as such might as well be the poster girl for everything the far right hates - indeed an extremist party once listed the choir as one of the things that's wrong with Britain on its website. But for The Boy (Rudi Dharmalingam) hating them from afar wasn't enough, and it quickly becomes apparent that Claire is the survivor of his act of violence.

Theatre review: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

One thing that looks likely to become a feature of Vicky Featherstone's tenure at the Royal Court is co-productions with her former company, the National Theatre of Scotland. So it is with the final show in the Open Court "taster" season, which falls under the Theatre Local umbrella, taking it to the London Welsh Centre near King's Cross. Which is a pretty strange choice of location for a show as resolutely Scottish as The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, the brainchild of its writer David Greig and director Wils Wilson. The prevalence of Welsh dragons in the decor aside though, this proves an apt enough space for the piece, the long bar set up for a lock-in as if in the Kelso pub where a couple of crucial scenes take place. The story is told by five actor-musicians, and is a tribute to the traditional Border Ballads - as well as a deconstruction of them.

Theatre review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The official critics have not been invited to this show yet.

With the success of Matilda forgive me if I was a bit cynical at news that a huge musical version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was in the works - would it be rushed to the stage to catch some of the buzz of the last Roald Dahl adaptation? More encouraging was the creative team: With David Greig providing the book, music from Hairspray and Catch Me If You Can's Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and directed by Sam Mendes, its pedigree definitely made it worth a look. Locked away in his factory, Willy Wonka (Douglas Hodge) makes the world's best-loved chocolate, but is himself a mysterious figure. Until a promotion puts golden tickets in five chocolate bars, with the lucky winners promised a trip of the factory. Four spoilt children get the trip of a lifetime, while the final ticket goes to dirt-poor Charlie Bucket (Jack Costello, Tom Klenerman, Isaac Rouse or Louis Suc.)

Theatre review: Glasgow Girls

Cora Bissett, who starred in David Greig's Midsummer, is wearing her director's hat for her latest collaboration with Greig, which approaches political theatre in a way that's seldom seen. Glasgow Girls is a lively musical based on the true - and ongoing - story of a campaign against the deportation of asylum seekers' children. In 1999, empty flats in Glasgow were deemed a suitable place to house asylum seekers from Kosovo, Iraq, the Congo and elsewhere. Over the years the families settled into their new home and, despite the inevitable "they come here, steal our jobs" minority, were mostly accepted into the community. When the Home Office starts forcibly deporting families whose status has, almost arbitrarily, been changed to "safe," six teenage girls spearhead a campaign to protect the children, many of whom know no other home.