Theatre review: A Moon for the Misbegotten

We're not even into the final year of Rupert Goold's programming yet but the Almeida stage already looks like the movers are in: Tom Scutt's design for A Moon for the Misbegotten piles up planks, pillars, old props and broken doorframes to create the multilevel set for Eugene O'Neill's final play, a spin-off from Long Day's Journey Into Night. The alcoholic older son from that play, James Tyrone Jr (Michael Shannon) left a failing Broadway career for life as a landlord in rural Connecticut, where he rents out a worthless piece of farmland to Phil Hogan (David Threlfall.) The old farmer's manipulative ways and use of them as free labour has seen all his children leave him except for sole daughter Josie (Ruth Wilson,) and he's also made an enemy of his wealthy neighbour (Akie Kotabe.) Now a rumour has reached him that the millionaire has a plan to get rid of him once and for all: Offer James well over the odds to buy the land from him, so he can turf out the tenants.

Theatre review: The Enfield Haunting

One of the most famous poltergeist cases ever documented, The Enfield Haunting has been the subject of multiple books, movies and TV series, so a stage version - courtesy of writer Paul Unwin and director Angus Jackson - was probably inevitable. Every so often someone attempts to do big jump scares in the theatre, and with the latest spooky juggernaut 2:22 A Ghost Story mainly known for its rotating cast of random leading ladies with big Instagram followings, there's still room for something to provide the actual chills and thrills recently vacated by The Woman In Black. But while there's some interesting elements to this starrily-cast premiere, the screams of audience terror they might have been hoping for don't come. Lee Newby's set certainly looks creepy enough - the innards of the small, cluttered two-storey house where a young family has lived for 5 years.

Theatre review: Don Quixote

The RSC are of course marking the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death on the 23rd of April 1616*, but they're also acknowledging that Miguel de Cervantes died on the same date¥, with his epic comic novel Don Quixote getting a new stage adaptation by James Fenton. Angus Jackson directs David Threlfall as the titular impoverished lord who's spent his life in his library, absorbed in tales of Mediaeval knights-errant. As he gets old and senile he starts to believe himself one of them, and sets off on a mission to have adventures and bring the age of chivalry back to Spain. He promises the local layabout Sancho Panza (Rufus Hound) an island of his own to rule if he'll be his loyal squire.