Theatre review: Terror

Billed as international event theatre and certainly designed as such, Ferdinand von Schirach's Terror has played over 1000 performances in Germany and been seen in numerous countries, with the Lyric Hammersmith now giving it its UK premiere in David Tushingham's translation. It's a courtroom drama with the audience serving as jury on an ever-topical case involving terrorism: A passenger plane carrying 164 civilians was hijacked, with it looking increasingly likely it would crash into a stadium filled to its 70,000 capacity. A hastily drafted and redrafted law allows for the plane to be shot down to save the majority, but as it stands only the Minister for Defence can give the order, and he refuses to do so. Faced with the reality, fighter pilot Lars Koch (Ashley Zhangazha) took it upon himself to sacrifice the plane and save the 70,000. Having gone against orders, he's now charged with mass murder and faces life in prison.

Theatre review: Winter Solstice

As has become increasingly apparent over the last few years, the rest of the world doesn't seem to think Gemany might have any insights on fascism worth listening to. But the Germans, bless them, keep trying, with the latest warning coming from Roland Schimmelpfennig, whose Winter Solstice comes to the Orange Tree in a translation by David Tushingham. An upper middle class couple in a household we're told has never voted for a conservative party, Bettina (Laura Rogers) is a director of arthouse films nobody particularly wants to watch, while her husband Albert (Dominic Rowan) is a popular historian who's written a number of hit books. Both are having affairs, Bettina with Albert's best friend Konrad (Milo Twomey,) and the family tensions are particularly fraught as they wait for Bettina's mother to arrive.

Theatre review: Idomeneus

The mythology of the Trojan War often sees the Greeks' triumph soured, as they return home to face tragedy and betrayal. Cretan king Idomeneus tops off his decade at war with a catastrophic storm on the way home. Of all his ships, only the one carrying Idomeneus himself survives, and only because the king promises the sea god Poseidon a gift: On reaching Crete he'll sacrifice the first living creature he sees. Of course he docks to find his own son Idamantes waiting to greet him. With its themes of human sacrifice, family tragedy and a classic dick move by the gods, it seems like this should be one of the better-known Greek myths, but Idomeneus' post-Troy fate doesn't feature in the Iliad and remains fairly obscure. The sources that do mention it differ on how the story plays out, and that's where Roland Schimmelpfennig's Idomeneus comes in.

Theatre review: Olga's Room

Once Christmas and New Year are firmly in the rear-view mirror January's theatre offerings tend to embrace darker subject matters as an antidote to all the jollity. Olga's Room could be said to fit the bill as the Arcola offers up the true story of German Jewish communist Olga Benario, who spent time in Brazilian and German prisons in the 1930s and '40s before finally being sent to a concentration camp. This is where we first join Olga (Bethan Clark,) who spends her time writing on the walls and floors, to remind herself of the significant events in her life as her sense of identity starts to fall apart. Dea Loher's play then takes us back to the cell she shared with teenager Genny (Larisa Faber) and actress Ana (Ceridwen Smith) following her revolutionary activities against the Brazilian dictatorship, which had links with Nazi Germany. There she lives under the constant threat not only of torture, but also of deportation back to Germany and the gas chamber.