Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 2: Perestroika

Previously, on Angels in America...

I can joke but while I may have seen the two parts of Angels in America a week apart, Phill, who could only get tickets two months apart, wondered if he'd need a "Previously..." at the start of Part 2 to refresh his memory. And it turns out the National have thought of people in that predicament, as my reminder email about Perestroika included a short YouTube video summarising the major events of Millennium Approaches. These included the brief appearance by Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown,) a woman convicted of treason decades earlier, whose execution Roy Cohn ensured by dubious means. Her ghost continues to appear to Cohn (Nathan Lane) as a patient, ominous harbinger of his own much slower death from AIDS. There's also a bigger role now for Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett,) who's got the unenviable job of being Cohn's nurse, and whose acidic put-downs make him the right man to stand up to the notorious lawyer's vitriol.

Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 1: Millennium Approaches

For the second year in a row London's hottest theatre ticket, with reviews to match the level of anticipation, is an epic play in two parts with a supernatural element. But far from the obvious appeal of Harry Potter, this year it's a 25-year-old American play about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s that was the instant sell-out. Tony Kushner's Angels in America comes in at well over seven hours, the first three acts of which are haunted by a sense of dread at something apocalyptic on the way - hence its subtitle, Millennium Approaches. Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) is a flaboyant gay man who's just found out he's got the virus. His boyfriend of a few years, Louis Ironson (James McArdle,) is still deeply in love with him but very quickly realises a fact he hates himself for: He can't handle staying with Prior to watch him get sick and die.

Theatre review: People, Places and Things

Emma (Denise Gough) is an actress who, halfway through a performance of The Seagull, loses sight of the difference between herself and her character, forgets her lines and is soon collapsing onstage. There's a prosaic reason for this blurring of identity: Emma is an alcoholic and addicted to various - mostly prescription - drugs, and soon she's checking herself into a rehab centre. The physical withdrawal is traumatic but over comparatively quickly, but what she finds the hardest is the the next part of her treatment, when in group therapy she's asked to reveal something of her true self and prepare to go back out into the world. The latest collaboration between the National Theatre and Headlong, and the first since both companies got new artistic directors, Duncan Macmillan's People, Places and Things attempts to shed a tragicomic light on the subject of addiction.

Theatre review: Adler & Gibb

Artworks and their perceived value tend to be viewed in the light of the artist's life and personality. A certain brand of "method" acting on the other hand claims to put the real personality by the wayside entirely, immersing the actor in their character. Both ideas are present, bringing with them a kind of artistic temperament that edges into the unhinged, in Tim Crouch's Adler & Gibb. In 2004, a year after the mysterious death of modern artist Janet Adler, a student (Rachel Redford) attempts to secure a scholarship to art school with a lecture about Adler and her partner Margaret Gibb. She has a personal reason for her fascination with the pair, but it seems the interviewing panel don't share her enthusiasm.

Theatre review: The Duchess of Malfi

Shakespeare's Globe serves up a feast for the eyes and a torture for the back and buttocks as it finally unveils the new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The much smaller indoor companion to their summer theatre launches its first season with the best-known tragedy by Jacobean nutter John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi. The titular Duchess (Gemma Arterton) is a young widow, who secretly marries her steward Antonio (Alex Waldmann) and has three children with him without almost anybody noticing. The Duchess has a pair of psychotic brothers, her jealous twin Ferdinand (David Dawson,) who is inappropriately possessive of his sister's virtue, and the oily, hypocritical Cardinal (James Garnon.) When their spy Bosola (Sean Gilder) brings them news of their sister's secret life, they plot a cruel, brutal and, this being Webster, generally batshit fucking insane punishment.

Theatre review: The Shawl

The Young Vic's tiny Clare studio seems to be becoming the home for the winners of directing awards: Having already played host to the JMK winner, we now get the Genesis Future Director's Award winner, Ben Kidd. He brings an interesting dynamic to The Shawl, the short 1985 play in which David Mamet returns to his recurring theme of con-artists, this time looking at mediums whose comforting messages from the dead are entirely bogus - or are they? Kidd's production opens with a beautifully spooky touch: Merle Hensel's design sees chairs bolted down in a fairly haphazard-seeming in-the-round configuration, and as the audience take their seats a security camera's live images are shown on a number of TV screens, scattered around the cardboard boxes that line the walls. But when the play starts and Miss A (Denise Gough) enters, with some trepidation, for her first consultation with a psychic, the TV screens show her entering a deserted room, as if the audience are now spirits the cameras can't pick up.

Theatre review: Desire Under the Elms

Eugene O'Neill transposes Greek tragedy (mostly Phaedra, with bits of Oedipus and Medea) to 19th century America in Desire Under the Elms, which Sean Holmes revives at the Lyric Hammersmith. Youngest son Eben (Morgan Watkins) has finally managed to get rid of his older half-brothers (Mikel Murfi and Fergus O'Donnell) as they go West to join the Gold Rush, and he hopes the family farm will now be all his when his father Ephraim dies. But when Ephraim (Finbar Lynch, thrilled I'm sure to be getting cast as a 76-year-old) disappears for a few weeks he returns with a new young bride, Abbie (Denise Gough,) and she now stands to inherit everything. But Eben and Abbie's fight over the land is complicated by their attraction to each other, and when Abbie gives birth to a son that only Ephraim believes is his, the scene is set for things to take a grisly turn.

Theatre review: Our New Girl

There's another kitchen on the stage of the new Bush (this time arranged in thrust by designer Morgan Large) but it's a posher and, on the surface, more ordered space than the last one. Heavily-pregnant Hazel (Kate Fleetwood) is a former lawyer, now attempting to distribute organic olive oil from home in order to spend more time with first child Daniel (Jude Willoughby tonight, alternating with Jonathan Teale.) There's hints of We Need To Talk About Kevin in Nancy Harris' Our New Girl as Hazel's nervous energy and hassled demeanour gradually reveal that she feels a disconnect from her son - she's uncomfortable around him, perhaps even afraid. Her husband is the impossibly dashing plastic surgeon Richard (Mark Bazeley,) who alternates between raking in the cash botoxing wealthy women's faces and spending months saving burn victims in Haiti (he first appears complete with douchebag-standard tasselled scarf.) Hazel's feeling of being the only one not in control in her own house only gets worse when, without consulting or even warning her, Richard hires young Irish nanny Annie (Denise Gough) to help her out (or possibly keep an eye on her as much as on Daniel?)

Fleetwood is excellent as ever, she's very good at these frustrated, nervy characters but occasionally displays the steel and attention to detail Hazel used in her former life as a barrister. (This choice of former career amused me, and only me; as I may have mentioned once or twice [a minute] I was in a play with Kate Fleetwood about 18 years ago, and we played opposing counsel.) I think my interpretation of Our New Girl is essentially the story of a woman attempting to gain the same control over her family life as she once had over her work. But the way it's told is somewhere between domestic drama and thriller. The opening moments give the audience an insight that may affect which side we fall on, but there's a question over whether Daniel's behaviour is unusually bad and his father too lenient, or if it's all in his mother's head because she never bonded with him. (Hazel is frequently accused of complaining about #FirstWorldProblems and not knowing how good she's got it.) There's no easy answers, Charlotte Gwimmer's production certainly plays up the mystery/thriller element and there's moments when I was desperately impatient to see how this was all going to play out. There's an Act II plot development that's rather disappointingly obvious but at least it has interesting repercussions. Well-performed by all four actors and featuring some moments of sharp comedy among the tension, I'd recommend this if you fancy something entertaining whose next move you can't always predict.

Our New Girl by Nancy Harris is booking until the 11th of February at the Bush Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.