Theatre review: Our Country's Good

Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good toured last year, but that hasn't put original director Max Stafford-Clark off returning to it with his Out of Joint company to mark its 25th anniversary. The play has become an A'level set text, and accordingly the St James Theatre - where the new production ends a national tour - was fuller than I'm used to seeing it, largely with school parties. From the snippets of conversation I overheard, Our Country's Good inspires a lot of strong feeling in the teenagers who study it, and they seemed completely satisfied by a production that's been cast with a number of actors who aren't exactly household names, but will be familiar to theatre aficionados. Most of them have to play multiple roles in Wertenbaker's sometimes overtly Brechtian telling of the true-ish story of the early days of Australia, when some of the recently-arrived prisoners performed George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.

Theatre review: Henry V (Propeller)

Henry V is the Shakespeare that's hard to avoid this year and after a thoroughly disappointing one at the Globe I was optimistic that Propeller would rehabilitate the play for me. Paired with their take on The Winter's Tale, Ed Hall's all-male company tackle one of Shakespeare's most testosterone-fueled plays (its whole story is essentially the progress of one military campaign) and, as you'd expect, don't hold back. Michael Pavelka's design gives us a modern-dress production with much of the cast remaining onstage throughout, a laddish regiment in desert camouflage gear delivering the Chorus' speeches. In keeping with the play's overt theatricality that asks us to fill in the blanks with our imaginations, most of the costume changes simply involve the actors pulling on additional clothing over their combat gear.

Theatre review: The Winter's Tale (Propeller)

The first time I saw The Winter's Tale, at the RSC some time in the '90s, I remember really enjoying it, but subsequent productions have put me off the play: It's famously varied in tone and style, lurching from a dark drama of jealousy into a raucous pastoral comedy, before veering off into a gently lyrical fairytale ending. All too often it seems to descend into something maudlin and flat, and it's one Shakespeare play I've most often been bored in. This year it's one of the two shows being toured by Ed Hall's all-male Propeller company, which for the second year is taking up residence for a fortnight at Hampstead. I was optimistic that a company with such a distinct identity and joyous performance style  could reawaken what I'd originally liked about the play. Andy, meanwhile, was new both to The Winter's Tale and to Propeller.