Theatre review: The Winter's Tale(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse & Shakespeare's Globe)

Leontes (Sergo Vares) is the king of Sicilia, whose life of privilege, happy marriage and lifelong friendship with Bohemian king Polixenes (John Lightbody) all come crashing down when he has a sudden burst of insanity. For no reason he becomes convinced his wife Hermione (Bea Segura) is having an affair with Polixenes, and that the baby she's carrying is his. His violent outbursts lead, directly or indirectly, to the death of his young son and only heir, the apparent death of Hermione, and a number of trusted servants and aides fleeing Sicilia in fear of their lives. In particular Antigonus (Colm Gormley) ends up in Bohemia with the newborn daughter Leontes has declared a bastard, and it's this fourth-act change of scenery that has inspired Sean Holmes to make The Winter's Tale the first production to take place in both of Shakespeare's Globe's theatres: Taking the entire audience from the indoor Swanamaker to the outdoor Globe and back again.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

From Sir Andrew Aguecheek straight to Hamlet is an unusual career progression but it's the one George Fouracres has taken since joining the Globe's ensemble cast last summer. After two standout comic turns the announcement he'd be playing Shakespeare's most famous tragic lead was welcome news to me, especially after the last Hamlet I saw actively played against any trace of humour or likeability in the character. Sean Holmes' production is the first time the play's been tackled indoors in the Swanamaker, and the first in the venue since the current Artistic Director played the role in her opening season. And there's some similarities between this and the Michelle Terry version in a general approach that avoids one overarching conceit; but Holmes' production both takes this experimentation with ideas several steps further, and results in, for my money at least, a much more entertaining - if far from cohesive - evening overall.

Theatre review: Herons

A second night in a row for me of kids in war paint - a quote on the website even calls Simon Stephens' Herons "an inner-city Lord of the Flies." I think this time around the cast actually are 14 or thereabouts, director Sean Holmes having found some of them from his Bugsy Malone (presumably this production's relatively short run gets around the child labour laws.) The setting is probably a London suburb, near a river or canal where Billy (Max Gill) and his father Charlie (Ed Gaughan) come daily to fish. But it's also where, almost exactly a year ago, Charlie discovered the body of a murdered girl, a classmate of his son's. Overweight, quiet and though apparently good in school, not street-smart enough to spot a bully targeting him, Billy is approached by the vicious Scott (understudy Louis Walwyn,) who says he has a message for his father.

Theatre review: Symphony

I'm back at the Vault Festival underneath Waterloo station, this time to catch two short shows in a night. First up, nabokov's Symphony, in which three playwrights contribute stories to be performed by a quartet of actor-musicians, to music by Ed Gaughan. Remy Beasley, Jack Brown, Iddon Jones and Adam Sopp are a multi-talented lot who all play numerous instruments in a show that's set up to look like a rock gig. Dressed in bolier suits, first to strip his off is Iddon Jones, who reveals a tiny pair of shorts and a singlet. The writer is the currently-ubiquitous Tom Wells, and the piece is called Jonesy. A teenage asthmatic, Jonesy is determined to take GCSE PE and prove himself one of the lads. Except rugby's a bit much for his asthma, so he ends up having to prove his manliness at netball instead.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Filter / Lyric Hammersmith)

They do say you shouldn't choose which shows to see solely on the basis of one cast member, and it can backfire. After having happily decided to give Filter's productions a miss in future, I relented for their new A Midsummer Night's Dream as Rhys Rusbatch was in it. Unfortunately the production seems to have shed him somewhere along the tour and it arrives at the Lyric Hammersmith without him. So what would I make of the latest Shakespeare adaptation from a company whose work I've found very problematic in the past?

Things don't start well as Ed Gaughan's Peter Quince opens the show with a bit of stand-up that uses the play's royal wedding as a prompt for such unique, never-before-made observations as the fact that the Royal Family is German, and that Camilla Parker-Bowles looks a bit like a horse. Once we get going properly though, the company seem to have got over, for now at least, some of the issues I've objected to in the past. Most importantly, though still inventive and silly, I no longer got the impression that Filter were having an onstage party for their own benefit, and should the audience happen to enjoy it as well, that's incidental.