Theatre review: Hay Fever

It was only three years ago - and in his eponymous theatre - that Hay Fever was last on St Martin's Lane, but already Noël Coward's partner-swapping comedy of manners is back. This time it's down the road at the Duke of York's, in a production that comes to London from Bath with most of its original cast, plus Edward Killingback (Yeah!) Them Motherfuckers Don't Know How To Act (Yeah!) as Sandy. It's a June weekend at the country home of the desperately affected Bliss family: David (Simon Shepherd) is a successful novelist whose work keeps them all in luxury, but the alpha personality is his wife Judith (Felicity Kendal,) a retired actress considering returning to the stage because she hasn't had quite enough letters demanding it. Everyone claims to be looking forward to a quiet weekend as they've each invited someone to the house - four new admirers the Blisses can spend the weekend toying and flirting with.

Theatre review: Twelve Angry Men

There's lots of shows opening in the West End right now and for a moment I thought tonight's had got a bit confused: The sound effect of a speeding train over the opening made me wonder if I'd rocked up at the Hitchcock adaptation a week early. But the sound turns out to be on-theme for this stage transfer of another famous film, which Reginald Rose adapted from his own 1954 screenplay. The Twelve Angry Men in question are the jury in a murder case, twelve white men deciding whether a black teenager stabbed his father in the middle of the night. Eleven jurors immediately cast their guilty vote but Juror 8 (Television's Martin Shaw) has reasonable doubt, and asks only that the rest take the time to discuss the case before condemning a man to death. The evidence is largely circumstantial but there's a lot of it - yet it turns out to be easier to poke holes in than the perfunctory defence made it look in court.

Theatre review: Dances of Death

There must be an unwritten rule about Strindberg that says you can only have the same one of his plays over and over, or none at all. Usually it's Miss Julie, but it's less than six months since Donmar Trafalgar gave us The Dance of Death, and now here it is at the Gate. Except it turns out Strindberg wrote two parts to the play, and the second part is rarely performed. Howard Brenton's new version conflates the two parts into a single two-act play, hence the title change to Dances of Death. Set on a Swedish island that's used in its entirety as a military base, it focuses on the toxic 30-year marriage of elderly army captain Edgar (Michael Pennington) and his wife Alice (Linda Marlowe.) What seems at first to be affection disguised as a string of insults turns out to have a very real hatred underneath it - and yet the couple are too committed to causing each other misery ever to try and escape.