Theatre review: Please Please Me

As the title gives away, Tom Wright's Please Please Me deals with the Beatles - or at least with the outsider credited with making the world sit up and pay attention to them, their gay, Jewish manager Brian Epstein. That's Brian Epstein. We first meet Brian (Calam Lynch) working in his family's department store, nominally in the closet but with his various encounters with rough trade (all played by William Robinson) often proving dangerous, his father (Arthur Wilson) is well aware of what's going on. Following the advice of one of his regular hook-ups, he visits the Cavern Club to catch the band that's got Liverpool's teenage girls screaming, and despite having no experience in the field decides he has to become their manager - and convinces them to give him a go.

Theatre review: Mary Page Marlowe

For one of his last productions at the Old Vic Matthew Warchus directs the UK premiere of Tracy Letts' 2016 play Mary Page Marlowe, in which several actresses play the title character from soon after her birth, to not long before her death. We get to meet her as a baby, with her PTSD-suffering father (Noah Weatherby) and alcoholic mother (Eden Epstein,) the latter also seen undermining a 12-year-old Mary (Alisha Weir.) The casting of Warchus' former Matildae continues with Eleanor Worthington-Cox as the 19-year-old, being read her tarot cards by friends trying to foretell her romantic future but hoping she can define herself in terms that don't just revolve around men. But by Rosy McEwen's twenties and thirties version, she's largely defined herself as someone who cheats on her husband, including with her boss (Ronan Raftery.)

Theatre review: The Little Foxes

In what can reasonably be called an alternative to the cheery festive fare at most other theatres, the Young Vic offers up a winter show so unremittingly grim that Anne-Marie Duff agreed to star in it. Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes premiered in 1939, takes place in 1900 and has, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, been set sometime in the 1950s or '60s for Lyndsey Turner's production. At the centre of the story are three siblings, whose family wealth comes from cotton plantations; while slavery has long since been abolished, brothers Ben (Mark Bonnar) and Oscar (Steffan Rhodri) still control all the wealth in their Alabama town, but are trying to get in on a deal for a new cotton mill they hope will restore them to the even greater power their family used to have.

Theatre review: Next to Normal

Fifteen years after its Broadway debut Next to Normal gets its London premiere at the Donald and Margot Warehouse, and in many ways you can see why UK producers might have been wary of bringing it here for so long - and not just because it won the Pulitzer for drama, and should therefore automatically be treated with suspicion. It treads a fine line between the emotionally raw and the emotionally manipulative, and I'm still not sure which dominates overall; there's definitely moments that fall on one or other side of that line. Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey’s (book and lyrics) musical is certainly a bold take on mental health issues, as it introduces Diana (Caissie Levy,) her husband Dan (Jamie Parker,) and teenage children Gabe (Jack Wolfe) and Natalie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) as an almost exaggeratedly average family.

Theatre review: The Secret Life of Bees

Composer Duncan Sheik has developed quite the relationship with the Almeida, what with the premiere of American Psycho and the recent reimagining of Spring Awakening. It's the latter whose musical style immediately comes to mind as his latest show, written with Lynn Nottage (book) and Susan Birkenhead (lyrics) opens. This distinctive musical signature remains throughout, but with the addition of bluegrass, gospel and rock'n'roll flavours in keeping with the time and place of The Secret Life of Bees: In 1964 South Carolina, teenage Lily (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) feels ostracised by the rest of her town, because for reasons she doesn't like to discuss they blame her for the death of her mother, despite the fact that she was a small child at the time. So she's grateful for her family's maid Rosaleen (Abiona Omonua,) who's become her best friend.

Theatre review: Jerusalem

Just as there are a lot of actors who get forever identified with one role, there are also roles that get identified strongly with one actor. But I've never seen so many people insist that it's unthinkable for anyone other than the original star to take over a role, as I have with Mark Rylance and Rooster John Byron in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. It's a theory the latest West End revival has no intention of challenging as, 13 years after first playing the role, Rylance returns to Ian Rickson's production. He brings with him some more of the original Royal Court cast, including Mackenzie Crook as Rooster's hapless sidekick Ginger, an unemployed plasterer who insists he's actually a DJ. What he mostly is is off his face, as what brings him to the dilapidated caravan on the edge of a Wiltshire wood is the same as brings most people there: Rooster is the village's resident drug dealer.

Theatre review: Tomcat

After a few years based at the Finborough, the annual Papatango playwrighting prize has moved to a new home with roughly twice the seating capacity, in Southwark Playhouse's Little space. This year's winner, James Rushbrooke, taps into the current trend for plays about science with Tomcat. In a not-too-distant future, genetic screening of foetuses has resulted in the eradication of most illnesses, but at the cost of roughly one in four pregnancies being terminated - a legal requirement if a scan finds anything out of the ordinary. A subculture does exist that rejects this degree of state interference, so there are a few exceptions - one of them is 12-year-old Jessie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox,) who's been kept under observation by the authorities since they discovered her at the age of three. She's lived in the same windowless room since then, forbidden from touching people or making any sudden moves: According to her genetic makeup, she might be a psychopath.