Theatre review: Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe)

The Globe's latest Macbeth comes courtesy of director Abigail Graham, who casts Max Bennett as the Scottish nobleman whose prowess on the battlefield earns him extra honours. But thanks to a prophecy from three witches, he expects even more: They promised him the throne, and spurred on by his wife he decides not to wait and see if fate will make the prophecy true, but instead murders the King and takes his place straight away. Compared to most recent Globe productions Graham's doesn't play around with gender with quite as much gleeful abandon, but we still get a Queen instead of a King - Tamzin Griffin's Queen Duncan comes across as a capable but uninspiring leader, who brushes over the fact that she's said Macbeth and Banquo (Fode Simbo) were equally important to the military victory, but only actually rewarded the former.

Theatre review: The Boys Are Kissing

Theatre503 always feels like a trek to get to and from, so I don't often include it in my regular venues, but Zak Zarafshan's The Boys Are Kissing seemed like a fun premise, and proved a good bet - taking that premise and running with it, even before it adds a camp supernatural twist on top. We're in the territory of middle-class couples navigating parenting dilemmas they never expected to face, and trying to do the best for their kids in the face of cutthroat playground politics, but with a very 2023 look at sexuality and gender: 9-year-old Lucas and Samir were seen by their classmates kissing in the playground, leading to a bit of gossip among the kids and a whole lot more among their mums. The headteacher has suggested their parents discuss the incident, so Lucas' parents Sarah (Amy McAllister) and Matt (Philip Correia) visit Samir's mothers Chloe (Eleanor Wyld) and Amira (Seyan Sarvan.)

Theatre review: The Merchant of Venice(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

Measure for Measure, Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice doesn't sound like the most exciting season imaginable on paper, but the Swanamaker has been firing on all cylinders this winter, and in what could have been the least promising offering of all it turns out they've saved the best till last: Abigail Graham's is probably the best Merchant I've ever seen, and not just because she's cut the entirety of Act 5. In fact, as we've come to expect from the Globe, it's not a production that's precious with the text, cutting and reshuffling to serve its purpose. In this instance, it's to set the action in the high-risk, masculine, bullying culture of modern-day city traders, so we open with Aaron Vodovoz' geeky Launcelot Gobbo asking for a job with Bassanio (Michael Marcus.) He's made to play a drinking game as part of his application, which mainly involves a penalty every time he says the word "Jew" - and as he's talking about wanting to leave his current employer, the Jewish moneylender Shylock, he says it a lot. He ends up very drunk and humiliated, but gets the job.

Re-review: Hamlet (RSC tour)

Hamlet is a play so popular and frequently produced that I've seen it more times than any other, so it's not often I feel the need to revisit a particular production. Simon Godwin's 2016 Stratford version was one I did want to see again, and I was far from the only person to be disappointed and annoyed when it was the only show in that RSC season not to transfer to London. The reason given was that the cast was unavailable, but as many of them were in other shows in the season, including Paapa Essiedu in the lead, there would probably only have been the need for a handful of roles to be recast. Well that omission has finally been rectified, as Essiedu returns to lead a tour of this relocation of mediaeval Denmark to modern Africa, with some of the original cast also joining him; more recastings have had to be made than would probably be the case if it had transferred straight away, but it's not in the least to the detriment of the production.

Theatre review: Doctor Faustus (RSC / Swan)

There's always at least one play that behaves like a bus, away from the stage a few years then two come along at once; this year it's Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, with two interesting directors taking it on. Up first, Maria Aberg sees Faustus and Mephistophilis as two sides of the same coin, and as such two actors share the roles, who plays whom determined by chance. As the performance opens, the two actors stand opposite each other and light matches. Oliver Ryan's match burned out first, so he was Faustus this afternoon. The scholar has exhausted medicine, the Law and theology, and is yet to find a truth about the world that'll satisfy his curiosity. His last option is to turn to the occult. He conjures the demon Mephistophilis (Sandy Grierson,) and sells his soul to hell.

Theatre review: After Electra

In her 2011/12 hit Jumpy, April De Angelis put a woman turning fifty at the heart of the action. For her new play - commissioned specifically to provide the sort of roles for older actresses that are in notoriously short supply - she puts a woman in her eighties centre-stage. Virgie (Marty Cruickshank) has been a moderately successful abstract artist, an inspiration to some but a black sheep in her own family. A hippie free spirit, when her marriage was failing she left her family, leading to her children being taken into care. Haydn (Veronica Roberts,) now a therapist with a tendency to analyse herself and everyone around her in Freudian terms at all times, and Orin (James Wallace,) with a disastrous marriage of his own under his belt, have reconciled with their mother after a fashion, but the youngest daughter was never returned to her, and who she might now be remains a mystery that haunts the whole family.

Theatre review: Visitors

An accomplished first full-length play from Barney Norris, Visitors looks at the effect on a family when one member of it is stricken with dementia - and how a new, big problem doesn't negate all the smaller ones that have been dogging them for years. 70-somethings Edie (Linda Bassett) and Arthur (Robin Soans) have been married over half a century. and have remained essentially happy together on their small farm all that time. They remain in love but they know their life together is coming to a close as Edie's memory is starting to go. Still at an early stage, her dementia only causes occasional memory lapses but she knows her condition will soon deteriorate. Hoping to keep his wife at home as long as possible, Arthur has got their son Stephen to arrange a live-in carer, Kate (Eleanor Wyld.)

Theatre review: Unscorched

For the third year running the Finborough Theatre hosts the Papatango playwrighting competition, although this year they've simplified things further and are just presenting the winner in a full production. Luke Owen's Unscorched looks at what for most people must be the epitome of a dirty job they'd rather someone else did. Tom (Ronan Raftery) has just started a job in digital analysis for child protection services. What this translates into is clicking on website links that have been flagged up as suspicious, and determining whether or not they really show one of five categories of child abuse; if so, he passes them on to the police. Many prove innocent but the ones that do need action can be traumatic to watch. Tom's determination to do a good thing is tested by the reality of the job, and the ways it affects his new relationship.

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.

Theatre review: Shiverman

New York-based playwright James Sheldon's Shiverman takes place on a fictional Pacific island, but takes its themes from real cases and customs of small islands near Papua New Guinea. Possibly-American (Paul Mooney's accent does wander a bit too much to be certain) anthropologist Roy has been studying the indigenous tribes for three years, assisted by local boy Tatalau'e (Benjamin Cawley) who's been dazzled by dreams of studying in California. When a Chinese strip-mining company looks set to raze the valley to the ground, Roy calls in Dominique (Lisa Kay,) his girlfriend and colleague, to help his appeal to UNESCO to protect the local culture, under the laws of "intangible cultural heritage." But under these regulations, a culture's human rights can only be protected if they don't violate already-established rights, and Dominique discovers what Roy's been hiding from her: Before being allowed to marry, all local girls must be raped by the tribe of "holy men."