Theatre review: East is South

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Hampstead Theatre invites the critics in next week.

After The Invention of Love saw Hampstead Theatre's main stage get caught up in classical analysis for a couple of hours, Beau Willimon's East is South threatens to do the same thing but with theology. In a secretive facility somewhere under an American desert, international teams of computer coders have been developing "Aggie," an AI more powerful than any seen yet - one that may not only end up passing for real human intelligence, but supercede it. Developers work in pairs and no new code can be approved without checks by multiple teams, but for all the security checks there's been a breach that might see Aggie escape onto the Internet. Lena (Kaya Scoledario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are one of the teams working on the kill switch, the code that can shut down the programme if it gets too powerful and out of control.

Theatre review: As You Like It (Shakespeare's Globe)

Continuing to suggest Michelle Terry's vision for Shakespeare's Globe is as the most joyously queer theatre in That London, and tying that into the gender-bending embedded in many of Shakespeare's plays, the 2023 summer season closes as it opened, with a production largely cast with LGBTQ+ performers in roles that don't necessarily match their pronouns. Ellen McDougall's As You Like It goes one step further by making its queerness an integral part of how it divides the play's two very different worlds. We begin in the monochrome court of Duke Frederick (Dale Rapley,) who usurped his position from his own brother, whom he banished to the forest. But he allowed his niece Rosalind (Nina Bowers) to remain, as she was so close to his daughter Celia (Macy-Jacob Seelochan.) But a wrestling competition reminds him that his brother's former allies are still around.

Theatre review: Watch on the Rhine

My first theatre trip of 2023 is to the Donald and Margot Warehouse. It's the show I'd actually planned to open the year with, and that in itself is one up on last year (which started with a bunch of cancelled and hastily-rescheduled performances from 2021.) I went into Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine knowing very little about it beyond the vague blurb on the website, and frankly being able to go in and be surprised is my ideal way to see a show. That blurb promised a German-American family taking in German relatives during the Second World War, before the USA had officially picked a side, so I was prepared for some queasy revelations about where the family's sympathies lie. Instead Hellman has a more defiant message in mind, and director Ellen McDougall delivers a tense domestic thriller about the moral ambiguities of heroism.

Theatre review: Our Town

Our Town is American theatre's archetypal metatheatrical play, and for anyone not sure what that means Ellen McDougall's staging provides a pretty strong hint: Rosie Elnile's set puts a miniature version of the Open Air Theatre's seating banks on the stage, reflecting the audience's place back at them. It's an inspired setting for a story that's so much about people sitting back and observing life, although that significance isn't revealed until late. For the first two acts Thornton Wilder's play is pointedly about the everyday as it follows life in the 1900s and early 1910s in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. In particular two families - that of Dr (Karl Collins) and Mrs Gibbs (Pandora Colin) and their next-door neighbours, local newspaper editor Mr Webb (Tom Edden) and his wife (Thusitha Jayasundera.) Narrated by the Stage Manager (Laura Rogers,) the first act follows a decidedly ordinary day.

Theatre review: Othello (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

With its black title character Othello is, unsurprisingly, most often used as a way of looking at racism, but for the last of this year's Swanamaker season Ellen McDougall has a different approach in mind. After all, the only overt racism in the play comes from Othello's enemies, but with help from a little tinkering with the text McDougall exposes how the misogyny in the play's world is even more deep-rooted. General Othello (Kurt Egyiawan) has made Michelle Cassio (Joanna Horton) his new lieutenant, to the fury of his ensign Iago (Sam Spruell,) who'd been expecting the promotion. Using his reputation as the most trusted of the officers, Iago decides to take revenge in a slow, insidious way.

Theatre review: Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith)

For the fifth year running it was a big group outing to the Lyric Hammersmith's pantomime, where last year's director Ellen McDougall and set designer Oliver Townsend are back, as is Cinderella's Prince Charming Karl Queensborough in the title role of Aladdin. It's all change elsewhere though, most notably in the script where, after three years, Tom Wells has left (probably because he had two new plays of his own this year to worry about) and former co-writer Joel Horwood has returned without his writing partner Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. Panto of course always has a bit of a topical edge and so here the story's introduced by the villain - Nigel David Donald Theresa Boris Abanazer (Vikki Stone,) who lives in Fulhammerboosh, where the rich have all the power and the poor are vilified.

Theatre review: The Rolling Stone

Chris Urch had a miner hit* with Land of Our Fathers, which will be getting another London run later this year, and in the meantime another of his plays gets a further life (having originally played in Manchester after winning the Bruntwood Prize,) as Ellen McDougall directs Urch's look at a very different subject. The Rolling Stone takes its title from a Ugandan newspaper that takes particular glee in the country's anti-gay laws: Notoriously, it publishes the names, addresses and photos of homosexuals with the intention that they be arrested or, just as likely, lynched. It's a poisonous environment to set a gay love story, in which 18-year-old Dembe (Fiston Barek) meets Ugandan-Irish doctor Sam (Julian Moore-Cook,) and the couple start a surprisingly laid-back relationship. When Dembe's father dies, his older brother Joe (Sule Rimi) is elected pastor of their church, but not unanimously - those who object to such a young pastor will keep a particularly close eye on Joe and his family.

Theatre review: Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith)

It's my annual trip to the Lyric Hammersmith's pantomime, and the third year Tom Wells takes on writing duties (and possibly the last - next year's Aladdin has, bizarrely, already been announced and put on sale, with Joel Horwood back as writer.) But for 2015 it's the story of Cinderella (Krystal Dockery,) the orphaned girl made to cook and clean up after the wicked Madame Woo (Sara Crowe) and her daughters - Cinderella is unusual among pantos in having two dames, the ugly stepsisters Booty (Matt Sutton) and Licious (Peter Caulfield.) Her only friend is Buttons (Samuel Buttery,) and her only hope of escape is the ball held by Prince Charming (Karl Queensborough,) to which everyone in Hammersmith has been invited. Her stepmother will do everything she can to stop Cinderella going to the ball, but she does have one last magical ally who'll make sure Cinders gets her prince.

Theatre review: The Glass Menagerie (Headlong)

Tennessee Williams' early masterpiece The Glass Menagerie has suddenly proved popular for fresh interpretation; the production in Southampton was a bit too far for me, but Headlong's tour includes a stop at Richmond, which is certainly doable, especially when it's an adventurous company taking on one of my favourite playwrights. Ellen McDougall's production is very much stripped down - not in the way that its star Greta Scacchi used to be best known for but in a way that, like so much else in the last 18 months, wears an Ivo van Hove influence on its sleeve. Fly Davis' set is a black box, bare except for a staircase, a couple of lamps and a single snowglobe representing the collection of glass animals that gives the play its title. But this isn't too far a departure from what's intended, as the prologue informs us this is a memory play where everything is a bit hidden in shadow and fuzzy around the edges, its narrator - an obvious stand-in for Williams in this autobiographical work - an unreliable one.

Theatre review: Idomeneus

The mythology of the Trojan War often sees the Greeks' triumph soured, as they return home to face tragedy and betrayal. Cretan king Idomeneus tops off his decade at war with a catastrophic storm on the way home. Of all his ships, only the one carrying Idomeneus himself survives, and only because the king promises the sea god Poseidon a gift: On reaching Crete he'll sacrifice the first living creature he sees. Of course he docks to find his own son Idamantes waiting to greet him. With its themes of human sacrifice, family tragedy and a classic dick move by the gods, it seems like this should be one of the better-known Greek myths, but Idomeneus' post-Troy fate doesn't feature in the Iliad and remains fairly obscure. The sources that do mention it differ on how the story plays out, and that's where Roland Schimmelpfennig's Idomeneus comes in.

Theatre review: Secret Theatre Show 4

After a break for panto the Lyric Hammersmith's Secret Theatre returns with one notable change: The secret is now revealed slightly earlier, the sheet with title, writer, cast and creative details being handed out before the show rather than after. But for the purposes of this review I'll be sticking to the same format as before: If you're planning to see Show 4 and don't want spoilers, stop reading now.