Theatre review: Titus Andronicus (RSC / Swan)

There's splashguards for the front row of the Swan and grates have been installed on the voms to drain off a variety of bodily fluids, it must mean Titus Andronicus is back at the theatre where I first saw it. This time, a few decades after Actor Brian Cox famously advised him to play the role, it's finally Simon Russell Beale's turn to take on the Roman General who finds out to his (and his family's) cost that the trouble with hanging out with mad emperors is that they're mad, and also they've got the power of emperors. Titus is given the casting vote on who should be the next autocrat of Rome, and chooses Saturninus (Joshua James,) who instantly decides to abuse his power by demanding the hand (in marriage) of Lavinia (Letty Thomas,) his own brother's (Ned Costello) fiancée. When she refuses, her whole family are considered to have offended his honour, and as he's her father that instantly takes Titus from kingmaker to pariah.

Radio review: Love and Information

Back to my occasional reviews of radio adaptations of stage work, where BBC Radio 3's recent production of Love and Information is the first audio adaptation, and 12 years seems like a surprisingly long time to wait to give it that treatment: After all, Caryl Churchill's 2012 play is an experiment in form that requires all kinds of resources for a live revival, that are a lot easier to get around on radio, where sketch shows are common. And that's essentially the format Churchill used for this play, whose cast very quickly run their way through more than a hundred characters in over fifty scenes that are rarely as long as two minutes, and can be as short as a single sneeze. As an audience member, one advantage this has is that I was able to focus entirely on the scenes and not the staging - I remember the original production at the Royal Court as being brilliant, but it was impossible not to be slightly distracted by the impressively slick scene changes.

Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -A Song at Twilight

The third and final play in Noël Coward's Suite in Three Keys is a full-length one, so it plays on its own in Tom Littler's revival of these late dramas. A Song at Twilight is, at least in Littler's production, the part of the trilogy that most acknowledges the fact that the Sixties are starting to swing. Well, ageing Hollywood starlet Carlotta (Tara Fitzgerald) acknowledges it, anyway, sporting the most preposterous and gravity-defying of Chris Smyth's wigs for these shows, enjoying the sound of pop songs playing outside the window, and firmly believing that an overhaul of social opinion on sexuality is overdue. But the man she's visiting (in Louie Whitemore's Swiss hotel suite that the story shares with the earlier double bill) is the sort to slam the windows shut against the noise, and certainly one who'd rather keep certain things behind closed doors.

Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -Shadows of the Evening andCome into the Garden, Maud

The Orange Tree marks the 50th anniversary of Noël Coward's death by staging very nearly his last works for the stage, the trilogy Suite in Three Keys. The plays are performed as originally intended, in a double bill alternating with the third, longer play, all set in the mid-1960s in the same luxury suite of a Lausanne hotel. And there's a distinctly unpromising start as we open with the damp squib of a drama Shadows of the Evening, apparently such a critical flop it got ditched entirely when the original production transferred to Broadway. George (Stephen Boxer) has lived with his lover Linda (Tara Fitzgerald) for several years after leaving his wife: Anne (Emma Fielding) has stayed on relatively good terms with them for the sake of her children, except for the fact that she's refused to grant him a divorce in all that time. Now Linda, at one time Anne's friend, has asked her to come urgently from London to Switzerland.

Radio review: The Two Noble Kinsmen

Even speaking optimistically it'll be a while before any live Shakespeare productions come along in 2021 (although multiple competing Romeo and Juliets are on their way digitally,) but in the meantime the BBC Sounds app offers an alternative: The Shakespeare Sessions podcast features, alongside various Bard-related documentaries and interviews, some of the Radio 3 adaptations from recent years. So with me not fancying another lockdown night in front of Netflix, one of the most obscure plays in the canon and the last one I ticked off my "seen onstage" list, but one which I've become more familiar with in the last few years, was an option. A candidate for the title of his final (collaborative) work, Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen is an eccentric, tragicomic adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale.

Theatre review: A Museum in Baghdad

Wars in the Middle East have taken a horrific toll on human lives; sometimes just as well-publicised is the loss of archaeological sites and priceless historical artefacts to collateral damage, looting and wanton destruction. Hannah Khalil's A Museum in Baghdad explores the tricky ground of trying to weigh out the relative value of lives and history. In overlapping scenes it follows two women, one historical, one fictional, both trying to launch the same titular museum eighty years apart. The nation of Iraq was created after the First World War out of various warring tribes in the region then known as Mesopotamia, under a king installed by the British rulers, and the understanding that it would be granted independence once the country was on its feet. Archaeologist Gertrude Bell (Emma Fielding) was one of the architects of the country and its laws, and when we meet her in 1926 she's in the process of setting up a central museum of treasures that tell the story of the region's history and cultural significance.

Theatre review: A Woman of No Importance

Another day, another former Artistic Director of a major South Bank theatre launches his new commercial production company. Where Nicholas Hytner's unique selling point - a large-scale London theatre that's actually fit for purpose - is one I can see the need for, I can't say the same for ex-Globe boss Dominic Dromgoole's new Classic Spring venture: The idea is to present seasons of late-19th and early-20th century classics in the West End proscenium arch theatres they were originally written for (Jonathan Fensom's designs fairly lush but offering no surprises.) A Shaw season is coming up, but first a year-long residency of Oscar Wilde plays at the Vaudeville, which is what makes me wonder exactly what gap Dromgoole thinks he's spotted in the market: The inevitable conclusion next year will be The Importance of Being Earnest, at which point it'll be only three years since the play's last revival at the very same theatre. At least the opening production is of a play not revived anywhere near as often, although for too much of A Woman of No Importance it's obvious why.

Theatre review: Terror

Billed as international event theatre and certainly designed as such, Ferdinand von Schirach's Terror has played over 1000 performances in Germany and been seen in numerous countries, with the Lyric Hammersmith now giving it its UK premiere in David Tushingham's translation. It's a courtroom drama with the audience serving as jury on an ever-topical case involving terrorism: A passenger plane carrying 164 civilians was hijacked, with it looking increasingly likely it would crash into a stadium filled to its 70,000 capacity. A hastily drafted and redrafted law allows for the plane to be shot down to save the majority, but as it stands only the Minister for Defence can give the order, and he refuses to do so. Faced with the reality, fighter pilot Lars Koch (Ashley Zhangazha) took it upon himself to sacrifice the plane and save the 70,000. Having gone against orders, he's now charged with mass murder and faces life in prison.

Theatre review: Rapture, Blister, Burn

Perhaps in an attempt to counteract the testosterone overdose from last Tuesday I still haven't quite recovered from, theatre has since been serving me up a whole lot of feminism. The latest is at Hampstead, where Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn looks at the age-old question of whether a woman can have it all. A feminist writer and lecturer specialising in the politics of pornography, Cathy (Emilia Fox) is not just a successful academic but a bit of a media darling. When her mother Alice (Polly Adams) has a heart attack, Cathy's satisfaction in her life of career over family is shaken, and she starts to believe that when Alice dies she'll be left alone. She takes a sabbatical to return home and look after her mother, but she's not the first person she calls: It's Don (Adam James,) the ex-boyfriend who married her best friend Gwen (Emma Fielding) when Cathy's career started moving faster than he could keep up with.

Theatre review: In the Republic of Happiness

Surely one of the most experimental pieces the Royal Court's staged in a long while, Martin Crimp's In the Republic of Happiness starts with what looks like a familiar Christmas scene, but quickly turns into one of the most baffling festive offerings you're likely to see. The play is divided into three distinct sections, each given a very different look in Miriam Buether's great set design (and for a change at the Jerwood Downstairs, the audience actually gets to watch the super-speedy scene changes take place.) First up is the traditional family discord around the Christmas dinner table. But as the sun goes down it turns out Dad (Stuart McQuarrie) has taken all the light bulbs out of their fittings, and the family secrets prove just as murky as the living room as the afternoon wears on.

Theatre review: The King's Speech

David Seidler tried to hawk his play The King's Speech to theatre producers but attracted the attention of a film producer instead. People more up-to-date than I on news of magic lantern shows, inform me the ensuing film did "quite well," so now the original play finally gets its chance on stage; and a West End stage at that, with a strong cast. King George V (Joss "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY" Ackland) is nearing the end of his life, and not too thrilled about the succession. David, the future Edward VIII (Daniel Betts) is a bit of a raving Nazi and, much more importantly by the ruling classes' standards, shagging an American. Everyone except David himself seems to see the abdication crisis coming, but the trouble is the next in line is Bertie (Charles Edwards,) whose severe stammer doesn't make him the ideal person to make reassuring speeches to the nation as WWII approaches.