Theatre review: Coven

A new musical at the Kiln that seems to have had a lot of hype before it even opened - selling out some performances and already extending - Rebecca Brewer (book, music and lyrics) and Daisy Chute's (music and lyrics) Coven plays like a darker version of SIX, but without quite hitting that show's energy and conciseness. Based on the Pendle Witch Trials, it sees Jenet Device (Gabrielle Brooks) arrested on a charge of witchcraft that nobody's particularly bothered to explain to her, and thrown into a cell full of women who prove nobody is safe from accusation: Maggie (Jacinta Whyte) is a "cunning woman" whose knowledge of herbal medicine can easily be twisted against her as evidence of potion-making, and Nell (Allyson Ava-Brown) a midwife whose inability to save every single baby has left her with enemies in the village. But Frances (Shiloh Coke) is the powerful wife of a local landowner; unpopular for seizing common land, but unsuspecting that it could come to this.

Theatre review: Cymbeline(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

If Love's Labour's Lost can feel like the young Shakespeare workshopping setpieces he would perfect later in his career, Cymbeline could be the older playwright collecting every mad idea he couldn't fit into an earlier play, then throwing them all together to see what happens. The story of Roman Britain sees Princess Innogen (Gabrielle Brooks) separated from her exiled spouse, to be reunited only after a deranged fairytale quest that includes a man hiding in a trunk, a health tonic that's actually a deadly poison that's actually just a sleeping draught, meeting a pair of siblings she never knew existed, and a headless corpse largely played for laughs. The Swanamaker's latest take on the play gender-flips a lot of characters including the titular king; I understand the desire for a powerful female leader figure, but it feels a bit of a pyrrhic victory for that leader to struggle to make an impression because she spends the whole play on more sedatives than a 1980s soap opera housewife.

Theatre review: Mlima's Tale

Theatres really make it hard for me to keep my visits under control sometimes: Although no doubt worth seeing, Lynn Nottage's story of the ivory trade through the eyes of an elephant sounded bleak enough that it might be better to give it a miss, but then the casting for Miranda Cromwell's production was announced, and made it harder to say no. In its opening moments, Mlima's Tale gives us a bit of a misdirect that it might actually be what the title promises, as Mlima (Ira Mandela Siobhan,) a 48-year-old bull elephant, begins to give us a potted history of his life, the rainy seasons he's seen, the children he's sired. But these are the final moments of his life before he's brutally killed by poachers - after numerous attempts evidenced by a dozen bullet scars, it's a desperate, amateurish Somali pair who finally take him down.

Theatre review: Once On This Island

Regent's Park opens its 2023 Open Air Theatre season with Once On This Island, Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty's (music) loose musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid, reinterpreted as a fable about colourism in Haiti. Ti Moune (Gabrielle Brooks) is introduced as a legend of the island, a dark-skinned foundling girl adopted by Mama Euralie (Natasha Magigi) and Tonton Julian (Chris Jarman.) They are peasants, a class dictated by their darker skin - the wealth and power of the island rests with the lighter-skinned Grands Hommes, descended from Napoleonic settlers and their black mistresses. They congregate at a luxury hotel, banning the peasants from profiting off the tourists, but one day the heir to the hotel fortune has a car accident on the wrong side of the tracks. Ti Moune finds Daniel (Stephenson Ardern-Sodje) close to death.

Theatre review: J'Ouvert

Second in the season of three new plays reopening the Harold Pinter Theatre is one that originally debuted in the much more intimate Theatre 503, where it must have felt pretty cramped as Yasmin Joseph's J'Ouvert tries to cram the whole Notting Hill Carnival on stage. It is, to start with at least, a pretty loose journey through the day with three young women: Nadine (Gabrielle Brooks) and Jade (Sapphire Joy) have known each other since they were children, while Nisha (Annice Boparai) is a newer friend who recruited them for a local activist group. Nadine is a bit cold and standoffish with Nisha, who she sees as a bit of a cultural tourist at an event with specifically Afro-Carribean roots, but Nisha believes it's an opportunity for women of colour to stand together and stand up for each other, and sees Jade as a potentially inspiring speaker for their cause.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

After a valiant effort by Richard II at the start of the year, A Midsummer Night's Dream has well and truly come along to replace last year's Macbethorama as 2019's most ubiquitous Shakespeare. The Bridge, Open Air Theatre and Globe are all showing off their Bottoms, and it's the second leg's turn for me as director Dominic Hill is brought in from Glasgow to Regent's Park for a new take on the play that must surely be the venue's most-performed. It's the story of Oberon, King of the Fairies (Kieran Hill) and his plan to humiliate his Queen Titania (Amber James) into giving him a changeling child of hers, with a plot involving a love potion; and the mortals who get caught up in the middle of the chaos when they wander into the woods, including a troupe of amateur actors and a quartet of starcrossed lovers.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Young Vic)

The Young Vic gets its first new artistic director in nearly twenty years as Kwame Kwei-Armah debuts in carnival fashion with a show first seen in New York two years ago: A musical adaptation of Twelfth Night. Kwei-Armah heavily edits Shakespeare’s text, something made easier by the inclusion of Shaina Taub’s original songs, whose modern-language lyrics help summarise and move on the story so that the whole thing comes in at well under two hours. Originally set in New Orleans, Kwei-Armah and Oskar Eustis’ production has been relocated to Notting Hill for its UK premiere, with Robert Jones’ thrust stage creating a long road where Viola (Gabrielle Brooks) is washed up after a storm, right into a funeral – but a lively one that turns into a street party, only the deceased’s sister Olivia (Natalie Dew) keeping up the mourning for long. It’s too long for Duke Orsino (Rupert Young,) who’s determined to woo her despite her obvious lack of interest.