Theatre review: Misalliance

Paul Miller's seasonal offering is what has become his personal trademark at the Orange Tree, another lesser-known play by one of the best-loved late 19th or early 20th century playwrights. It's Bernard Shaw's turn again, with Misalliance a fairly straightforward attempt at a knockabout comedy, although one with a message that would have still ruffled a few feathers in 1909. Tarleton (Pip Donaghy) is a self-made man who made a fortune with his brand of hard-wearing underwear. He sent his children to the most expensive schools so that they wouldn't mingle with the aristocracy (they're always asking for loans they never pay back) but somehow his daughter Hypatia (Marli Siu) has still got engaged to Bentley (Rhys Isaac-Jones,) youngest and oddest son of Lord Summerhays (Simon Shepherd.)

Theatre review: Blue Stockings

An accomplished director, Jessica Swale's clearly been learning a thing or two in the rehearsal room about what makes plays tick, because her debut as a playwright is an assured one. Having worked at Shakespeare's Globe before, this becomes the venue for the premiere of Blue Stockings, and having championed the work of trailblazing women in her choice of plays to direct, she finds another group of them in Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. For a few decades, women had been allowed to study there at colleges like Girton, but any achievements they made had to go unrecognised: At the time we join the bluestockings (Swale takes her play's title from the sneery nicknmae given to female students) they are trying to secure a historic vote that would allow them to graduate.

Theatre review: Hymn and Cocktail Sticks

If Alan Bennett's new play People turned out not to be what everyone was expecting - and not in a good way - the National has teamed it up with a pair of autobiographical shorts that are much more classic Bennett, in style but more importantly in quality. Alex Jennings plays Bennett himself as the narrator of Hymn and Cocktail Sticks, one of which plays in repertory before evening performances of People; and both can be seen as a double bill on selected Sundays. Jennings is not an actor you'd immediately think of as physically similar to the playwright, which makes his transformation all the more impressive: Having worked with the writer on The Habit of Art it's not entirely surprising if Jennings has picked up the writer's voice and, crucially to the telling of these stories, its particular inflections and quirks.