Theatre review: Hamlet (National Theatre / Lyttelton)

The new Artistic Director has launched the season by reminding us of the National Theatre's close connection with Ancient Greek Tragedy, now her new deputy gets to do the same for Shakespeare: Robert Hastie's take on Hamlet stays on dry land, but if it's not overtly high concept it's still full of ideas, and little nods to past productions. Hiran Abeysekera's Hamlet is a stroppy prince, performatively wearing black clothes and nail polish at his mother's wedding in protest at how soon it's come after her first husband, Hamlet's father's, death. But if there's something of the attention-seeking, overgrown teenager to him, the front becomes reality when his father's ghost starts haunting the palace: The dead king's spirit (Ryan Ellsworth) tells him he was murdered by his brother Claudius (Alistair Petrie.)

Theatre review: The School for Scandal

Continuing the new RSC artistic team's unpredictable approach to an opening season we have a rare main stage outing for Restoration Comedy, that genre made up of such a tangle of mini-plots it always defeats my attempts to provide anything like a coherent synopsis. But it's probably accurate enough to say the main focus of all the shenanigans in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal is a pair of brothers, young adults but still theoretically being kept an eye on by family friend Sir Peter Teazle (Geoffrey Streatfeild) since their father's death: Charles Surface (John Leader) is the party-animal youngest, who's already got through his share of the inheritance and has sold off half the contents of his house. But a lot of his financial mismanagement comes from his generosity to friends and strangers alike, and he's essentially kind-hearted - something his public image doesn't really reflect.

Theatre review: A Mirror

In an unnamed totalitarian state, Jan Čelik (Jonny Lee Miller) is Director of the Ministry of Culture, tipped to become the next Minister and, unlike the current one, actually interested in culture: He strongly dislikes the Ministry's nickname of "censorship bureau," and prefers to think of himself as someone who nurtures promising artists and hones their talents into something that can be used for the glory of the Motherland - like the national treasure playwright Bax (Geoffrey Streatfeild,) whose success Čelik takes a lot of credit for. He thinks he's found the next big thing in mechanic and former soldier Adem (Micheal Ward,) whose debut play violates almost every censorship guideline in the book, but whose naturalistic style shows promise Čelik thinks he can mould. In fact the play is even less artful than the Director realises: Adem has a form of photographic memory, and the unconnected scenes in the play he's submitted are actually verbatim transcripts of conversations his neighbours have had, that he's heard through the building's thin walls.

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: Blithe Spirit

The latest West End outing for Blithe Spirit is a show I was perhaps looking forward to more when it became one of my first casualties of lockdown, than I was by the time Richard Eyre's Bath production finally made it back to London. In large part this is probably because in the interim I listened to an audio version that ended up being my favourite out of any version I'd actually seen on stage, and likely hard to beat. Now at the Pinter Theatre, a decent-sized but far from packed audience suggests that despite being perhaps the best-loved Noël Coward play, there's still maybe not the appetite for quite how frequently it ectoplasmically manifests itself. Still, it's always someone's first time, and Vanessa was unfamiliar with the play about Charles Condomine (Geoffrey Streatfeild,) a writer who tries to research fraudulent psychics for his new book, by inviting a local eccentric to hold a séance.

Theatre review: The Way of the World

A delayed trip to the Donald and Margot Warehouse, where James Macdonald's production of The Way of the World has been sadly overshadowed by the reason the performance I was originally due to see was cancelled: Actor Alex Beckett's unexpected death. Performances of William Congreve's Restoration comedy have now resumed with Robin Pearce replacing Beckett as Waitwell, and the rest of the run being dedicated to the late actor's memory. Unfortunately it proves a pretty poor memorial, as Macdonald has produced an interminable, impenetrable and woefully unfunny evening whose cast try hard to inject some energy into it but only succeed in small doses. I don't think I've seen Congreve's play before but I suspect it has to take a lot of the blame itself; the lengthy first scene in which Mirabel (Geoffrey Streatfeild) and Fainall (Tom Mison) exchange exposition about numerous similarly-named characters we haven't met yet sets a lugubrious tone the rest of the play struggles to get out of, and left me none the wiser about who anyone was by the time they turned up.

Theatre review: Wild Honey

Nobody could accuse Ed Hall's Hampstead Theatre of wild programming, but the word itself is one they're very fond of - we've had Wildefire, Wild and now Wild Honey, Michael Frayn's version of Chekhov's unfinished Platonov. This revival was due to be directed by Howard Davies, who sadly died at the beginning of rehearsals, and his replacement should be well-versed in the play: Jonathan Kent directed a different version of Platonov as part of his Young Chekhov trilogy at the National only a few months ago. There's another connection to that day-long epic, as Geoffrey Streatfeild returns to the one play out of the three that he didn't appear in this summer. Frayn's play is a shorter, broader version of the story of Platonov (Streatfeild,) a provincial schoolteacher who's spent the winter in virtual hibernation with his wife Sasha (Rebecca Humphries) and their baby son.

Theatre review: Young Chekhov - The Seagull

Last year's big one-day, three-play marathon, The Wars of the Roses, followed Shakespeare's rarely-performed Henry VI plays with the much-loved and frequently revived Richard III. So too this year when it's Anton Chekhov's turn, and after the very obscure Platonov and fairly rare Ivanov, Young Chekhov at the National takes us up to his first big hit, and my personal favourite, The Seagull, in the same theatre where I first saw the play. Tom Pye's set for the whole trilogy has, as far as possible, avoided the usual stuffy drawing rooms and, taking it's cue from Chekhov's love of a disappearing natural world, been dominated by dead trees and shallow waters. This water has colonised even more of the stage for the finale, with all of the upstage area now a lake, through which characters sometimes wade to make a dramatic entrance.

Theatre review: Young Chekhov - Ivanov

This may be Young Chekhov but it's already time for a midlife crisis play in the middle section of Jonathan Kent's productions of David Hare's translations. Ivanov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) is 35 and depressed, feeling trapped in his home with consumptive wife Anna Petrovna (a completely different Anna Petrovna but again played by Nina Sosanya, showing range as she goes from educated woman to completely dependent on her husband's attention,) and his bombastic uncle Count Shabyelski (Peter Egan, from the 1980s.) As with the characters in Platonov, property doesn't always come with the money to maintain it, and Ivanov is hugely in debt to the two women who between them control the town's finances. Ivanov begins an affair with Sasha (Olivia Vinall,) daughter of his main creditor.

Stage-to-screen review: Richard III (BBC Hollow Crown)

What do BBC budget cuts look like? Geoffrey Streatfeild with some muesli on his face to show that Edward IV is poorly, that's what they look like.

It's been tempting throughout this second series of The Hollow Crown to see adaptors Ben Power and Dominic Cooke as using the re-cut Henry VI Part 1 and especially Part 2 as warm-up for the main event of The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, whether because of  Brobdingnag Arafat being cast in the title role or simply because it's always been the most popular play in the tetralogy. And while there's been some strong moments along the way to belie the fact that these are Cooke's first foray into directing for the screen, there's no denying that he's saved the flourish for the finale. With the exception of the climactic Battle of Bosworth Field, there's not so many wide open spaces as before, instead the "bottled spider" gets to work in claustrophobic rooms with a lot of blue filters (so blue at one point it looks like Barry Chuckle is wearing electric blue nail polish.)

Theatre review: The Beaux' Stratagem

I can't remember when I last saw a Restoration comedy at the National, but it feels like it's been quite some time. Simon Godwin makes up for this with George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, which takes up residence in the Olivier with an impressive cast. Aimwell (Samuel Barnett) and Archer (Geoffrey Streatfeild) are a pair of noblemen whose love of the high life has left them close to penniless. Their stratagem is to travel the country, Aimwell posing as a wealthy lord and Archer as his footman, until they can find a pair of heiresses to marry. Aimwell finds one in Lichfield, but of course he falls for Dorinda (Pippa Bennett-Warner) for real. Archer also soon has eyes for her sister-in-law Mrs Sullen (Susannah Fielding) but she's still unhappily married to Dorinda's waster brother Sullen (Richard Henders.)

Theatre review: My Night With Reg

A classic gay play follows an adaptation of Russian literature in the Donmar Warehouse's consistently eclectic programming. First seen in 1994 and surprisingly rarely revived since, Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg was a breakthrough as a play with all-gay characters that became a West End hit and is, certainly among those I've seen, one of the best of the late-'80s and '90s plays dealing with the impact of AIDS (a disease that's never named here.) Elyot's tragicomedy is at heart the story of three friends who were close at university, but in the decade or so since graduating haven't been great at staying in touch: Guy (Jonathan Broadbent) is having a housewarming for the flat he's just moved into alone, and has invited John (Julian Ovenden,) after a chance meeting. He doesn't expect John to show up but he does, awkwardly reigniting the unrequited love Guy always had for him.

Theatre review: Children of the Sun

Howard Davies directing a Russian play has become a bit of an annual National Theatre tradition, often in a translation by Andrew Upton. This year they tackle Maxim Gorky, and his 1905 look at young intellectuals in a safe bubble that won't last forever, Children of the Sun. Protasov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) is head of a family that's owned much of their small town for decades - although their finances aren't quite what they used to be, perhaps in part due to Protasov's occupation: A scientist, he spends his days in a home laboratory doing chemical experiments that seem to require constant supplies. His sister Liza (Emma Lowndes,) who suffers from an unspecified illness, is regularly rejecting the advances of family friend and local vet Boris (Paul Higgins.) His wife Yelena (Justine Mitchell) is spending all her time with artist Vageen (Gerald Kyd.) And Protasov himself is the unwilling target of romantic advances from Boris' sister Melaniya (Lucy Black.)