Theatre review: Measure for Measure(RSC / RST, Barbican & tour)

The current RST season has so far been OK without coming close to blowing me away, and it now limps to an end with Measure for Measure. A Problem Play - so much so that it fits into the narrow original definition of the term that only encompassed three plays - it's admittedly not one I find it easy to like, unless approached with a kind of originality and flair that Gregory Doran's production doesn't have to offer. Vienna - in Stephen Brimson Lewis' design an early 20th century version, the Vienna of the waltzes - has always had prohibitively strict morality laws that have been hard to enforce (because, as the play acknowledges, it would entail expecting people not to behave like people.) The current Duke (Antony Byrne) has been particularly lax in enforcing the law, and the city has become a haven for extramarital sex, whether for fun or profit. The Duke regrets this but after all this time thinks it would be hard for him to enforce it again himself so, pretending to leave the city, he leaves his deputy Angelo (Sandy Grierson) in charge, while staying in Vienna in disguise to see what happens.

Theatre review: Tanika's Journey

Deafinitely Theatre were one of the companies contributing to this year's Globe to Globe festival, bringing their British Sign Language storytelling to Love's Labour's Lost. As one of Shakespeare's more verbally dexterous plays I found that silent treatment to have mixed results, but now in a new production at Southwark Playhouse' Vault they present a simpler story, devised by the company. A group of refugees is trudging through a frozen Russian forest. Exhausted, deaf Tamil refugee Tanika (Nadia Nadarajah) collapses in the snow, refusing her guide's (Graeme Brookes) attempts to give her food. As she appears to have given up, she flashes back to her earlier life in Sri Lanka with her family (Mouna Albakry, Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke) and English BSL teacher Edward (Matthew Gurney) who convinces her she needs to try and flee to London; as well as slipping into fantasies of her future life should she finally manage to complete her journey.