Theatre review: Operation Epsilon

I've talked before about how similar, highly specific ideas seem to crop up on different stages around the same time, but this is a whole new level of specificity: Alan Brody's Operation Epsilon is the true story of the German nuclear scientists who were captured by Allied forces near the end of the Second World War, and held at an English country pile so that the British and Americans could ascertain just how close the Nazis had come to developing nuclear weapons. And yes, this is based directly on the men's actual conversations, recorded by the military in secret. If I sound like I'm repeating myself it's because that was also the premise of Katherine Moar's Farm Hall, which I was a big fan of when it premiered about six months ago. I guess you can blame Oppenheimer for everyone deciding the other side of the story would hook audiences.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I can't easily tell from the Globe website when the press night is due, but as I had a member of the creative team sitting next to me making notes I'm guessing we're still in the preview period for this one.

I'm going to get a big grumble out of the way first this time, because I have a lot of good things to say about Blanche McIntyre's production of Measure for Measure, and don't want them to be overshadowed by something that's a regular irritation. But you know, if it's a regular irritation at one particular theatre that's because they just keep doing it, namely underselling how long a show is. I know I often say I like short shows, so can understand why saying a show isn't that long is good marketing, but if it's not true the advertised running time is useless at best, a lie at worst. I use the info to figure out when and how is the best way to get home, especially when, like tonight, a Tube strike makes that more complicated. So as seems to happen every time I go to the Globe now, I spent the last half-hour wondering if the play would overrun by 15 minutes (can still catch my train) or 20 (1 hour 15 minute gap until the next one for some reason, not getting home until after midnight) instead of paying attention to the show*.

Theatre review: Ravens: Spassky vs. Fisher

You might think that a game of chess would be hard to make a compelling stage story out of, but as Chess has been proving for the last thirty years… you’d be right. But this hasn’t dissuaded playwrighting bear Tom Morton-Smith from giving his own take on the way a board game ended up encapsulating the entire Cold War; instead of fictionalised versions and illicit affairs he goes back to the real people who, like it or not, found themselves representing the entirety of the USSR and USA in Ravens: Spassky vs. Fischer. While the Arms Race and Space Race provided the most direct dick-measuring contest between the two nations, each also attempted to dominate in fields that more obliquely showed off their strengths and values: Movies for America, while Russia had ballet, circus and chess. Boris Spassky (Ronan Raftery) is the latest in a long line of Soviet chess champions, and the first to be in serious danger of losing the title to an American, as former child prodigy Bobby Fischer (Robert Emms) has been climbing up the ranks and is now challenging him at the 1972 World Championship in Reykjavik.

Theatre review: The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers

Best-remembered today as England's first female professional writer (although it turns out in the 19th Century her name was a euphemism for a reet dorty hoor, society having decided that "female professional writer" wasn't actually something they were ready for yet, thanks,) Aphra Behn's most famous play is The Rover, or, The Banish'd Cavaliers. The subtitle sets the action a couple of decades before the play's writing, during the exile of the prince who would eventually be Restored as Charles II. His followers, equally unwelcome in England during Cromwell's rule, had a mixed reputation, seen by some as accomplished soldiers, by others as thrill-seekers lacking morals. Behn gives us just such a mixed picture - veering towards the latter - in her quartet of Cavaliers who end up in an unnamed Spanish town during Carnival season, and intend to make the most of its spirit.

Theatre review: The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC / Swan)

I saw my first Shakespeare production aged 15, an RSC production of Macbeth which, like the company's entire ensemble seasons in those days, came to the Barbican. The Macbeths I've seen since must go into double figures but not every play is as frequently revived, and thanks to my largely eschewing theatre in the late nineties and early noughties, completing the set ended up taking 27 years but I've finally seen every canonical Shakespeare play^ on stage. Nowadays you have to go to Stratford-upon-Avon to catch the less popular titles but it's good that I was back at the RSC to tick off the last show on the list, and also appropriate that it should be what's generally accepted to be Shakespeare's final extant play, and to this day the most obscure, the Fletcher collaboration The Two Noble Kinsmen. Set in the same time and place as A Midsummer Night's Dream, it seems Shakespeare thought all Theseus (Gyuri Sarossy) and Hippolyta (Allison McKenzie) ever did was fight wars and watch shows, because once again they spend the start of the show doing the former, and the rest of it doing the latter.

Theatre review: Creditors

Strindberg's Creditors is about Adolph and Tekla, a husband and wife with some cracks in their relationship that are exploited by a malevolent stranger, Gustav. The immediately obvious high concept in the new production by Rikki Henry - winner of this year's Genesis Award - is to turn it into the story of a gay marriage. Adolph (Tom Rhys Harries) is an acclaimed young artist, married to Tekla (Jolyon Coy,) a novelist a few years older than him, who's been married and divorced before. They're spending some time on a hotel on an island when Tekla needs to go away for a few days on business. In his absence Adolph meets another guest, Gustav (Gyuri Sarossy,) who for reasons that will become apparent is determined to sabotage their marriage. By the time we meet them at the start of the play, he's managed to expose Adolph's biggest insecurities about his relationship.

Theatre review: The Hotel Plays

Three Tennessee Williams vignettes come together to form an interesting promenade show from Defibrillator, a theatre company that's taken over three bedrooms and a function room of the Langham Hotel in central London to create The Hotel Plays. Small audience groups are led up and down stairs by an usher, and the stories linked by appearances from porter Charlie (Linden Walcott-Burton) as we witness intimate scenes from fracturing lives. The Langham is a pretty swanky hotel, but for Defibrillator's purposes its rooms represent places that probably aren't quite as posh, and more likely to witness the kind of nefarious business we see in the short plays. Like the long-running affair in The Pink Bedroom, directed by Anthony Banks, where a Man (Gyuri Sarossy) arrives expecting another no-strings night with his mistress. But the Woman (Helen George) is starting to want something a bit more from the relationship - something like respect.

Theatre review: The Seagull

I've mentioned many times how much I like it when productions of Chekhov break away from the stereotypical naturalistic staging commonly associated with his work, and how glad I am this is happening more often lately. And now here's a production that not only does that, very successfully, but also looks beyond appearances to throw all sorts of preconceptions about the play out of the window. It's not surprising that the company to do it are Headlong, who've given The Seagull to adaptor John Donnelly and director Blanche McIntyre, and got something new back from them. At the lakeside house of famous actress Irina (Donnelly's text sticks informally to first names) her son Konstantin attempts to get the attention he craves from her by staging an experimental play, starring the local girl he's in love with. When this attempt fails, it sets both Konstantin and some of the people around him on a destructive path his mother remains blithely unaware of.