Theatre review: Here We Go

Caryl Churchill's certainly been very visible lately: Revivals of Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and A Number, a new play coming up at the Royal Court, and before that "a short play about death," the variously lyrical and frustrating Here We Go, directed by Dominic Cooke at the Lyttelton. Its three scenes appear to take place in reverse chronological order, beginning at a funeral where mourners including Joshua James, Amanda Lawrence, Alan Williams, Eleanor Matsuura and Madeline Appiah exchange stilted snippets of conversation about the deceased, platitudes about what a memorable character he was and how they can't quite believe he's gone. But we also get a glimpse into their own mortality as each of them turns to the audience to let us know when and how they will die (one will be run over the very next day.) For the next scene we go back a bit to meet the deceased himself (Patrick Godfrey,) moments after his death.

Theatre review: Bakkhai

The second full-scale show in the Almeida's Greek season goes for the opposite aesthetic to the first: Where Robert Icke's Oresteia not only brought Aeschylus into the 21st century cosmetically but also in a radical reworking of the text, James Macdonald brings back some of the original staging conventions of ancient Greece, specifically with regards to casting. All the named roles are played by the same three actors, while the chorus - who aren't quite as authentic in that they're played by real women - speak or sing their lines in unison. The former convention leads to a bit of gender-bending, which is appropriate enough when the play is Euripides' Bakkhai. Dionysus (Ben Whishaw,) best-known as the god of wine and revelry, is a fairly new addition to the pantheon of Olympus, in fact when we meet him much of his mortal mother's family are still alive, and it's they who will bear the brunt of the new god's wrath when they don't show him due respect.