Theatre review: Medea (Almeida Theatre)

Rupert Goold concludes his hit Greek season at the Almeida by directing by far the most frequently produced of the three tragedies (the end of this run will clash with the Gate's take on it,) Euripides' Medea. For me this production has a similar effect to Simon Russell Beale graduating from Edgar to King Lear last year: The first professional role I ever saw Kate Fleetwood in was as part of the chorus to Fiona Shaw's Medea, and now it's her turn at the titular role, in one of her comparatively rare collaborations with her husband. As with Robert Icke's take on the Oresteia, Rachel Cusk's adaptation of the story of the woman who takes brutal revenge when her husband leaves her is a pretty broad re-write of the original; and while Goold's production and his cast's performances are excellent, I'm a bit less sure about how well the story changes work.

Theatre review: Crow

Crow at Greenwich Borough Hall has no connection to the ill-fated 1994 dark superhero movie. A shame, as the cast getting shot mid-scene could only have constituted an improvement. Instead we get an adaptation of Ted Hughes' sinister trickster Crow poems, although in fact very little of Hughes' actual poetry makes it into the show, usually spoken into microphones, over action that at best tangentially relates to the words. The big draw has been the involvement of puppet company Handspring, although despite the publicity heavily quoting the positive reviews for War Horse, this is actually Handspring UK, a new spin-off company from the one that created Joey et al. And in any event, it turns out that however cleverly designed they are, small black puppets up against a black background, dimly lit, are not the feast for the eyes you might imagine.