Theatre review: Man and Boy

So far Indhu Rubasingham's approach to classics at the National has involved a quirky sensibility from her directors to keep things feeling fresh, but with a light enough touch not to frighten Aunt Edna. For the era's first Dorfman show we go to the ever-reliable Terence Rattigan, and a production that takes him out of the naturalistic confines that gave him an undeserved stuffy reputation for many years, but doesn't detract from the cleverness of his writing: The lesser-known Man and Boy takes place in 1930s New York, with the country in the throes of the Great Depression but a few wealthy financiers still having held on to their money. One of them is Gregor "GA" Antonescu (Ben Daniels,) a Romanian radio magnate whose luck might be about to run out: Rumour has it that a huge merger has fallen through, and his stock is plummeting.

Theatre review: Love, Love, Love

I imagine there's a hiatus coming up in my theatregoing and reviewing, thanks to a certain global situation targeting the Baby Boomers, but in the meantime here's Mike Bartlett's own dig at that generation. After the Brexit result came in I predicted Love, Love, Love would be a play that kept coming back over the years, and here it is as Rachel O'Riordan's second directing gig in her inaugural Lyric Hammersmith season. It follows Sandra (Rachael Stirling) and Kenneth (Nicholas Burns) from first meeting to happy ending - but every chapter in their story has collateral damage they've become uncannily adept at ignoring. The first of these is Kenneth's brother Henry (Patrick Knowles,) whom Sandra has just started dating at the beginning of the play; older by only four years he appears to be from an entirely different generation.

Theatre review: Either

Do the box office at Hampstead Theatre keep a nightly record of how people pronounce Either when collecting their tickets, and take bets on which pronunciation will win every night? And if not, WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT OF ANYTHING?

Two consecutive trips to Hampstead Theatre wasn't exactly planned but it's not always easy to space things out in my diary, especially when a season is announced at late as this one was. Still, it makes for an interesting way to judge a new Artistic Director's mission statement to make a kind of double bill of the launch shows in both the main and studio spaces, and Either certainly suggests Roxana Silbert won't want to be left behind when theatre starts experimenting with changing ways of looking at the world. Specifically, in this instance, the changing understanding of what gender is and how it affects people's interactions: Ruby Thomas' play is about a couple, but is explicitly genderless - a stage direction projected onto Bethany Wells' set at the start insists that the two characters can and should be played by any and all genders.

Theatre review: A Further Education

A shaky start could resolve itself in great things or a complete nosedive; true of many people's first year at university, and of Will Mortimer's debut play about a mature student, A Further Education. At an unnamed (more on this later) university, new tutor Chris (Oliver Hembrough) has three first year students in his tutorial group. Straight out of school are Lydia (Isabella Laughland) and Joshua (Makir Ahmed,) while Charlotte (Stella Gonet) is a local, much older but sharper than any of them when it comes to dissecting the classics. Her grades are high and her fellow-students quickly accept her in their social circle as well, and she even ends up becoming friendly with the strident but scatty new Vice-Chancellor Rachel (Issy van Randwyck.) There's more than just her age and the breadth of her knowledge that sets Charlotte apart from the rest of the students though, and Joshua and Lydia soon stumble upon a secret about her.

Theatre review: The Same Deep Water As Me

Fast becoming a big-name playwright on both sides of the Atlantic, Nick Payne can't really be accused of sticking to a formula. Following his biggest success with the multiverse-spanning Constellations last year, his latest comedy-drama The Same Deep Water As Me goes for a less lyrical, starker subject matter in the world of "no win, no fee" ambulance-chasing lawyers. But in John Crowley's premiere production at the Donmar it winds up being a rather flat affair. His escape to London having ended in ignominy, Andrew (Daniel Mays) has returned to his home town of Luton where he's joined Barry (Nigel Lindsay) in his injury-law firm. Despite the increasing popularity of this kind of lawsuit, their firm doesn't seem to be reaping the benefits, and they're desperately scrabbling for clients. So Andrew is vulnerable to getting sucked into a plan to defraud big corporations by staging repeated car accidents and suing for imaginary injuries, in the knowledge that deep-pocketed companies would rather settle than go to court.

Theatre review: Hard Feelings

Unexpected pitfalls of putting on a play: If, as the audience enters, a TV on the set is showing Airplane!, even on mute, the audience may just end up watching and enjoying it, and be a bit resentful of the actors when they turn up and expect us to watch them instead. Well, this audience member might. The film is playing on video, rather a luxury I imagine as the year is 1981 and we are in the Brixton house owned by Isabella Laughland's Viv - or by her parents at any rate, living in America and letting their daughter live there to look after their investment. Viv shares the place with a few of her fellow Oxford graduates, although which of them exactly is meant to be a rent-paying resident at any given time is a bit vague, and subject to frequent change at her whim, or should she choose to take offense at something they say.

Theatre review: The Last of the Haussmans

Old hippie Judy Haussman (Julie Walters) has just had a cancer scare, and Social Services have warned they're not happy with the state her house is in. Her children return to the cluttered Devon home they grew up in, but highly-strung daughter Libby (Helen McCrory) is convinced Judy has an ulterior motive: To get them to tidy up the house so she can sell it and deny them their inheritance. With its look at how a generation who said they were trying to save the world actually left it in a worse state for their children, Stephen Beresford's play The Last of the Haussmans shares some similarities with Love, Love, Love, whose final act also saw a family reunite at a Devon house in the summer. Fortunately this establishes its own identity, and ultimately a very different core of characters with their own dynamic.