Theatre review: KENREX

My online Show of the Year 2021 and even better live in 2022, nobody could accuse Cruise of lacking in ambition, but that's how its creator Jack Holden's follow-up makes it feel. Less obviously personal but with much more of an epic scope, KENREX takes Holden's monologue-with-songs format and applies it to a true crime documentary, one of those violent stories of isolated and twisted Americana. The isolated place in question is Skidmore, a Missouri town so small and remote it doesn't have a sheriff - if anyone makes a 911 call it'll take an hour for the police to turn up. This is something that local bully Ken Rex McElroy has taken advantage of throughout the 1970s, and his reign of terror has included violence, physical and sexual assault, arson, killing pets, theft of livestock, and general menace and intimidation of the town's population.

Theatre review: Sons of the Prophet

I had mixed feelings about booking for Sons of the Prophet: Stephen Karam's last play at Hampstead Theatre was That American Play Where An Extended Family Gets Together After A Long Time, Preferably At Thanksgiving But That’s Optional, but surely even the most determined American playwrights can't write that one too many times, and the premise and cast were appealing. And the play, which takes its title from the central family's distant and regularly overplayed relation to Kahlil Gibran, is certainly not clichéd in its premise: It centres on two gay brothers from a Lebanese-American Maronite Christian family, from a part of Pennsylvania where all the towns seem to be named after places in the Middle East. A few years after their mother's death, their father also dies in a car crash after a student prank goes wrong.

Theatre review: Cruise

2021 was a game of two halves in theatre, with an almost even split between the time when shows were all online, and when they started to reopen to live audiences. It was something I reflected in my end of year review, skipping my usual Top Ten shows and instead offering two #1 shows, one live, one in the quickly-evolving digital format. Jack Holden's Cruise straddled both media, appearing first in a filmed version before being chosen as one of the shows to reopen the West End, in a socially distanced Duchess Theatre. Chez Partially Obstructed View the show got my top spot in the online category - I loved it and would have been happy to see it again, but the original live run came right after I'd seen it digitally, which was a bit too soon to revisit it. Now, helped in part by an Olivier nomination for Best New Play, Bronagh Lagan's production gets another short run, this time playing the Apollo at full capacity.

Stage-to-screen review: Cruise

Actors writing monologues for themselves to show off both their writing and acting skills is nothing new, and no doubt many more of them will be on their way soon, written in lockdown. Jack Holden has got in ahead of the pack by using one of the streaming platforms, stream.theatre, for the premiere of his play Cruise, but this particular "stage-to-screen" presentation is actually more like "screen-to-stage," as before the filmed version had been seen online a live production at the Duchess was announced. I'd already booked to watch online before I knew there was the option of seeing it live, but having now watched it I can see why producers might think it was worth a punt as one of the shows to reopen the West End with: Not only is it in the top flight of actor-written monologues, but after the huge TV success of It's A Sin this taps into a similar vein; not just in the subject matter of London's 1980s gay society being ravaged by AIDS, but also in balancing grief for the lives lost with a celebration of the hedonism that was its flipside.

Stage-to-screen review: The Madness of George III

National Theatre At Home, which uses recordings made during the NT Live cinema screenings that have become very popular internationally in the last ten years, has been at the forefront of online theatre in lockdown, with whole shows being made available on YouTube for one week only. I only haven't mentioned them on this blog yet because, being predominantly shows from the NT itself, I'd already seen them live and reviewed them at the time*. In recent weeks the NT has expanded the project's horizons though, offering shows from other venues, and with it the opportunity to share in the fundraising drive. This week this means a trip to Nottingham Playhouse, and Adam Penford's production of The Madness of George III. Alan Bennett's enduring play looks at the institution of royalty in all its alienness and pomp, and the frail, sometimes banal humanity holding it up.

Stage-to-screen review: What the Butler Saw

A second virtual trip to Leicester, where the Curve Theatre has actually been ahead of the curve so to speak as one of the first venues to get its online alternative to live performances up and running. As with Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual the next show they've made available has a Leicester connection, as it was the birthplace of Joe Orton (I don't think he had much good to say about the place, but in fairness he was Joe Orton, he didn't have much good to say about anything.) What the Butler Saw was his final play, in which he delivers every beat of the perfect farce while breaking all the genre's unwritten rules. The setting is the Hampstead mental health clinic run by Dr Prentice (Rufus Hound) and his wife, and as the curtain rises the doctor is "interviewing" prospective secretary Geraldine (Dakota Blue Richards,) a process which involves making her strip for a medical examination with a view to sexually assaulting her.

Theatre review: Ink

The more I think about Ink, the more overtly it seems like a take on Doctor Faustus. James Graham’s latest play – his first of three premieres over the next five months – is an origin story for the The Sun, Britain’s bestselling and most politically influential newspaper. The paper had already been running for a few years when we join the story in 1969, as an unloved stablemate of the bestselling Daily Mirror, with tiny sales figures and considered a bit of a Fleet Street joke, a job there even less in-demand than one in a local paper. Having already bought the Sunday paper News of the World, Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) doesn’t want his printing presses to go unused the rest of the week, and buys The Sun with a plan to turn it into a rival for The Mirror, and eventually overtake it. He courts Larry Lamb (not that one) (Richard Coyle) to be the first editor, responsible for finding that elusive mass appeal.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Play for the Nation (RSC / Barbican & tour)

This year's official "Shakespeare play I'm going to end up seeing so often I'll be quoting it in my sleep" is clearly A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is packing in the productions over the next couple of months - I've got at least three planned between now and July, and I'm not even seeing all the versions London has to offer. First up is Erica Whyman's touring one for the RSC, subtitled A Play for the Nation for reasons that will become apparent. As a royal wedding approaches in ancient Athens, another potential marriage is in jeopardy: Hermia's (Mercy Ojelade) father won't approve of her marrying her beloved Lysander (Jack Holden) because he sees Demetrius (Chris Nayak) as a more suitable match. The two lovers escape to the forest, but Helena (Laura Riseborough,) in love with Demetrius, inexplicably thinks betraying them to him will help her own chances of getting him back.

Theatre review: Oppenheimer

Two years ago in the Swan, the RSC had a hit with a revival of A Life of Galileo, which gloried in the enduring enthusiasm of the scientist even as his discoveries edge his life towards tragedy. So it's not too surprising if they now revisit the theme, going straight for the subject of Brecht's metaphor: The development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Tom Morton-Smith's Oppenheimer sees the titular scientist, known to all as Oppie (Perennial Next Big Thing John Heffernan,) start as an enthusiastic, popular physics lecturer at Berkeley, whose students provide him with a ready-made pool of young scientists when a controversial new project comes calling. But long before America's involvement with the war in Europe, Oppie and his friends are concerned about the rise of fascism, and holding Communist Party fundraisers to help fight it.

Theatre review: The Shoemaker's Holiday

The latest former RSC regular making a return to Stratford-upon-Avon is David Troughton, in the title role of Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday. But while there's a starring role for him, this comedy with occasional lurches into darkness is quite an ensemble piece. It starts with a serous premise: The King is going to war with the French (possibly Henry V at Agincourt although the play never makes it explicit) and many men are being conscripted. Apprentice Shoemaker Ralph (Daniel Boyd) has recently got married, and doesn't want to leave his new wife Jane (Hedydd Dylan) alone. He begs to be excused, but Rowland Lacy (Josh O'Connor) refuses to make an exception, and packs Ralph off to war. Lacy, though, has his own love in London, Rose (Thomasin Rand,) daughter of the Lord Mayor (William Gaminara.) Because of the difference in class, neither of their families approves of the match, and think Lacy leading a charge to France will split them up.

Theatre review: Johnny Got His Gun

With a great deal of attention - deservedly - focused on the main house, Southwark Playhouse haven't allowed their studio space to get ignored, and have brought one of their big-name creatives, director David Mercatali, to The Little. Another commemoration of the First World War's centenary sees Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun adapted as a monologue by Bradley Rand Smith. Jack Holden plays Joe Bonham, an American soldier whose narration jumps back and forth, confusingly at first, between the day he left his small town to set off to war, and his current situation, incapacitated in some way in a hospital. As his thought processes start to clear a bit, we understand the full horror of his situation as he does: All four limbs have been amputated after an explosion that also deafened, blinded, and left him unable to speak; yet somehow, horribly, he's still alive.

Theatre review: Hemingway's Fiesta

There's a lot of transatlantic passion trying to fit onto the small Trafalgar 2 stage for Hemingway's Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises), Alex Helfrecht's new stage adaptation of the novel. Jake Barnes (Gideon Turner) is an American journalist in 1920s Paris, wounded in the First World War and now pretty spectacularly drunk most nights. He's shaken up by the reappearance of Brett (Josie Taylor,) the English woman he'd once loved and lost, and who's now got divorced and sought him out. But there are still obstacles, both physical and psychological, to their getting back together, and in her frustration Brett seduces his friend Robert (Jye Frasca.) When she follows Jake to Spain where he's reporting on a promising young bullfighter (Jack Holden,) Mediterranean passions sweep them up.