Theatre review: 1536

Anne Boleyn looms large over Ava Pickett's 1536, although she never actually makes an appearance*: Instead we're in a field in Essex with three regular young women, who we catch up with over the course of a few weeks as gossip reaches them of the queen's arrest for treason, increasingly lurid accusations of sexual impropriety, and eventually her execution. In the process we see them deal with the slow, horrifying realisation of just how precarious their lives are as women in Tudor England. Central to the story is Anna (Siena Kelly,) whose outlook on her own body and sexuality is very modern - she enjoys her power over men as much if not more so than the actual sex, doesn't particularly care if she's got a reputation in the village, and is currently hooking up with Richard (Adam Hugill,) even when she discovers he's about to enter into an arranged marriage with her best friend Jane (Liv Hill.)

Theatre review: Sea Creatures

One of the more baffling and dreamlike plays I've seen in a while, Cordelia Lynn's Sea Creatures seems to have a solid enough setting: A holiday home on an unnamed part of the British coast, where a noted academic brings her family every summer. Shirley (Geraldine Alexander) was the youngest woman ever to be awarded a professorship at her university, but she hasn't published anything for a decade and has become vague and distracted - she's sometimes described as not being able to tell the difference between animate and inanimate objects. Her partner Sarah (Thusitha Jayasundera) is an artist; no matter what the subject of her art is meant to be, she always ends up with a painting of a lobster. Shirley's eldest daughter George (Pearl Chanda) is heavily pregnant but not happy about it, and responds angrily to anyone who points it out, while youngest daughter Toni (Grace Saif) is a childlike 22-year-old.

Theatre review: Romeo and Julie

It's 2023 but shows that I originally had tickets to see in 2020 are still making their belated returns. Callum Scott Howells had already been slated to appear in Gary Owen's Romeo and Julie then, but in the intervening time his appearance in It's A Sin and subsequent status as The Gay Internet's Official Fantasy Boyfriend of 2021 means he brings some added star power now the show finally premieres. It was worth the wait to get the show on with Howells in place: He plays Romeo (pronounced Romeo, but usually referred to as Romy,) an 18-year-old single dad who can't even rely on his alcoholic mum Barb (Catrin Aaron) for help babysitting his daughter. Like Owen's previous plays this takes place in the impoverished Cardiff suburb of Splott, but presumably on its edges: Julie (Rosie Sheehy) only lives a couple of streets away, but has led a much easier life so far.

Theatre review: Patriots

I wonder what first attracted noted Arsenal fan Rupert Goold to a play that sticks it to Roman Abramovich? Or perhaps, after The 47th, he wanted to keep to a theme of uncannily accurate portrayals of recent or current world despots - this time Will Keen's disturbingly accurate Vladimir Putin. Both Abramovich and Putin are major characters in the director's latest project at the Almeida, but the central figure in Peter Morgan's Patriots is the man who first brought the two together, arguably the OG Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky (Tom Hollander.) A child prodigy with ambitions of winning the Nobel Prize for Mathematics*, in the late 1980s he took an abrupt turn, spotting the pitfalls and possibilities of Perestroika and turning his maths skills to economics. Soon he's one of the richest men in Russia, and with his wealth comes power.

Theatre review: Venice Preserved

I've seen Venice Preserved once before, but as that particular production was an incoherent car crash that was 50% sales presentation for a property development and 50% people desperately shouting "immersive!" at you while asking for money for four hours, it's probably easiest all round to just treat Thomas Otway's Restoration thriller as completely new to me. Prasanna Puwanarajah directs a mercifully coherent production, although how much sense the plot itself makes remains up for debate. Jaffeir (Michael Grady-Hall) is recruited by his best friend Pierre (Stephen Fewell) to join a bloody rebellion against the corrupt ruling class of Venice; both swear loyalty to the cause, but each also has a personal vendetta against some member of the senate which is the real clincher in wanting to bring them down. In Jaffeir's case, it's his senator father-in-law Priuli (Les Dennis,) who disapproved of the marriage and went out of his way to punish him for it.

Theatre review: Moth

Only a couple of years on from getting a new building the Bush has already started experimenting with a second auditorium. They've staged a couple of shows there before but the first one I've had the chance to get to is Declan Greene's Moth, a transfer from the HighTide Festival. The Attic turns out to be a tiny space, low-ceilinged, as hot as the Finborough used to be pre air-con and, in this in-the-round arrangement, seating what can't have been much more than 40 people. At least this intimate, claustrophobic setup is apt for the play, which takes us into the world of a very disturbed teenager. Sebastian (Jordan Mifsúd) is a grubby, bullied schoolboy with only one friend - emo girl Claryssa (Stacey Gregg.) When even her friendship seems in question, Sebastian looks to a higher power and a more apocalyptic narrative for his life.