Theatre review: Fear in a Handful of Dust

In what is, I think, the last of the World War I dramas I'll be seeing this year, Sevan K. Greene's Fear in a Handful of Dust takes us right down to the intimate level of two men on the front line, but has a perspective on the War that takes in the outposts of the British Empire. During a severe bout of German bombing, some trench walls fall in trapping recent arrival Simon (Jack Morris,) a private from an English regiment but who grew up in the Raj, so considers India his real home. Buck (Henry Regan,) shot in the leg, manages to clamber into the hole with Simon, but with a German sniper watching the trench, they're both stuck there for at least the night, hoping someone from their side will think to look for them in the morning. It's 1916, so the war's been on for a couple of years, and Buck has been with his Irish regiment all that time; but although he's the more experienced soldier, Simon will also be able to teach him a thing or two.

Theatre review: Henry V (Old Red Lion)

My third Henry V of the year is at the Old Red Lion, where the same company of six actors from The Revenger's Tragedy are playing it in repertory. With the other two productions I've seen this year going by and large for the sympathetic portrayal of the king, Henry Filloux-Bennett's goes the other way, turning the play into an allegory for the second Iraq war - a leader who believes he's doing god's work, going into war on dubious evidence. This is far from a new approach - Adrian Lester was a Blairite Henry back in 2003. The explanation given for revisiting the conceit is that we now have a better knowledge of what went on behind the scenes. Still, a Labour-bashing production in 2012 does feel a bit like flogging a dead horse; at least Cameron and Clegg get a last-minute dig as the Epilogue's men who "made his England bleed."

Theatre review: The Revenger's Tragedy

It's a mini-revival for Thomas Middleton in London at the moment (even if the National have erased his name from the Timon publicity.) The Old Red Lion, a fairly under-the-radar pub theatre that's been raising its game recently, now attempts an ambitious rep season, doubling up a tiny cast across two Jacobethan classics - Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy makes up half of the programme (paired with the ubiquitous Henry V.) Vindice's wife and father are dead, and he blames the corrupt Duke and his family. Together with his brother Hippolito, he plots an elaborate revenge that sees him disguise himself as a henchman to the Duke's son Lussurioso. Meanwhile the royal family's own deadly machinations against each other mean they're doing much of the revenger's job for him.