Theatre review: Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Netflix branch out from streaming to producing live theatre, but this new play is a spin-off from their tentpole Stranger Things, so there isn't too much fear that it'll get cancelled during the interval for not getting enough Instagram traction. The TV series is a 1980s nostalgia-tinged sci-fi/fantasy story about teenagers getting caught up in deadly adventures when their small town's reality starts bleeding into an alternate dimension known as The Upside Down. The First Shadow is a prequel that does the same for some of the central adult characters, taking them back to their high school days in the 1950s and making them face the first signs of a supernatural incursion into Hawkins, Indiana. In particular, the play serves as the backstory of the series' Big Bad, Henry Creel. But first there's a pre-credits sequence because yeah, when the credits are as iconic as Stranger Things' they're going to roll on stage as well.

Theatre review:When Winston Went to War With the Wireless

There's a tendency for previously obscure ideas or stories to get multiple interpretations all at once. Sometimes the coincidence just seems random, at others there's an obvious logic to it: You can see why events of recent years might inspire multiple writers to look back at a historical event when a Conservative government attempted to control the output of the BBC. Six months ago I'd never heard of the feud between Winston Churchill and the BBC's first Director General, John Reith. Then earlier this year I listened to a radio drama about the subject, and within weeks it had been announced that Jack Thorne would be premiering his own take on the subject at the Donald and Margot Warehouse. Having been left with altogether too many W tiles, Thorne presents When Winston Went to War With the Wireless.

Theatre review: The Motive and the Cue

The National Theatre has lured a couple of the most commercially successful British playwrights amd screenwriters to the South Bank to premiere new shows this season, starting with Jack Thorne in the Lyttelton, with stage and screen director Sam Mendes at the helm of a play about screen stars, and what draws them to the stage. The Motive and the Cue is inspired by the real story of Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn,) who in the middle of the honeymoon for (one of) his marriages to Elizabeth Taylor (Tuppence Middleton) went to Broadway to rehearse for Hamlet. John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) had already become a legendary Shakespearean actor by his mid-20s, but by 1964 and at the age of 60 his glory days seem to be far behind him.

Theatre review: The Solid Life of Sugar Water

Jack Thorne wrote The Solid Life of Sugar Water for Graeae, the company giving opportunities to D/deaf and disabled artists, and has stipulated that this should be respected in any revivals - the character of Alice is explicitly stated to be Deaf, and is required to be played by an actor with a hearing impairment, like Katie Erich in the Orange Tree's production. It's not specified what disability her husband Phil has, if any at all, but Adam Fenton has Tourette's. I'm not sure if the production integrating creative captioning to make it as inclusive for the audience as it is for the company is also a contractual requirement for staging it, but both productions I've seen have done so. So it's a play that foregrounds inclusivity, but the truth is it uses this as something of a red herring: Alice's deafness is occasionally referenced to dramatic effect, but the central tragedy the couple face is a - hopefully rare - potentially universal one.

Theatre review: After Life

The Dorfman reopens with a Headlong co-production in which all the characters are dead. Arguably a questionable subject after the reason theatres were closed for so long in the first place, if it weren't for how charming and gently moving After Life proves to be. Designer Bunny Christie, director Jeremy Herrin and writer Jack Thorne are credited with co-creating the concept for a stage adaptation of a cult Japanese film from 1998, set entirely in a limbo that feels somewhere between a small office and a mid-range hotel (there is, unequivocally, no steam room.) Every Monday the Guides, led by Kevin McMonagle's phlegmatic line manager Five, meet a new group of the recently-deceased, or Guided. In private meetings they discuss happy, significant or otherwise precious memories from the life that just ended, and by the end of Wednesday the Guided need to have made an enormous, perhaps impossible decision.

Theatre review: The End of History...

Ten years ago Jack Thorne set an entire play in the wee small hours of the 2nd May 1997, and with his latest play's opening scene taking place about six months after that date it's clear he's not yet done interrogating what the hope and optimism of Tony Blair's first victory actually ever amounted to. Blair is much more of a background noise than a central theme in The End of History..., a family drama spanning twenty years that often has the feel of a sitcom that's gone unusually dark. Sal (Future Dame Lesley Sharp) and David (David Morrissey) are a kind of embarrassing sitcom mum and dad (right down to the clichéd trope of the mum who's a terrible cook,) with the main source of embarrassment being their commitment to their left-wing beliefs and causes, their enthusiasm for which has never dulled.

Theatre review: Woyzeck

When the Old Vic announced that Jack Thorne would be writing an adaptation of Woyzeck and John Boyega would star I did wonder if the combination of a Harry Potter writer and a Star Wars actor would draw an audience unprepared for a play people have famously struggled to get to the bottom of for over a century. As it turns out I really hope there aren't too many kids being taken along as they'll have come away from the evening with a whole new vocabulary. Georg Büchner's play was unfinished when the playwright died in 1837, so all versions have always taken a bit of leeway in filling in the gaps. Thorne's version moves the action to 1980s West Berlin, where Boyega plays Frank Woyzeck, part of the British army presence patrolling the Berlin Wall. It's a job both stressful and dull, and those stationed there are thought of as inferior to those in the thick of it in Northern Ireland.

Theatre review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part Two

Tonight it's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part Two, and as with Part One of J.K Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany's story I'm going to to do a review with some degree of spoilers, a little bit spoilery for plot, a bit more so for characters and staging, as a record of my reaction for myself if nothing else. So read on if you've seen the plays already or are involved in the production and already know everything; or, I guess, if you're absolutely sure you have no intention of ever seeing it either at the Palace or when it eventually opens on Broadway and, probably, territories all around the world. If you have tickets, are planning on going to see it or there's any chance you might some day, #KeepTheSecrets and stop reading after this paragraph.

Theatre review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part One

Shows are always plugging themselves as "the theatrical event of the year"- most recently Sunset Boulevard attempted the line, rather foolishly as if there's ever been a year when that title has had no contest, this is it: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two were a phenomenon as soon as tickets went on sale, and now the show's actually opened the response has actually lived up to expectations. Playwright Jack Thorne is the first writer J.K. Rowling has entrusted to script an entirely new, canonical Harry Potter story, although she and director John Tiffany collaborated with Thorne on putting the story together. I chose to see this over consecutive nights so will review the parts separately too, although reviewing a show where it's important to #KeepTheSecrets is a tricky business. Ultimately this blog is a record for myself as well as reviews for others, so I will be giving it a go - so here's a little spoiler disclaimer:

After the text cut, expect some spoilers - I'll be mentioning some characters and their actors, and the general starting point of the plot, but I won't give away all the twists. Still, if you have any intention of seeing this show, I'd say - spoilering this review itself - I loved it, now don't read below the cut. Even if you won't be seeing it until 2017 or even until it makes it to Broadway, come back and read what I thought then - I can wait.

Theatre review: The Solid Life of Sugar Water

Jack Thorne's enigmatically-titled The Solid Life of Sugar Water is likely to be the last thing I see at the National Theatre's Keith before it gets pulled down, and if so is a strong farewell to The Artist Formerly Known As Shed: Phil (Arthur Hughes) and Alice (Genevieve Barr) are a young married couple describing, in great detail, a rather awkward night of sex. The reason for their discomfort around each other is that this is the first time for them since their first child was stillborn. They're both worried about each other - Phil has noticed it's been a while since his wife last showered, while Alice isn't mentioning the fact that her husband hasn't been eating properly for weeks - but they're not sure how to speak to each other since their child's death. Looking back on both the highlights of their relationship so far, and their recent trauma, if they can get their sex life back on track everything else might follow.

Theatre review: Hope

The Royal Court's Christmas shows tend not to be like other theatres' Christmas shows, and while for the second year running the creative team is writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany, this year's offering makes vampires seem positively festive in comparison. Hope follows the year 2014 in the life of the Labour council of an unnamed, working class town (everyone in the cast keeps their own accent, so it could be pretty much anywhere.) The actual business of running the town doesn't get a look-in though, as the Government's austerity measures have seen their budget slashed by £22 million a year, and everyone's primary concern is to determine which essential services have to be cut. Thorne's play identifies Government policy as a cynically genius plan: Slash budgets from the top but leave the details, and all the resulting ill-feeling, to the local, opposition councils.

Theatre review: Let The Right One In

A teenage vampire love storyNO WAIT, COME BACK! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK! Having read John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel and seen the first of the two film adaptations, Let The Right One In feels very familiar to me but it seems not everyone has even heard of it, so may need reassuring that absolutely nothing sparkles. Except maybe some blood in the snow. Instead this is a bleakly Scandinavian but strangely romantic coming-of-age story that takes in vicious bullying, blurred gender identity and an undercurrent of paedophilia. Basically standard Christmas fare for the Royal Court, where Jack Thorne's adaptation comes following its premiere earlier this year for the National Theatre of Scotland. And though the original 1980s Swedish setting remains (with an authenticity that goes all the way to chocolate bars called Plopp) the accents are all Scottish in John Tiffany's atmospheric production.

Theatre review: Mydidae

DryWrite is a company that commissions playwrights to produce work on very specific briefs, and there's nothing dry about their challenge to Jack Thorne, to set a play entirely in a bathroom. Named after a kind of short-lived fly, Mydidae takes place over a day in the life of a couple, Marian (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and David (Keir Charles.) It starts as a fairly light piece that looks at how comfortable the pair are together, their morning peeing, flossing and shaving all done in front of each other, sharing a lot of in-jokes that suggest a couple who've got to know each other really well. But a darker underside becomes apparent - the day ahead is one they're both dreading, and it's not just because of the important business pitch David has to make: This is also the anniversary of an event which Thorne makes the audience aware of with a nice degree of subtlety.

Theatre review: The Physicists

Three shows in and it's harder than ever to see what identity Josie Rourke is trying to give the Donmar Warehouse under her Artistic Directorship: She takes the director's reins again for Jack Thorne's new translation of The Physicists, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1962 satire of Cold War fears. In the old wing of an insane asylum, only three patients remain. Two think they're famous physicists, Albert Einstein (Paul Bhattacharjee) and Sir Isaac Newton (Justin Salinger.) The third, Möbius (John Heffernan) is a physicist, who believes King Solomon appears to him daily to impart wisdom. As the play opens, Einstein and Newton have each murdered one of the nurses; and Möbius' relationship with his own nurse (Miranda Raison) seems to be following an uncomfortably similar pattern. I've seen people name-check Doctor Strangelove with regard to the play, and there's certainly a sense of the gently, but threateningly surreal to the affair.