Theatre review: A Doll's House

Anya Reiss' adaptation of A Doll's House is a faithful one in that it follows the story beats and motivations of Ibsen's original, but also a modern one in that it identifies an archetype we can all recognise and agree is the villain of the piece: Finance bros. At the beginning of Joe Hill-Gibbins' production Nora (Romola Garai) has prepared for Christmas by maxing out her husband's credit card on decorations and gifts for their family, to make up for a pretty miserable time the previous year. She's not worried about paying off the debt: Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is selling his investment company and they'll be millionaires by January. Her excitement seems indistinguishable from anxiety though, as their successful year has come after Torvald's addiction issues almost brought their family down, and only very expensive rehab got him out of it.

Theatre review: Lyonesse

Elaine Dailey (Kristin Scott Thomas) was a rising star of TV and film who'd just made a celebrated stage debut when she vanished the day after Press Night, disappearing for decades and becoming almost a figure of legend, with rumours abounding over whether she was alive or dead. Now a figure from her past has died, and she's ready to resurface and tell her story - and she hopes she can be centre stage again when it gets told. In Penelope Skinner's Lyonesse Lily James plays a Mrs Trellis of North London, an executive at a female-led film production company who are looking for a #MeToo project to develop. Her boss Sue (Niky Wardley, who's replaced Doon Mackichan at short notice after she had to leave the show for personal reasons,) has heard that Elaine's story might fit the bill, and sends Kate Trellis to her crumbling Cornish home to secure the rights.

Theatre review: Jack Absolute Flies Again

For many of us One Man, Two Guvnors is now remembered as the show that stopped us from ever trusting a theatrical ad-lib again, but there's no denying what a huge international hit Richard Bean's rewrite of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters was. So it's not surprising if the National Theatre have tried to recreate the alchemy as Bean, now with one of the original Masters, Oliver Chris, on board as co-writer, takes another 18th century comedy and transposes it to more recent history. This time the source material is perhaps the most enduring Restoration Comedy, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals, and while it remains to be seen if its financial success can match its predecessor, Jack Absolute Flies Again is certainly a hit in terms of providing laughs when they're most needed. From a flippant world of fops and wigs the scene moves to men and women in a higher-stakes setting, during the aerial Battle of Britain in 1940.

Theatre review: White Noise

In recent years when British theatre has dealt with race and the history of slavery, it's largely been about acknowledging that Britain even had any part in or benefited from the slave trade. America's legacy is even more entrenched in slavery and racism, but (apart from the more extreme fringe) it's widely accepted that it's a great burden of debt and shame that the nation still carries. So American plays exploring where its history puts the nation today have gone for a different trend, which often uses extreme situations and shock value to blow up the polite multicultural surface and show racial conflict as written into Americans' DNA. Suzan-Lori Parks' White Noise definitely falls into that category, presenting us with a happy quartet we can tell from the first moments are probably going to end up tearing each other to pieces. Friends since university, the two men and two women have in the past paired up in various combinations, but have ended up in two long-term, interracial couples.

Re-review: King Lear (Duke of York's)

King Lear is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays and I must have seen at least a dozen productions by now, so I don't say it lightly that Jonathan Munby's Chichester production from last year was the best I've seen yet - in fact I chose it as my overall favourite show of 2017. With Ian McKellen in the titular role it was always going to make commercial sense to transfer it to London, and I wasn't going to miss the chance to see it again even if I knew the changes that come with a transfer meant it couldn't quite match up to the original experience. For one thing, the Duke of York's might be a small theatre by West End standards but it's a world away from the intimacy of the Minerva, where even sitting near the back of the theatre only actually translated to the fifth row or thereabouts, and the cast made lots of entrances and exits by an aisle right next to me.

Theatre review: Coriolanus (RSC / RST & Barbican)

Season director Angus Jackson returns for the fourth and last of the RSC's Roman plays, and although Coriolanus is set earlier than the other three, designer Robert Innes Hopkins eschews the togas of the middle two plays, to match the modern dress of Titus Andronicus. In fact this also starts with a rioting gang in hoodies, and since it will actually play first when they all transfer to London, it annoyed me a bit that it'll look there like Blanche McIntyre copied the idea. Fortunately there was less to annoy me about the rest of the production, in which Sope Dirisu takes on the least likeable of Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Caius Martius, later given the title Coriolanus after one of his many military victories, is a one-man Roman army, raised as such by his batshit bloodthirsty mother Volumnia (Haydn Gwynne.)

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (RSC / RST & Barbican)

It's ironic that Gregory Doran, to me the epitome of reverential, by-the-numbers Shakespeare, should have delivered my favourite-ever Julius Caesar a few years ago in a comparatively exciting and revelatory production; because Doran having temporarily handed over the reins to Angus Jackson for the Roman season at the RSC, it's Jackson who now serves up perhaps the most vanilla version of the same play I've seen so far. Have no doubt you can expect togas, swords and sandals from Robert Innes Hopkins' design as Julius Caesar (Andrew Woodall) returns to Rome triumphant after a military victory. His popularity sees the people clamour to give him political power at home, but not everyone's impressed: Cassius (Martin Hutson) has never been a favourite of Caesar's and doesn't want to wait and see how he'll fare under the new regime.

Theatre review: The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC / Swan)

I saw my first Shakespeare production aged 15, an RSC production of Macbeth which, like the company's entire ensemble seasons in those days, came to the Barbican. The Macbeths I've seen since must go into double figures but not every play is as frequently revived, and thanks to my largely eschewing theatre in the late nineties and early noughties, completing the set ended up taking 27 years but I've finally seen every canonical Shakespeare play^ on stage. Nowadays you have to go to Stratford-upon-Avon to catch the less popular titles but it's good that I was back at the RSC to tick off the last show on the list, and also appropriate that it should be what's generally accepted to be Shakespeare's final extant play, and to this day the most obscure, the Fletcher collaboration The Two Noble Kinsmen. Set in the same time and place as A Midsummer Night's Dream, it seems Shakespeare thought all Theseus (Gyuri Sarossy) and Hippolyta (Allison McKenzie) ever did was fight wars and watch shows, because once again they spend the start of the show doing the former, and the rest of it doing the latter.

Theatre review: Othello (RSC / RST)

Iqbal Khan's production of Othello opens with a coup de théâtre courtesy of Ciaran Bagnall's set: The initial setting is Venice, and as Iago (Lucian Msamati) and Roderigo (James Corrigan) plot to reveal the secret of Othello's recent marriage, water bubbles up through grills in the floor, flooding part of the stage and creating the canal their boat floats in. It's an understated and effective start to a production that stays strong on visuals and atmosphere throughout. Hugh Quarshie plays Othello, the black general whose military skill makes him the go-to man when the Duke of Venice (Nadia Albina) needs someone to deal with a conflict in Cyprus. He takes with him his young lieutenant Cassio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd,) newly promoted over Iago, who hasn't forgiven his general for overlooking him. He plots revenge on both men, and Othello's new wife is the tool he plans to use against them: If he can convince Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio, his jealousy might destroy them all.