Theatre review: CARE

Alexander Zeldin's CARE takes place in a care home for the elderly, which Rosanna Vize's set design and James Farncombe's lighting bring to clinically realistic life, but with the odd flicker into something a bit eerier befitting a liminal space between life and death. Joan (Linda Bassett) arrives there after a fall damages her hip, believing that she'll be there for a few days at most until the physical injury recovers. But her daughter Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) is already looking into making this a more permanent solution, as the accident was in part due to Joan's failing mental health, and the family can no longer trust that she won't be a danger to herself. As she spends her first few weeks in the home, an increasingly confused Joan does find some moments of joy as the residents share their life stories and highlights.

Theatre review: The Other Place

The National's currently got a full programme of shows that are as critically acclaimed as they are, frankly, bleak, and after the Dorfman's A Tupperware of Ashes and the Olivier's Coriolanus I'm completing the hat trick at the Lyttelton with Alexander Zeldin's The Other Place. Loosely (very loosely, which is why it's got a different title, Simon,) inspired by Antigone, the story's look at burial rites as a way of showing respect or contempt becomes one of how they're about saying goodbye, and how grief can turn into something toxic and twisted. Adam killed himself at his rural family home a few years ago; his brother Chris (Tobias Menzies) now owns it, and has kept the ashes there where he now lives with his new wife Erica (Nina Sosanya) and her teenager Leni (Lee Braithwaite,) as well as Adam's youngest daughter Issy (Alison Oliver) who moved back in when she couldn't pay her rent.

Theatre review: Vanya

For the third play Simon Stephens has written specifically for Andrew Scott to perform, they've turned to Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, here retitled Vanya. If that suggests a laser focus on the title character it's actually quite the opposite: Stephens has turned it into something between a monologue and a one-man show, with Scott playing all the roles. I say monologue because there's more speeches being delivered straight to the audience than in the original, but the actor also has to interact with himself a lot: He plays Ivan (the character names have been mostly anglicised - he's only referred to by the eponymous nickname once,) who's been running his late sister Anna's farm most of his life; as well as his niece Sonia, and Michael, the alcoholic doctor she's unrequitedly in love with.

Theatre review: Ghost Stories

For his final season at the Lyric Hammersmith Sean Holmes returns to the biggest commercial hit of his time there - Ghost Stories went on to have a couple of West End runs, international productions and a film adaptation – reviving the production he co-directed with its writers Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. That means it’s the same production I saw when it premiered in 2010 so technically I could call this a re-review, but nine years is probably enough time to say I’m seeing it with fresh eyes. Having said that, I remembered a lot of detail, probably refreshed in my memory when I saw the film version. Which is fun, but the stage remains where this story works best: Simon Lipkin takes over the role originally played by Nyman himself, as parapsychologist Professor Goodman gives a lecture on ghosts, looking at paranormal tales from the earliest legends to the newest websites collecting “ghost” photos, and showing as he goes how they’re actually the mind’s eye seeing what it wants to see.

Theatre review: Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby

Welcome to this year's installment of "Nick never learns his lesson about Beckett." I have, in fact, had a Beckett rule in place for some time, that rule being "no Beckett, ever," but I still seem to keep finding excuses to break it, whether it be Juliet Stevenson or the prospect of unusually attractive tramps. Lisa Dwan's performance of Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby, three short plays dealing in some way or other with women reflecting on their lives, has been knocking around for a couple of years, starting at the Royal Court then spending some time in the West End before touring extensively. I'd avoided it, but what finally changed my mind was a story about the production causing audience members to have panic attacks: Like the prospect of getting splashed with stage blood, this is the sort of thing I find a perverse kind of selling point.

Theatre review: Desire Under the Elms

Eugene O'Neill transposes Greek tragedy (mostly Phaedra, with bits of Oedipus and Medea) to 19th century America in Desire Under the Elms, which Sean Holmes revives at the Lyric Hammersmith. Youngest son Eben (Morgan Watkins) has finally managed to get rid of his older half-brothers (Mikel Murfi and Fergus O'Donnell) as they go West to join the Gold Rush, and he hopes the family farm will now be all his when his father Ephraim dies. But when Ephraim (Finbar Lynch, thrilled I'm sure to be getting cast as a 76-year-old) disappears for a few weeks he returns with a new young bride, Abbie (Denise Gough,) and she now stands to inherit everything. But Eben and Abbie's fight over the land is complicated by their attraction to each other, and when Abbie gives birth to a son that only Ephraim believes is his, the scene is set for things to take a grisly turn.

Re-review: London Road

London Road topped my list of favourite theatre of 2011, and I was far from a lone voice: So popular was Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork's verbatim musical that the National Theatre has brought it back, moving it from the smallest auditorium to the largest as one of this year's Travelex £12 shows. Despite seeing it twice in the Cottesloe I couldn't resist one more visit in its new home, and this time brought my mum along for the ride. In 2006, in the run-up to Christmas, five prostitutes were murdered in Ipswich. Alecky Blythe, who creates her plays by editing together real-life audio interviews, went to Ipswich to speak to the residents as the events were unfolding, and then again in the subsequent couple of years to find out how they were coping with the fallout both from the killings themselves, and the media circus that came to town.

Theatre review: The Recruiting Officer

Captain Plume has been courting Silvia for some time, and Mr Worthy has been courting her cousin Melinda. But when both women come into unexpected fortunes, the men find themselves socially inferior to their prospective brides, and so no longer considered worthy of marrying them. Josie Rourke opens her first season at the Donmar Warehouse with George Farquhar's 18th Century comedy set in Shrewsbury, where Plume (Tobias Menzies) is on the hunt for more soldiers for the endless wars in Europe. Together with his recruiting officer Sergeant Kite (Mackenzie Crook) he's more than willing to use underhand tactics to get the local men to sign up.

Theatre review: The Changeling (Young Vic)

It's apparently double-barrelled name week at the theatre for me: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett on Monday, Harry Hadden-Paton last night and a triple dose tonight with Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and director Joe Hill-Gibbins - even the anti-heroine of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling is called Beatrice-Joanna. Contracted by her father (Howard Ward) to marry Alonzo (Duncan Wisbey,) Beatrice-Joanna (Jessica Raine) has her eye on Alsemero (Holdbrook-Smith) instead. Her solution is to charm detested servant De Flores (Daniel Cerqueira) into murdering Alonzo, but she hasn't counted on De Flores being obsessed with her, and demanding a reward she's not prepared to give willingly. Designer Ultz has created an industrial in-the-round set with seating on both levels of the Young Vic's Maria; I initially went in downstairs, but got the feeling parts of the set would block some of the action so went upstairs. From there, looking down on the action from behind netting, the feeling is of being at some kind of secret fight to the death.

The chaotic set is a reflection of Hill-Gibbins' production, which goes for a sense of surreal hysteria. Somewhat tenuously connected to the main plot is a subplot set in a lunatic asylum, where Lloyd-Hughes' Antonio pretends to be a patient so as to get to the asylum-keeper's wife (Charlotte Lucas.) If not so much the story, it's the tone of insanity about the subplot that ties in to the rest of the production, and James Farncombe's lighting is used to good effect in differentiating the play's various worlds.

Jacobethan tragedy can be so OTT as to be funny, and in marked contrast to the recent Southwark Playhouse production (frankly, far from the only way in which this production has the edge) the director has embraced its extremes. Jelly, punch and trifle feature both in the violence, and in the sex during the bed trick that gives the play its title. Although if the chocolate sauce was meant to signify what I thought it was, someone ought to see a doctor. The production's full of ideas, which is good, even if they don't always work - it takes quite a while for the story to take shape, and one very clever visual device is used a couple of scenes after it could have provided a helpful shorthand to what had happened offstage. It's a well-acted production though, and one whose energy and tongue-in-cheek approach to the subject matter makes it memorable.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley is booking until the 25th of February at the Young Vic's Maria (returns only according to the website, although tonight I could see about a dozen empty seats.)

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.