Theatre review: Twelfth Night or What You Will(Shakespeare's Globe)

Despite its wintery title the season Twelfth Night is most commonly associated with is Autumn, usually accompanied by some variation of the dreaded phrase "Shakespeare's melancholy farewell to comedy" in the blurb. Well there's certainly something autumnal about Robin Belfield's production at the Globe, but it's more pagan harvest festival than sad falling leaves. Under a gold wooden sun and featuring a wicker man, Jean Chan's design is all brashly colourful carnival outfits. It's a mood that's infected almost everyone in Illyria, including its Duke who's often seen opening the play lounging moodily on cushions. Instead Solomon Israel's Orsino is definitely up for the party, and is just a bit annoyed that the girl he fancies isn't joining in, or returning his interest - and all because she's still in mourning for all the men in her family dropping dead over the course of a couple of months, honestly some people, such drama queens.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Shakespeare's Globe)

Without the new writing or more obscure revivals that sometimes take us into the autumn at Shakespeare's Globe, it's already time for my last outdoor visit of this summer season (there is one more show scheduled, but it's in the Swanamaker,) and it's the regular onstage appearance of the Artistic Director, as Michelle Terry takes on Viola in Twelfth Night. Shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria - here a scrapyard full of car parts, old neon signs, a jukebox and other clutter of 1950s Americana in Jean Chan's design - Viola makes a beeline for the local Duke, Orsino (Bryan Dick.) Disguised as a boy called Cesario, she falls for him immediately, but he's smitten with the unattainable, grieving Countess Olivia (Shona Babayemi.) When "Cesario" is sent as an envoy of Orsino's love to Olivia, the circle of unrequited love is completed when she's instantly attracted to "him."

Re-review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

I have fond memories of, and emotional connections to, a lot of venues, but in the last year of theatres facing an existential crisis it was the thought of never being able to go to Shakespeare's Globe again that hurt the most. So it's probably for the best, given I might have got a bit emotional, that my first trip back to the main house in two summers was to a production I'd seen there before: Sean Holmes' fiesta-style A Midsummer Night's Dream from 2019 has returned to launch the 2021 season, and though both venue and production have had to make a few changes while COVID-19 restrictions are still in place, both have retained the atmosphere that makes them special. In the audience, along with social distancing in the three galleries, and all shows playing without intervals (to stop everyone crowding to the loos at once,) the most obvious change is in the Yard, where there's usually up to 700 standing groundlings. For the first couple of months of the season these have been replaced with just three rows of temporary seats arranged by support bubbles.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

The third and last of this year's major London Midsummer Night's Dreams comes courtesy of Sean Holmes in his new position as an associate at the Globe. In a crowded field the production needs to do a lot to stand out: While there's a couple of interesting little twists on the familiar story this isn't a particularly high-concept Dream; instead everyone's energies have been thrown into mining every possible moment of comedy, with great success. Jean Chan's Athens is more South American than Southern European, the design evoking a pastel-coloured Rio Carnival, although to start with this is for appearances only - Duke Theseus (Peter Bourke) is holding festivities for his upcoming marriage to Hippolyta (Victoria Elliott) but the latter has no choice in the matter of marrying a much older man, and is far from thrilled with it - this is the second Dream this summer to have the Amazon Queen arrive on stage in a box, although it's played slightly more for laughs here.

Theatre review: Working

Studs Terkel has been one of America’s favourite radio hosts and journalists since 1945, and is known especially for his interviews with regular people and the books he’s published collecting them. Working, which unsurprisingly looks at people from the perspective of their jobs, is the most famous of these, but is still an unlikely subject for a musical, and Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s adaptation is in its turn an unusual musical: In its current form, only three of the songs are by the Wicked composer himself, as Schwartz asked a number of other writers and musicians to contribute different voices. Craig Carnelia is the most frequent contributor with four songs, James Taylor and Micki Grant each provide two, and there’s one by Mary Rodgers and Susan Birkenhead. Since its 1977 debut it’s been further rejigged, so now it also boasts the current biggest name in musical theatre with two songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Theatre review: Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith)

For the fifth year running it was a big group outing to the Lyric Hammersmith's pantomime, where last year's director Ellen McDougall and set designer Oliver Townsend are back, as is Cinderella's Prince Charming Karl Queensborough in the title role of Aladdin. It's all change elsewhere though, most notably in the script where, after three years, Tom Wells has left (probably because he had two new plays of his own this year to worry about) and former co-writer Joel Horwood has returned without his writing partner Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. Panto of course always has a bit of a topical edge and so here the story's introduced by the villain - Nigel David Donald Theresa Boris Abanazer (Vikki Stone,) who lives in Fulhammerboosh, where the rich have all the power and the poor are vilified.

Theatre review: The Hairy Ape

Eugene O'Neill fans are spoilt for choice in That London at the moment. As the title suggests, The Hairy Ape is more the beard-and-muscles at sea side of O'Neill's canon like last year's Anna Christie, than the domestic tragedy on offer in Long Day's Journey Into Night - even if both the muscles and the beard are slightly less extravagant than Jude Law's. An odyssey of the working man in the early days of trade unionism, The Hairy Ape follows Yank (Bill Ward,) a strong, not-too-bright man who works in the guts of a luxury transatlantic liner, shoveling coal into the furnaces. It's 1922, and the daughter of the ship's owner has patronising ideas of doing something for the less well-off. But when Mildred (Emma King) visits the boiler room, Yank scares her off. Told that she thought he was a "hairy ape" (and be warned, this is one of that weird sub-genre of plays that like to remind you of the title in the dialogue a lot) Yank cracks and ends up searching the streets of New York looking for some dignity, and a place to belong.