Theatre review: An Ideal Husband

The National Theatre's recent Importance of Being Earnest found a new angle by introducing a formidable Caribbean take on Lady Bracknell, and now Nicholai La Barrie extends that idea by giving us another Oscar Wilde play where the entire cast of characters has been reimagined as first or second generation Caribbean British. In An Ideal Husband class, power and money are constantly intertwined in a relationship that proves precarious as Lord Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo,) a politician whose career benefited from his personal wealth, gets blackmailed about the source of that wealth: The unscrupulous Mrs Cheveley (Aurora Perrineau) has obtained a letter proving that, at the start of his career, he benefited from his parliamentary knowledge to do a bit of insider trading. She has an investment project of her own on the go, and if Chiltern publicly endorses what is very obviously a scam, she'll keep his secret.

Stage-to-screen review: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe / Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank)

I mentioned recently that after 2020's overload of Romeo and Juliets failed to materialise for obvious reasons, it was due to turn up in 2021 in largely digital form. But before a rather odd-looking green screen affair and the National's repurposing of the Lyttelton into a TV studio turn up, there's a version already available on YouTube, and free to view (as ever, donations are encouraged,) until the end of next month. Last year I had my first experience of the Globe's Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank strand of shows for schools with the 2020 production of Macbeth, and now for their 2019 offering, and a 90-minute edit can't be a bad call for a play I tend to lose my patience with, can it? Certainly playing the story at speed can only accentuate the way Romeo (Nathan Welsh) and Juliet (Charlotte Beaumont) decide they're in love with each other having barely met.