Theatre review: The Confessions

A British / Australian / Luxembourgish co-production, Alexander Zeldin's The Confessions, which he also directs at the Lyttelton, is based on conversations with his mother and her peers, and follows one woman's life from Australia in 1943 - when, as a child, she meets her father for the first time returning from the war and is confused because she thought the portrait of him on the wall was her father - to London in 2021, when she finally tells her son, who's been quizzing her just like the real author, to stop poking around for more details of her life. For the most part Amelda Brown narrates the story as the older Alice, while Eryn Jean Norvill plays her younger self in the scenes, but they occasionally trade places at particularly critical moments; perhaps Alice is so shaken by these events she steps out of her body, and can only confront them with the benefit of time.

Theatre review: Trouble in Mind

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I seem to be having a run of shows I could only fit in before they officially open to the press; this was the penultimate preview.

A play that made me spend a lot of the evening wondering if I'd misread how old it was, Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind was first staged off-Broadway in 1955; which makes it ahead of its time, to say the very least. Wiletta Mayer (Tanya Moodie) has made a successful career as an actress, admittedly mostly in all-black revues and a succession of bit-part "mammy" roles on screen. Now she's preparing to go back to Broadway for a ground-breaking new drama that will make a powerful statement about racism, and mobilise its comfortable white audience into empathy. It's just a shame that the play-within-a-play, written and directed by white men, is terrible, and full of as many offensive stereotypes as any number of overtly racist works. But as she tells newcomer John (Daniel Adeosun) when rehearsals begin, there's a certain repertoire of polite nods, smiles and giggles black actors have to offer up to white creatives if they're going to feel comfortable around them and continue giving them work.

Theatre review: The Watsons

Emma Watson (Grace Molony) was all set for a life of unusual financial independence for a Georgian woman, as the ward and heir to a wealthy dowager aunt. But after 14 years the aunt surprised everyone by marrying an officer who will now inherit everything instead, so Emma has been sent back to the comparative poverty of her own family, to stoically help her eldest sister Elizabeth (Paksie Vernon) care for their dying father. The only way out of being stuck there is marriage, and as the newcomer to the village Emma is the belle of the inevitable ball. She soon has three suitors to choose between: She likes the charming Tom Musgrave (Laurence Ubong Williams) but so does her other sister Margaret (Rhianna McGreevy) and besides, Tom is the story's designated cad. The character Jane Austen seems to have wanted her to end up with is parson Mr Howard (Tim Delap,) but while he might be a thoroughly decent man he doesn't seem like an interesting enough one to really engage someone as dynamic as our heroine.

Theatre review: Ramona Tells Jim

In a story that jumps back and forth fifteen years, Sophie Wu has put together what feels like parts of two different plays, one of which works much better than the other. Ramona Tells Jim takes place in a remote part of coastal Scotland – “the shittest village in Scotland” according to Jim (Joe Bannister.) At age 17, he’s a loner who likes collecting crustacea and dreams of becoming a marine biologist. Meeting Ramona (Ruby Bentall) will make for a memorable few days but will also be partly responsible for thwarting his ambition: An awkward 16-year-old English schoolgirl on a geography field trip, she’s his first romance, but early on in the play we get a clue that a violent event will sour the memory of their relationship. 15 years later Ramona turns up again unexpectedly, first on Facebook, then on Jim’s doorstep.

Theatre review: Wild Honey

Nobody could accuse Ed Hall's Hampstead Theatre of wild programming, but the word itself is one they're very fond of - we've had Wildefire, Wild and now Wild Honey, Michael Frayn's version of Chekhov's unfinished Platonov. This revival was due to be directed by Howard Davies, who sadly died at the beginning of rehearsals, and his replacement should be well-versed in the play: Jonathan Kent directed a different version of Platonov as part of his Young Chekhov trilogy at the National only a few months ago. There's another connection to that day-long epic, as Geoffrey Streatfeild returns to the one play out of the three that he didn't appear in this summer. Frayn's play is a shorter, broader version of the story of Platonov (Streatfeild,) a provincial schoolteacher who's spent the winter in virtual hibernation with his wife Sasha (Rebecca Humphries) and their baby son.

Theatre review: As You Like It (National Theatre)

With Rufus Norris, by his own admission, nowhere near as strong on the classics as his predecessor and relying heavily on advice from his associates, the choice of As You Like It as the first Shakespeare play of his tenure was greeted as something of a predictably safe choice. Happily this isn't something that extends to Polly Findlay's production which, though far from the funniest version of the play I've ever seen, may be one of the most charming and visually inventive. The setting is the court of a usurping duke - here a modern-day stock trading office - whose daughter Celia (Patsy Ferran) has been allowed to keep her cousin Rosalind (Rosalie Craig) as a companion. But Duke Frederick's (Leo Wringer) moods are unpredictable, and he decides to banish Rosalind. She and Celia escape to the forest, taking with them the clown Touchstone (Mark Benton.)

Theatre review: The Witch of Edmonton

Curses, demon dogs and, worst of all, enforced Morris dancing in the final show of the RSC's Roaring Girls season in the Swan. William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford and possibly other unknown writers worked together on The Witch of Edmonton to get it quickly to the stage in 1621 after a woman was hanged in Edmonton for witchcraft. Mother Sawyer (Eileen Atkins) is sick of being accused of witchcraft and used as a scapegoat for all the town's ills, and wishes aloud that she actually did have the powers she's accused of, so she could take revenge for all the abuse she receives. Her wish is heard by the devil, who takes the shape of a large black Dog (Jay Simpson,) and offers her the traditional deal of doing evil on her behalf, in return for her soul. Dog variously possesses and enchants the townspeople, but their downfall comes largely from the revelation of sins they'd been up to already.

Theatre review: The Roaring Girl

The show that gives this year's RSC Swan season its overall title is Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl, a comedy inspired by a real-life Jacobean woman nicknamed Moll Cutpurse, whose fondness for dressing in men's clothes, drinking in taverns and starting fights made her notorious. Jo Davies transfers the fictional Moll to the 1890s, and a Victorian London obsessed with sex, but uncomfortable with any kind of gender-bending. So when Sir Alexander Wengrave (David Rintoul) disapproves of his son marrying Mary (Faye Castelow) because her dowry isn't big enough, Sebastian (Joe Bannister) has a plan: Pretend to be in love with Moll Cutpurse, and his father will be so horrified that Mary seems the perfect daughter-in-law in comparison. One slight problem with the plan is that Moll (Lisa Dillon) doesn't actually know about it, and may not want to cooperate.

Theatre review: Bloody Poetry

Howard Brenton wrote Bloody Poetry in 1984 as a reaction to Thatcher's government and what he saw as the "shredding" of England's radical tradition. So his play, revived here by Tom Littler at Jermyn Street Theatre, goes back to the Romantic Poets to remind us of the revolutionary, partner-swapping atheists behind one of the country's most influential literary movements. The focus of the story is on Percy Bysshe Shellley (Joe Bannister) and his "menagerie." As the play begins it's 1816 and he's accompanied to Lake Geneva by Mary (Rhiannon Summers,) already being referred to as his wife, even though his first wife Harriet is still alive; and Mary's stepsister Claire (Joanna Christie - I totally didn't twig she was the girl from Equus, I think I was distracted by how much she looks and sounds like Sarah Hadland.) Though this isn't just a love triangle, complicated as it is by Lord Byron who knocks Claire up, as well as occasionally trying his luck to see if Bysshe might consider giving boys a go. Bysshe is like a sulky, emo adolescent, in contrast to David Sturzaker's bombastic rock star Byron - when we first meet them, the other three are very much like stalkery fans, going to the hotel they know Byron likes in the hope he'll turn up and befriend them.