Theatre review: Nachtland

Despite an incredibly irritating social media publicity campaign (who were those messages raving about the show months before it opened even meant to be from, anyway?) I've been looking forward to the Young Vic's Nachtland: Marius von Mayenburg's dark satire (translated here by Maja Zade) has a viciously clever premise, and Patrick Marber's production has a great cast. The resulting evening is an entertaining one, but a frustrating one as well. The audience enter to Anna Fleischle’s set absolutely covered in dusty old props, which the cast clear away before the action starts: Siblings Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Philipp (John Heffernan) are clearing out the house of their recently-deceased father, bickering about who looked after him when he was alive and whose story it is to tell even as they narrate it to the audience.

Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing(National Theatre)

The year's third major Much Ado About Nothing is the starriest, courtesy of John Heffernan and Future Dame Katherine Parkinson as Benedick and Beatrice at the Lyttelton. The National's go-to Shakespeare director Simon Godwin was best-known for directing new work when the RSC hired him to give a fresh eye to The Two Gentlemen of Verona nearly a decade ago, and while that was the start of a major change of direction for his career, he's still bringing that outsider's attitude to one of the most beloved comedies of all. Dialogue has been cut, moved, assigned to different characters, and while it's all Shakespeare's work it doesn't all necessarily originate in this play (there's even the best part of a sonnet bulking up Hero's role.) At heart the play - and its most famous couple - remain the same, but the irreverent treatment of the text yields results in making many of the plotlines and characters less problematic.

Radio review: Doctor Faustus

The last time the RSC tackled Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the concept of the damned scholar and his demon servant as a two sides of the same coin was played with by having two actors alternate the roles of Faustus and Mephistopheles, with both actors and audience only finding out who would play whom at the start of the performance. Radio is a medium that allows for the idea to be taken easily to the next conclusion, so adaptor/director Emma Harding gives us hot Heff-on-Heff action: John Heffernan plays both roles in this recent Radio 3 broadcast. Faustus is a Wittenberg scholar frustrated by the limits of human knowledge found in the approved books; he expands his horizons to forbidden tomes on demonology, and manages to summon Mephistopheles. Despite the demon himself warning him against it, Faustus signs a contract to sell his soul to Lucifer in exchange for 24 years of Mephistopheles giving him any knowledge and power he desires.

Theatre review: What If If Only

If Caryl Churchill's career wasn't already distinguished enough, in recent years it's also become notable for her work's increasing brevity - slowly but surely she's moving towards the point where she can emotionally devastate you in under a minute. What If If Only brings us to the 20-minute mark (positively epic compared to the 14 minutes originally advertised,) and it manages a feat that's both impressive and, annoyingly, virtually impossible to convey in a review: Being completely nebulous in its content, yet crystal clear in its intentions and emotional impact. In Churchill's surreal, political ghost story, Someone (John Heffernan) is at his dinner table mourning the loss of a loved one to suicide, still talking to them and wishing they could return. A ghost does materialise with some resemblance to the person he lost, but she's not quite right - she's older, like a future version who never got to exist.

Theatre review: Pinter Seven - A Slight Ache / The Dumb Waiter

In what was originally meant to be the season’s finale before one more show got added to the end, Pinter Seven is the busiest I’ve seen the theatre during this run, probably due to the combined star power of Martin Freeman and Danny Dyer you slag. They appear together in The Dumb Waiter, and the double bill also stars Gemma Whelan and John Heffernan, the latter of whom has previously played one of Dyer’s ancestors. Although I don’t suppose Dyer brings that royal connection up much. As well as the casting, two of Pinter’s more accessible short works have to be part of the draw; although given who we’re talking about “accessible” still means a lot of very dark humour and an almost indescribable sense of existential menace. This menace gets personified in A Slight Ache, the 1957 radio play which forms the first act you slaag.

Theatre review: Saint George and the Dragon

To Rory Mullarkey falls the dubious honour of giving the Olivier stage its best piece of new writing this year; a bar set so low the only challenge it could provide is in a limbo contest. Straight after I saw Albion, another play's title gives away the fact that it'll touch on English identity in the face of Brexit, as Mullarkey gives us his centuries-spanning, epic twist on Saint George and the Dragon. John Heffernan plays failed dragon-slayer George, who returns to the country of his birth only to find that one of the creatures he's been running from has taken up residence there too, turning it into a dark place in constant fear. Charles (Gawn Grainger) begs the knight to slay the beast, but it's only when he sees and instantly falls for Charles' daughter Elsa (Amaka Okafor) - who happens to be the Dragon's next meal - that he agrees to challenge him.

Theatre review: Macbeth (Young Vic)

When Carrie Cracknell directed Medea at the National, Lucy Guerin's choreography was singled out as a major part of the production's atmosphere. Now, for Macbeth at the Young Vic, Cracknell and Guerin share equal directing credit as they attempt to fully integrate dance with Shakespeare's text. Macbeth (John Heffernan) is the star general in Duncan's (Nicholas Burns) Scottish army, but an encounter with three witches feeds his ambitions and makes him impatient to take the throne himself. He and his wife (Anna Maxwell Martin) goad each other into a plot to kill Duncan in his sleep and take his kingdom. They succeed, but as with so many Shakespearean kings he finds power hard to wield. Soon he's arranging more murders to cover up the way he came to the throne, and to quash any new threats.

Theatre review: Oppenheimer

Two years ago in the Swan, the RSC had a hit with a revival of A Life of Galileo, which gloried in the enduring enthusiasm of the scientist even as his discoveries edge his life towards tragedy. So it's not too surprising if they now revisit the theme, going straight for the subject of Brecht's metaphor: The development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Tom Morton-Smith's Oppenheimer sees the titular scientist, known to all as Oppie (Perennial Next Big Thing John Heffernan,) start as an enthusiastic, popular physics lecturer at Berkeley, whose students provide him with a ready-made pool of young scientists when a controversial new project comes calling. But long before America's involvement with the war in Europe, Oppie and his friends are concerned about the rise of fascism, and holding Communist Party fundraisers to help fight it.

Theatre review: Edward II

Some shows generate a Marmite buzz right from the first preview, and that was definitely the case with the National's new Edward II, right up to the official reviews, which ran the gamut from one star to five. Described as "rarely-performed," I've actually seen Marlowe's play twice before, albeit in zero-budget fringe productions, and I've found it to be the strongest of his plays that I've seen. So I didn't see playing it on the National's biggest stage as a particularly big risk, and surely whatever you think of this production the play itself comes out of it very well. Having been a "rising" stage name for ages, John Heffernan finally gets top billing as Edward, the newly-crowned king whose first act is to recall from exile his lover Gaveston. Hated by the court, and distracting the king from the small matter of war with Scotland, Gaveston's presence inspires the barons into all-out rebellion against Edward.

Theatre review: The Hothouse

I thought part of the idea behind Jamie Lloyd's Trafalgar Transformed season was that there'd be a different configuration for every production? Perhaps I was misinformed, as the second show in the season is again in traverse, in a similar set-up to the one used for Macbeth.

This second show is The Hothouse, a Harold Pinter play but not one that's remotely typical of his work. It's not quite a black comedy, not really a farce and doesn't reach the depths of subtlety that many of his plays do, but it is entertaining, in a twisted way. Roote (Simon Russell Beale) runs a nameless mental institution, assisted by the ruthlessly efficient (or just ruthless) Gibbs (John Simm.) It's Christmas Day but any festive cheer is dulled by the death of one patient, and the fact that another has given birth to the child of a staff member. Most of the staff seem to have an idea of the father's identity, so the hunt is on for a scapegoat - the junior Lamb (Harry Melling) fits the bill.

Theatre review: Love and Information

Nikki Amuka-Bird, Linda Bassett, Amanda Drew, John Heffernan, Paul Jesson and Amit Shah are among the cast of 15 for Caryl Churchill's latest play, Love and Information. Almost as if she'd seen the Royal Court Downstairs' flair in recent years for lightning-fast scene changes and wanted in on the action, Churchill gives us essentially a fast-paced sketch show format. On what looks like the same white box, endless configurations of people and settings appear, to perform vignettes no longer than a couple of minutes at most, some lasting only seconds; a couple of them with barely any dialogue. The significance of some of the scenes is occasionally hard to pinpoint but overall a picture builds up of information in modern life: The demand for it (the opening scene is of Shah demanding a secret from Amuka-Bird,) the overload of it (he soon regrets asking,) and where emotions and individuality fit into a world made up of endless streams of data, both useful and useless.

Stage-to-screen review: Henry IV Part 1 (BBC Hollow Crown)

Turns out becoming King of England will really age you, but on the plus side it'll restore your hairline: Henry IV regenerates from Rory Kinnear in the first part of the BBC's Hollow Crown quartet of Shakespeare Histories, to Jeremy Irons in Henry IV Part 1. Richard Eyre takes over directing duties for the middle two plays, and brings much more washed-out colours to reflect a more sombre reign than Richard II's. Haunted by the fact that he deposed a king and could face the same fate, Henry faces rebellion from Harry Percy (known as Hotspur) egged on by his uncle Worcester. Meanwhile Henry's son Hal (Tom Hiddleston) appears to be a very unworthy heir to the throne, spending all his time with the drunken old knight Falstaff and an assortment of misfits in an Eastcheap tavern.

Theatre review: The Physicists

Three shows in and it's harder than ever to see what identity Josie Rourke is trying to give the Donmar Warehouse under her Artistic Directorship: She takes the director's reins again for Jack Thorne's new translation of The Physicists, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1962 satire of Cold War fears. In the old wing of an insane asylum, only three patients remain. Two think they're famous physicists, Albert Einstein (Paul Bhattacharjee) and Sir Isaac Newton (Justin Salinger.) The third, Möbius (John Heffernan) is a physicist, who believes King Solomon appears to him daily to impart wisdom. As the play opens, Einstein and Newton have each murdered one of the nurses; and Möbius' relationship with his own nurse (Miranda Raison) seems to be following an uncomfortably similar pattern. I've seen people name-check Doctor Strangelove with regard to the play, and there's certainly a sense of the gently, but threateningly surreal to the affair.

Theatre review: She Stoops to Conquer

Jamie Lloyd's first production at the National isn't quite the high-speed ride you usually expect from him, coming in at just under three hours. But none of the time is wasted in She Stoops to Conquer, which is packed with incident and detail. Goldsmith's comedy has, on the surface of things, too many madcap plots swirling around - a prospective bridegroom mistaking his future in-laws' house for an inn and getting a bit too comfortable there, his friend trying to steal away their niece, a son from an earlier marriage causing no end of mischief, and a plot (by their rightful owner) to steal a box of jewels. That's without the romantic lead acting like a completely different person depending on whether he's talking to his future fiancée, or the sultry barmaid he's fallen for (who, unbeknownst to him, actually is that fiancée.) But Lloyd marshals the perfect cast around the Olivier stage in one of the funniest shows I've seen in ages.

Harry Hadden-Paton and John Heffernan as Marlow and Hastings, the pair of friends arrived from London, have a foppish chemistry, and each also works well with his leading lady: The oblivious Marlow is led a merry dance by Katherine Kelly's Kate Hardcastle, while The Heff shares lots of amusing glances and desperate gestures with Cush Jumbo as his illicit lover Constance. Steve Pemberton's Hardcastle is suitably flustered and David Fynn's Tony Lumpkin the play's lord of misrule. But while everyone is on top comic form, Sophie Thompson steals the show as Mrs Hardcastle. Her failed attempt at a posh accent to impress her city guests has no right to be as funny as it is but I was crying with laughter. The cheap front-of-stalls seats were particularly good value for a show so full of detail and apparent spontaneity.

Christopher had studied, and hated, the play at school but was willing to give it a go - often the least funny plays on the page are the funniest on the stage - and he was converted as well. I told him I didn't know what I'd write in this review as I'm so used to nitpicking but couldn't find anything to criticise here. I could say it takes a while to warm up but the decision to show up the exposition-heavy opening means I was on-side from the off. The play still works as a satire of snobbery - all the problems are the result of arbitrary class distinctions - as well as just being a joyous event. The National have had a good few months for hit comedies, for my money this is the pick of the bunch.

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith is booking in repertory until the 21st of April at the National Theatre's Olivier.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.