Theatre review: The Tragedy of King Richard The Second (Almeida)

Simon Russell Beale first made his name as a Shakespearean actor taking on roles that didn't always seem immediately obvious fits for him (I first saw him as Edgar in King Lear, then Ariel in The Tempest.) By contrast Richard II seems like a part he was born to play, but in recent years he's often said he regretted never getting the chance while he was young enough (the real king died aged 33, inasmuch as historical accuracy ever matters where Shakespeare's Histories are concerned.) If someone was going to come along and give him the chance to play the part in his fifties, it makes sense for it to be Joe Hill-Gibbins, never a director to get too hung up on the literal. Hill-Gibbins has restored the full original title The Tragedy of King Richard The Second but elsewhere he and Jeff James have ruthlessly cut down the text so the play comes in at a little over 90 minutes.

Theatre review: Machinal

The Almeida’s current season of female playwrights now looks back to 1928 for a play whose expressionist style places it very firmly in that time, but whose script often feels almost unnervingly up-to-date. In Machinal, Sophie Treadwell despairs at the world treating all people like part of a machine, but there’s no question it’s women’s role in that machine that’s the particular target. Initially known only as Miss A, later revealed to be called Helen, Emily Berrington plays a young woman who works as a stenographer in a New York office where she doesn’t fit in, largely due to being the only one who openly admits she feels like she’s wasting her life there. Not that this deters the company vice-president, Jones (Jonathan Livingstone,) who proposes to her. Helen flinches at his touch, but she knows marriage is the expected next step in her life, and a wealthy husband would get her out of her 9-5 job, so she accepts.

Theatre review: Wild

Mike Bartlett’s latest play doesn't mention Edward Snowden, but it makes no attempt to disguise its inspiration: Wild opens with American IT expert Andrew Wild (Jack Farthing) hiding in a Moscow hotel room, a couple of days after leaking a huge amount of data online, revealing the true extent to which the US Government spies on its own citizens and those of its allies. Miriam Buether's proscenium arch set is a pretty narrow letterbox - not always great for sightlines from the back, it has to be said - through which we see all that Andrew's world has currently shrunk down to. He's made a lot of powerful enemies overnight and has had to sequester himself without a phone or laptop to stop them tracking him down. Hopefully on his side is an organisation that's unnamed, but which can again be easily identified - it's reminiscent of WikiLeaks - and which has put him up in this safe room.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure (Young Vic)

My third, and presumably last Measure for Measure of the year, and after a typically caustic, physical and anti-naturalistic one from Cheek by Jowl's Russian arm and an unsuccessful attempt to ramp up the bawdy comedy at the Globe, the Young Vic's production pitches it somewhere in the middle. Joe Hill-Gibbins returns to the venue where he made his name, although instead of the jelly that featured heavily last time he was here, he brings along the video cameras from his Edward II at the National. Miriam Buether's set is a plain wooden box that, when the curtains go back, is piled high with blow-up plastic sex dolls. This, it seems, is what the people of Vienna have been reduced to in the eyes of the Duke (Zubin Varla.) The city's morality laws are actually incredibly strict, so he's let them slip during the 19 years of his rule. He now feels this was a mistake, but he'd feel hypocritical enforcing them now himself. So he pretends to leave the city, posing as a friar to see what happens when he leaves the puritanical Angelo in charge. What could possibly go wrong?

Theatre review: Going Dark

Sound&Fury were behind Kursk, one of my favourite shows of 2010, so I was excited about the company's return to the Young Vic. Going Dark is another immersive show but there the similarities end as it's a much more thoughtful, small-scale affair. The audience has to go out the front of the building and round the block to the back entrance of The Clare (so don't arrive at the last minute!) where coats and bags are collected before entering the auditorium.

There's nothing metaphorical about the title Going Dark. There's little light to find your seat by and during the show there's often periods of complete darkness. The show sees Sound&Fury both expand their scope to encompass the whole Universe, and at the same time shrink their focus to inside one man's head. Max (John Mackay, formerly of the RSC's Ensemble^TM) is an astronomer whose job at a planetarium sees him describing the infinite on a daily basis. He's also the single father of six-year-old Leo. And he's rapidly going blind.