Theatre review: Ravenscourt

Qualified NHS therapist Georgina Burns' first fully-staged play Ravenscourt opens at Hampstead Downstairs, and though there's the odd line of clunky dialogue for the most part it goes against my usual complaint about the venue's sets being more fully developed than the scripts (although Debbie Duru's set is a nicely economical use of the space.) It's set within the NHS' Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, a service both lauded as a world leader in its ambition for helping the nation's mental health, and critically underfunded and oversubscribed. Ravenscourt is a psychiatric facility; the day surgery is loomed over by an institution for those with the most serious mental illnesses, and occasionally therapy sessions are interrupted by the patients next door having an attack. Lydia (Lizzy Watts) is a comparatively young therapist but she does have some years of private practice under her belt by the time she decides to join the public sector.

Theatre review: Every Day I Make Greatness Happen

Launching Hampstead Theatre's autumn season Downstairs is a play by high school teacher and comparatively new playwright Richard Molloy. Sticking to the tenet of writing about what you know and reaping the results, he sets Every Day I Make Greatness Happen in a little-used, leaky-roofed classroom in a North London school, where students are not allowed to join the Sixth Form unless they've passed their English GCSE. For three students who failed it, the Head of English, Miss Murphy (Susan Stanley,) has agreed to coach them through a re-take while they also take their AS-level classes. They have six weeks to make their second chance count and be allowed to stay on. Iman (Josh Zaré) is timid and nerdy but a bit slow, and has spent the last five years at school being relentlessly bullied by Kareem (Moe Bar-El.)

Theatre review: Othello (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

With its black title character Othello is, unsurprisingly, most often used as a way of looking at racism, but for the last of this year's Swanamaker season Ellen McDougall has a different approach in mind. After all, the only overt racism in the play comes from Othello's enemies, but with help from a little tinkering with the text McDougall exposes how the misogyny in the play's world is even more deep-rooted. General Othello (Kurt Egyiawan) has made Michelle Cassio (Joanna Horton) his new lieutenant, to the fury of his ensign Iago (Sam Spruell,) who'd been expecting the promotion. Using his reputation as the most trusted of the officers, Iago decides to take revenge in a slow, insidious way.

Theatre review: Fuck the Polar Bears

I guess this year's "plays with Fuck in the title" meme has well and truly jumped the shark, because after a couple of strong entries we now get Tanya Ronder's egregious Fuck the Polar Bears at the Bush. A play about the damage done to the environment by everyday energy usage, it makes its points with all the subtlety of an anvil made of shit. Our heroes are Gordon and Serena, a wealthy middle-aged couple and the worst human beings ever to have existed. Gordon (Andrew Whipp) is the new CEO of an energy company that wants to start fracking; he celebrates his promotion by bringing home six Sloppy Giuseppe pizzas he knows his family will barely pick at*. I think we might be meant to infer he's happy to waste food but it was all a bit subtle for me. His big new wage packet means he and his wife can finally sell their enormous mansion, and move into an even more enormous mansion they like better.

Theatre review: Idomeneus

The mythology of the Trojan War often sees the Greeks' triumph soured, as they return home to face tragedy and betrayal. Cretan king Idomeneus tops off his decade at war with a catastrophic storm on the way home. Of all his ships, only the one carrying Idomeneus himself survives, and only because the king promises the sea god Poseidon a gift: On reaching Crete he'll sacrifice the first living creature he sees. Of course he docks to find his own son Idamantes waiting to greet him. With its themes of human sacrifice, family tragedy and a classic dick move by the gods, it seems like this should be one of the better-known Greek myths, but Idomeneus' post-Troy fate doesn't feature in the Iliad and remains fairly obscure. The sources that do mention it differ on how the story plays out, and that's where Roland Schimmelpfennig's Idomeneus comes in.

Theatre review: The Trojan Women

After a successful first season of "Revolt," Christopher Haydon at the Gate looks at "Aftermath," and first in the new season is Euripides' classic of those left behind when the fighting ends, The Trojan Women. Poet and playwright Caroline Bird has come up with a loose translation of the play that brings the language and action bang up to date. The war has just ended, and the Trojan men have been killed. The women are waiting in a hospital to find out which Greek general will claim each of them as his slave or concubine. Their babies are being taken from them - allegedly to be raised as Greeks, but it looks likely the reality is grimmer. Lucy Ellinson's Chorus is heavily pregnant, not far from giving birth. The only other occupant of the maternity ward is Troy's former Queen, Hecuba (Dearbhla Molloy,) put in the relatively quiet ward as the one remaining mark of respect afforded to her.

Theatre review: Tenet

The latest round of Artistic Director Musical Chairs is played at the Gate, where Christopher Haydon's inaugural season comes under the umbrella title "RESIST!" Evariste Galois, a 19th Century French mathematician and radical, died, possibly in a duel, at the age of 20 before getting the chance to fully explore his theories. Having struggled to find a way to tell his story on stage, Lorne Campbell (also directing) and Sandy Grierson finally hit on the unlikely technique of pairing Galois (Jon Foster) with controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Lucy Ellinson,) who quizzes the mathematician on the very specific definition of "the truth" that both men are obsessed with, in Tenet: A True Story About the Revolutionary Politics of Telling the Truth About Truth as Edited by Someone Who is Not Julian Assange in Any Literal Sense.