Theatre review: King Lear (Wyndham's)

The received wisdom on Kenneth Branagh is that he's been living out a lifelong Laurence Olivier fixation by playing all the major roles he was most associated with, in performances that increasingly make the late Baron of Brighton seem like a master of gritty naturalism. This has inevitably built up to King Lear, and watching the production - which he also, of course, directs himself in - I have to wonder if this is really the case, or if in fact his role models are the 19th century actor-managers who gave their names to the West End theatres he plays in. Certainly the performances, not only his own but those he gets out of a cast largely made up of recent graduates, are the kind of thing you can imagine a Victorian audience being used to. The evening opens with a projection of the Earth seen from space, perhaps as a clue to where SirKenBran's performance will be visible from.

Stage-to-screen review: Lights Up - The Winter's Tale

The RSC's a funny old company, isn't it? At one time considered downright avant-garde, in the last four decades its reputation has gone to the opposite extreme, as a byword for safe, old-fashioned, "heritage" Shakespeare. Nowadays I'd say it sometimes tries (with wildly varying levels of success) to push the envelope, but for the most part slips back into the kind of Shakespeare that reveres the text just that little bit too much over the theatricality. They make for an odd choice to provide the longest, largest-scale entry in the BBC's Lights Up festival, following as they do a lot of new writing with small casts and current concerns. Exactly what concerns Erica Whyman's production of The Winter's Tale deals with is anybody's guess, as apart from a couple of neat design ideas I came out of it with not much clue as to how Whyman interprets the odd, bleak story of Sicilian king Leontes (Joseph Kloska,) who essentially has a complete personality change mid-sentence, accusing his wife Hermione (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) and best friend Polixenes (Andrew French) of having an affair.

Theatre review: Imperium Part II: Dictator

The phrase "all political careers end in failure" wasn't coined until the twentieth century (by Enoch Powell of all people,) so Cicero wouldn't have been able to pay it any attention when, in the events at the close of Conspirator, he found himself far from the political heights he'd once scaled. A shame for him, as he might have been able to accept that failure as the end of his career, rather than setting himself up for a much greater fall in the second part of Mike Poulton's Imperium, based on a trilogy of historical novels by Robert Harris. Dictator opens with Julius Caesar (Peter De Jersey) enjoying that formal title of dictator, the civil wars of the first play having left the Roman Republic in chaos, and willing to let one strong hand rule it while it tries to reestablish its democracy. Of course, now that he's sole ruler Caesar is unlikely to give up his power in a hurry, and Cicero (Richard McCabe) is brought out of retirement to advise his opponents.

Theatre review: Imperium Part I: Conspirator

Following the transatlantic success of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, it's not a big surprise if the RSC wants to replicate it by giving Mike Poulton another sequence of historical novels to adapt into a two-part epic play. And as 2017 has been the company's year for exploring Shakespeare's Roman plays, Rome is where Poulton now takes us, for Robert Harris' Cicero Trilogy. Imperium begins with Conspirator, an accusation that could be leveled at a number of its characters, including the man with the biggest claim to defeating them: Cicero (Richard McCabe) is still remembered as one of the great orators, but his political career will require him to adopt means of manipulation beyond what he can persuade a crowd of. Tiro (Joseph Kloska,) the slave who serves as his private secretary, is the affable narrator of an eventful year in Cicero's life, and its aftermath.

Theatre review: The Christmas Truce

The RSC's winter season contributing to the World War I centenary even takes in the family Christmas show; and where Love's Labour's Lost and Won take us either side of the war, Phil Porter's The Christmas Truce puts us in the thick of it. Part of the inspiration was a local Stratford celebrity other than the usual one: Bruce Bairnsfather was an electrician who helped set up the electrics of the original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and lit some early productions. But once war broke out he became famous for a different talent, as the comic cartoons he submitted to magazines became hugely popular. He was considered such a morale-booster that once injured he wasn't allowed to return to the front, so he could keep the nation's spirits up writing full-time. But before that he was also present at an event at Christmas 1914 that would become legendary.

Theatre review: Moby-Dick

For the second half of simple8's residency at the Arcola, Sebastian Armesto tackles Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Almost the entire ensemble from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari returns, although as this is very much a story drenched in testosterone as much as it is in sea-water, the two women in the cast have been replaced by Nicholas Bishop as Starbuck, the first mate who tries to provide a voice of reason, and Leroy Osei-Bonsu as Queequeg, the enormous African cannibal (lapsed) who makes for an odd-couple pairing with the bookish narrator, Sargon Yelda's Ishmael. Needing to supplement his income from teaching, Ishmael chooses whaling as an unlikely spot of moonlighting. Being thrown together with Queequeg, the latter's prayers direct them to the Pequod, owned by a pair of eccentrics and captained by the single-minded Ahab.

Theatre review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

A travelling fair makes its annual trip to a small German town, with a new star attraction: The Somnambulist, in which Dr. Caligari (Oliver Birch) exhibits the seriously ill man he's been "looking after," Cesare (Christopher Doyle,) who suffers from a sleeping sickness but can perform any number of feats in his sleep - including predicting the future. The arrival of the fair coincides with an outburst of strangling, and suspicion falls on jittery Town Hall employee Franzis (Joseph Kloska,) who knew and disliked both victims. Franzis denies committing the murders - or at least, he has no memory of doing so, but increasingly distrusts what is real and what a dream. Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton of Poor Theatre company simple8 adapt and direct the classic German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as part of a residency at the Arcola (next month they present Moby-Dick, and there's reduced-price tickets for booking both shows together.)