Theatre review: Hamlet (Young Vic)

Returning to the London stage after a few years of fighting The Good Fight and, more dangerously, The Good Wife in America, Cush Jumbo comes to the Young Vic to play Hamlet for Greg Hersov, a director she worked with a lot in the past when he was Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange in Manchester. There's centuries' worth of tradition of women taking on the role, as well as black actors more recently, but I think she might be making history as the first woman of colour to do it in a major London production. There was never much doubt that she was up to the task, and she gives a powerful performance; but while Hamlet remains my favourite Shakespeare play on account of how infinitely flexible it is, it is of course performed very often because it's seen as such a pinnacle of an actor's career. And this was one of those productions that made me wonder - outside of wanting to give an actor their shot at the big role, what was the reason for staging this particular production, at this time?

Theatre review: Macbeth (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

Michelle Terry’s summer season at the Globe was the first time the venue didn’t have an official overall theme for the year, but for her first winter at the Swanamaker she has two: She’s split her season into two themed “festivals” starting with “Ambitious Fiends,” looking at power and corruption, with an optional supernatural element. That option is taken and really played with in the opening production: The candlelit playhouse has been open for a few years now so I find it a bit surprising that this is its first Macbeth, a play thought to have been written with this kind of theatre in mind. Indeed, given it’s notoriously an enthusiastic rimjob on James I, there’s a popular theory that the mirror that displays the line of kings in Act IV scene 1 would have once ended up reflecting the actual king in an intimate setting. Robert Hastie doesn’t have any royalty to play with, unless you count the theatrical royalty of Terry herself as Lady Macbeth, with real-life husband Paul Ready as her on-stage husband.

Theatre review: Lady Windermere's Fan

Dominic Dromgoole passes the directing reins over to Kathy Burke for the second major production in his Oscar Wilde season at the Vaudeville: Lady Windermere’s Fan slightly predates A Woman of No Importance but, for my money, feels the more rounded and accomplished play; and while it also has a strong cast, it doesn’t depend on them as strongly to do a salvage job as the first in the season depended on Eve Best. Lady Margaret Windermere (Grace Molony) has been married for two years, and has failed to pick up on the hints everyone’s dropping that her marriage is the subject of much gossip. It’s only when the Duchess of Berwick (Jennifer Saunders) outright tells her that she learns her husband Arthur (Joshua James) has in recent months started to pay regular visits to a mysterious woman; a look through his bank book reveals he’s also been paying her large sums of money.

Theatre review: The Inn at Lydda

Although the initial description didn't instantly grab me, I eventually booked for The Inn at Lydda based on the cast - not only a strong cast but one largely made up of faces familiar to the Globe, suggesting that the new regime doesn't entirely want to burn bridges with the old one (something tricky to do anyway in the Swanamaker, where Dominic Dromgoole's face is part of the decor.) John Wolfson's play, getting a short run in the indoor playhouse, imagines a meeting in ancient Judea: The Emperor Tiberius Caesar (Stephen Boxer) is sick and dying, but has heard of a miracle worker in a distant part of his empire, who he's sure can cure him. Unfortunately by the time he and his entourage make it to Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth has been crucified by Rome's own representatives. But unlike the last version of the story we saw on a London stage, this one is based on Christian apocrypha, so the story doesn't end there.

Theatre review: Cymbeline (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

I imagine the Globe consider the two, hugely popular plays opening in the new year to be the big hitters of the winter season, but I know I won't be alone in most looking forward to the two that opened before Christmas, and which make it to the stage far less frequently. Joining Dominic Dromgoole's own production of Pericles is Sam Yates' take on another late romance that I have seen performed before, but so long ago I was essentially coming to it fresh, the ancient Britons vs Romans epic Cymbeline. Princess Innogen (Emily Barber) has married her childhood sweetheart Posthumus (Jonjo O'Neill,) much to the fury of the King: Cymbeline (Joseph Marcell) has himself recently remarried, and promised the new Queen (Pauline McLynn) that his daughter would marry her son Cloten (Calum Callaghan.)

Theatre review: Omeros

Before the Globe's winter season kicks off in earnest with the first Shakespeare productions to be designed especially for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse*, there's something of a Homeric mini-season as a taster. We start with the return of Joseph Marcell in a piece he performed a couple of times last year, Derek Walcott's epic poem Omeros, which transposes some of the characters from the Iliad to the Caribbean setting of the poet's birthplace, St Lucia. So we have a fisherman called Achille, at odds with Hector, who drives a bus to and from the airport, over who owns a little rusted tin; and an elderly Philoctète who believes his rotten, stinking foot is a curse passed down from his slave ancestors, a throwback to the chains around their ankles. There's also, of course, a Hélène, pregnant and fought over by the local men even as they seem to despise her for her pride and vanity.

Theatre review: King John (Shakespeare's Globe & tour)

Following runs at Temple Church and in Northampton one of only two standalone Shakespeare histories, King John, finally makes it to Shakespeare's Globe. It's part of the Magna Carta-themed Justice & Mercy season, and James Dacre's production does drop in a reference to that most famous - and unwanted - legacy of the king, even if Shakespeare himself famously didn't. Instead we follow King John (Jo Stone-Fewings) from his (first) coronation to his death, a reign whose every battle, treaty or political machination seems to instantly flop when chance throws a spanner in the works - usually in the form of a smug Papal Envoy (Joseph Marcell,) who likes to pop up occasionally to remind the various princes that the Vatican trumps their authority. With candles, incense and chanting hooded figures dominating Jonathan Fensom's design from the start, it's clear this is a world where the Church is a presence that's not to be messed with.

Re-review: King Lear (Shakespeare's Globe & tour)

When I saw the Globe's small-scale touring King Lear last year, the American teenagers sitting behind me were beyond thrilled to be seeing Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as the King. So it's apt that this year's tour will take in a number of US venues, as Joseph Marcell returns to Bill Buckhurst's production, and hopefully more teenagers will find a love of Shakespeare through a beloved figure from their childhood TV. I rarely return to a production unless it's outstanding, but the Globe feels like such a major part of my summer it tends to get a free pass, and although not perfect this Lear was good enough for another look. I did economise on the high prices by trying out the slightly cheaper, restricted view Gentlemen's Room seats; it was a good choice and I'll probably repeat it next year, as I avoided getting a seat too far round so didn't spend the whole time looking at the backs of the actors' heads.

Theatre review: King Lear (Shakespeare's Globe & tour)

King Lear divides his kingdom between the two of his daughters who flatter him the most, banishing the third for her refusal to play the courtly game. But words turn out to mean little when all your power's gone, and when Goneril and Regan refuse him the honours he still expects, Lear is cast out to the elements. Storms, war and madness bring the former king down to man at his most basic level, and in the process he learns what it means to be human. Following Hamlet and As You Like It in past years, King Lear is the latest play to get the patented Shakespeare's Globe stripped-down treatment, in a touring production that this week pitches up on home ground. Eight actors plus two musicians, 1940s costumes and a lot of doubling are used to tell one of Shakespeare's best-known stories.