Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

After a valiant effort by Richard II at the start of the year, A Midsummer Night's Dream has well and truly come along to replace last year's Macbethorama as 2019's most ubiquitous Shakespeare. The Bridge, Open Air Theatre and Globe are all showing off their Bottoms, and it's the second leg's turn for me as director Dominic Hill is brought in from Glasgow to Regent's Park for a new take on the play that must surely be the venue's most-performed. It's the story of Oberon, King of the Fairies (Kieran Hill) and his plan to humiliate his Queen Titania (Amber James) into giving him a changeling child of hers, with a plot involving a love potion; and the mortals who get caught up in the middle of the chaos when they wander into the woods, including a troupe of amateur actors and a quartet of starcrossed lovers.

Theatre review: How I Learned to Drive

Nostalgia with a markedly sinister edge at Southwark Playhouse's Little, with Jack Sain's production of Paula Vogel's 1998 Pulitzer-winner, How I Learned to Drive. As she approaches 40, Li'l Bit (Future Dame Olivia Poulet) reminisces about her teenage years in the 1960s, and in particular her relationship with her uncle, Peck (William Ellis.) He did indeed teach her to drive, but from the first time we meet them it's clear that's not all that happened in his car - and if he'd had his way even more would probably have gone on. Li'l Bit initially flashes back to 1969, when she was 17 and preparing to take her driving test. But her narration then takes us back and forward in time, jumping through memories as they come to her, and building up a picture of how her adolescence formed who she is today.

Theatre review: Stink Foot

Topless men covered in treacle may not be the first thing that comes to mind about Greek tragedy, but then Sophocles' Philoctetes does take its storyline from one of the odder subplots of the Trojan War myth: One of the Greek generals headed to Troy, Philoctetes was bitten on the foot by a snake, a wound which became badly infected. So badly, in fact, that the smell got too much for the others on the ship, and en route Odysseus dumped him on a deserted island. But, nine years on, a prophecy reveals that Troy will only fall to Hercules' magic bow, which now belongs to Philoctetes. The bow needs to be wielded by Neoptolemus, son of the late Achilles, so Odysseus decides to kill two birds with one stone: Neoptolemus will be brought to Troy, and on the way will stop off to get Hercules' bow - one way or another.

Theatre review: Unidentified Item in the Bagging Area

Sarah Simmonds is a young playwright having her first full play produced, but Unidentified Item in the Bagging Area deals with the problems of a woman twice her age. A visit to the gynaecologist reveals that 50-year-old Victoria (Jenny Ogilvie) has already gone through the menopause without realising it. She may have avoided the hot flushes, night terrors and hair loss some of her contemporaries have gone through, but the sudden realisation that she's biologically entered a latter stage of her life leads to a crisis that makes her reevaluate her position in life and as a mother. Most of all though it leads her to look at her marriage to Jeremy (John McAndrew,) who took early retirement but is, as she sees it, wasting his time pottering in the garden, having lost all interest in her sexually. With no communication with her husband any more, she tries to find someone who'll listen in supermarkets, a menopause support group, and even a phone sex line.

Theatre review: Bully Boy

Advertising itself as London's first new purpose-built theatre complex in 30 years, the St James Theatre's first task will be convincing anyone that London actually wants it. On a corner a few minutes' walk from Victoria, a shiny foyer with a bar/brasserie looks more like the lobby of a chain hotel than a creative space. Hopefully time will bring a bit more character to its public face. Meanwhile the opening season of programming seems surprisingly low-key, and they shouldn't be surprised to have attracted comments that they're presenting regional theatre at London prices (on the surface there doesn't seem a huge difference in the programming here and that at my local theatre, a receiving house that struggles to put bums on seats at a fraction of the ticket price.) The auditorium itself is a nice medium size (312 capacity) with stadium seating meaning decent sightlines to the small thrust stage - though I would have hoped for better soundproofing in a newly-built theatre. But of course what it's all going to come down to is the quality of the work actually put on that stage, and for its inaugural production the St James has turned to Northampton's Royal and Derngate Theatres, and a play by writer, performer, and Chief Lesbian to the Court of Radio Four, Sandi Toksvig.