Theatre review: Obsession

Toneelgroep Amsterdam's season at the Barbican continues with a new play, based on a film by Luchino Visconti - whose work Ivo van Hove frequently stages - and with a cast half made up of Dutch ensemble members, and half of British guest actors (although at times even the latter seem to have picked up the Dutch accent.) After filling it with furniture and audience members for Roman Tragedies, Jan Versweyveld uses the size of the Barbican stage to leave vast empty spaces for Obsession, which takes place in a bar - one that apparently does have some customers, we just don't get to see them. Instead Gino (Jude Law,) a drifter, wanders in playing the harmonica and looking for something to eat, which he may or may not be able to pay for. He's a mechanic and stays to do a few jobs around the place in exchange for his room and board, but the real reason he's sticking around is because he's fallen instantly in lust with the barmaid Hanna (Halina Reijn,) and the second her much older husband Joseph (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) is gone they start an affair.

Stage-to-screen review: The Vote

The second James Graham political play to have been running in London concurrently with The Angry Brigade, tickets for The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse were allocated by ballot, so although I applied I wasn't able to see the show at the theatre. I guess that's democracy for you, Donmar members didn't get preferential treatment, and neither did critics - it's just a fortuitous coincidence that all the newspaper critics' applications successfully got them tickets for the same night. And just in time to give it a boost for its showing on More4 on election night! That was the alternative option for those of us who didn't get to see the starry cast in the flesh, a live broadcast at the exact time that the show is set: 8:30 to 10pm, the final 90 minutes of voting in a Lambeth polling station. It's a marginal seat and, with the election looking like a closer-run thing than it actually turned out to be, every vote could be crucial.

Theatre review: Henry V (Michael Grandage Company at the Noël Coward Theatre)

A year ago it looked certain that the Michael Grandage Season at the Noël Coward Theatre would be one of the theatrical events of 2013, but as it draws to a close I wonder how long we'll even remember it for. Not that the star-studded quintet of plays has been bad, at least not always, but it's certainly not been stellar either. The last time Grandage took on a West End theatre for a year he ended with Jude Law as Hamlet, and they reunite to close this season as well with a go at Henry V. On inheriting the crown, Henry instantly abandons fun and games in favour of a ruthless ambition to reclaim French territory he believes rightfully his. Convincing himself that god is on his side, the way things pan out does nothing to disprove this theory as his tiny, exhausted English army trounces their stronger enemy.