Theatre review: Playhouse Creatures

With Playhouse Creatures April De Angelis completes a loose trilogy of plays about some of the first women to achieve fame - or notoriety - in something like the modern sense. Whether the connection was intentional I don't know, although I'm guessing the fact that all three of the plays have been underwhelming to one extent or another wasn't part of the plan. In the 1660s Nell Gwynn (Zoe Brough) is still an orange-seller wishing she could join the ranks of the new female actors, only recently allowed onto the stage by Charles II. After being pipped to the only open spot for a new actress by Mrs Farley (Nicole Sawyerr) she eventually tricks her way into a minor role, securing a more permanent spot after catching the eye of the men in the audience - and the King himself.

Theatre review: The Witches

One of Roald Dahl's most popular books saw him write about an evil underground cabal he thought were secretly running the world for nefarious purposes, but fortunately on this occasion he was talking about witches. Lucy Kirkwood (book and lyrics) and Dave Malloy (music and lyrics) take on the latest Dahl classic to get the musical theatre treatment. With Lizzie Clachan's staging cutting the front of the Olivier stage off and using designs that could easily fit into a more conventional proscenium arch, the National must be hoping The Witches does for them what Matilda did for the RSC. And, notwithstanding a running time that's pushing its luck with family audiences, they might get their wish. Ten-year-old Luke (Vishal Soni, alternating with Bertie Caplan and Frankie Keita) gets briskly orphaned at the start of the story, with the Norwegian grandmother he's never met before becoming his new guardian.

Theatre review: Top Girls

Which five people, living or dead, real or fictional, would you invite to your dream dinner party? To most people that’s a creaky old conversation-starter, but to Marlene (Katherine Kingsley) it’s the perfect way to celebrate a promotion, in the famous opening act of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. It’s 1981, Marlene’s become the first female Managing Director of Top Girls Employment Agency, and she’s gone to a trendy restaurant with five women from history and legend who embody a female ideal - or at least someone’s idea of it. Victorian adventurer Isabella Bird (Siobhan Redmond) and 13th century Japanese concubine, Buddhist nun and author Lady Nijō (Wendy Kweh) made their own way in a man’s world while others, like Pope Joan (Amanda Lawrence) and Brueghel’s soldier-woman Dull Gret (Ashley McGuire) took on masculine roles, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Theatre review: Pinter Six - Party Time / Celebration

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This installment of Pinter at the Pinter hasn't invited the critics in yet.

I booked for all the Pinter at the Pinter shows before they'd been retitled to give each anthology a number, so I've ended up with Pinter Six before Pinter Five; as the season is (currently) due to conclude with Betrayal seeing some of it in reverse order seems apt enough. Jamie Lloyd directs the shortest double bill so far, starting with Party Time, which I couldn't help thinking of as what it would be like if Pinter had written The Masque of the Red Death, except the plague outside is all the partygoers' doing, and they're cheerfully set to make things a lot worse. Accordingly, the majority of the characters on stage may be laughing and drinking wine, but Soutra Gilmour's designs keep everything positively funereal, in all-black outfits and a torchlit black box set that could have come out of a vampire movie.

Theatre review: Welcome Home, Captain Fox!

The Donmar's latest season opens in high spirits with Anthony Weigh's new version of Jean Anouilh's Le Voyageur Sans Bagage, relocated to New York State in 1959 as Welcome Home, Captain Fox! Among her various charitable projects, aspiring socialite Marcee DuPont-DuFort (Katherine Kingsley) discovers Gene (Rory Keenan,) a WWII veteran in a military mental hospital, who doesn't remember anything before he woke up in in a French battlefield 15 years earlier. The wealthy Hamptons matriarch Mrs Fox (Sian Thomas) had a son who went MIA around that time, and Marcee is convinced she's found a match - and one that could get her a few rungs up the social ladder. Mrs Fox and her eldest son George (Barnaby Kay) are skeptical at first, but as soon as they see Gene they're convinced he's the missing Jack. But being in what he's told is his childhood home doesn't prompt any memories to come back, and he's not sure if he wants them to.

Theatre review: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

The popular but much-criticised screen-to-stage trend has had a few knocks lately, but a Broadway import could give it a bit of a boost through, in part, getting one of the most basic elements right: Picking a source material that actually suits its new format, in this case an old-fashioned, big budget musical (complete with pause before Robert Lindsay's first line so the audience can applaud his entrance; they didn't.) Dirty Rotten Scoundrels follows the 1988 Frank Oz film very closely:  Lawrence (Lindsay) is a British con-man living in the South of France, where he makes a fortune every summer posing as a deposed prince, and convincing wealthy heiresses to fund his fictional nation's freedom-fighters. The arrival of small-time American crook Freddie (Rufus Hound) threatens to get in the way of his plans, and the only way to get rid of him is to challenge him, the loser having to leave the town forever.