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: Once in a Lifetime

It's fair to say my past experience with director Richard Jones' work hasn't been stellar; at least I didn't leave his last three shows at the interval, but that is partly down to the fact that they didn't have intervals. I've liked a couple of his shows though so went along to his return to the Young Vic, and though it's lacking in some crucial ways at least I wasn't tempted to take an early bath. Once in a Lifetime is a product of the ten-year playwrighting partnership of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, who had numerous Broadway hits, in a version restructured for 12 actors by Hart's son Christopher. (Not that 12 is a tiny cast, but it seems as if the original required so many bodies it became prohibitively expensive and nobody wanted to revive it.) It's obvious why extravagance might have been on the playwrights' agenda though as their subject is Hollywood, and the particular excitement after the first talking picture was released in 1927.

Theatre review: Fully Committed

To mark ten years as the expensive face of off-West End theatre, the Menier Chocolate Factory have revived one of their earliest hits, the one-man show Fully Committed. The actor who originated the role, Mark Setlock takes the directing reins, while Kevin Bishop plays Sam, a wannabe actor who's not had much success, and a recent rejection from an HBO drama has hit particularly hard. To pay the bills he has a job taking reservations for a New York restaurant, currently the trendiest place in town, and as a result people are willing to try all sorts of tricks to get a table. It's the runup to Christmas and both his co-workers have failed to turn up, so Sam is left on his own in a grim basement to take calls from people pulling rank, threatening and bribing him to get ahead of the queue, while upstairs in the restaurant and kitchen his colleagues are happy to pile on more indignities.