Theatre review: Karagula

I don't know how much longer we'll be able to enjoy Philip Ridley plays now that we're actually living in one, but at least his latest dystopia is so utterly, unashamedly demented that correlating it to reality needs about as much imagination as it clearly took to write in the first place. Karagula takes place in an alternate reality, on a planet with two moons and - as far as its inhabitants can tell - only a single town surrounded by endless desert. In a twisted pastiche of 1950s Americana, teenagers Dean (Theo Solomon) and Libby (Emily Forbes) are having a romantic evening, spoilt only by Dean's worry that he'll be elected Prom King. It's an honour, but one with the unfortunate side-effect that, like every winning couple going back millennia, the Prom King and Queen will be driven away in an open-topped limo after the dance, to be shot to death in a literal reenactment of the JFK assassination.

Theatre review: The Jew of Malta

Ever since I first read Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta a few years ago I've been keen to see it on stage; not necessarily because of its virtues as a piece of writing, but to see how a 21st century production would cope with the aggressive antisemitism and racism that is even more at the heart of this story than it is in The Merchant of Venice. I thought it might crop up on the fringe at some point but in the event it was one of the country's biggest companies that took on the challenge, with Justin Audibert getting a baptism of fire on his RSC directing debut. The solution he's come up with is an interesting one, particularly in light of the fact that Merchant's LOLantisemitism attitude is often dealt with by ramping up the play's dark side: The opposite happens here, Marlowe's bloodthirsty and vicious revenge tragedy revealed as a black comedy.

Theatre review: Teh Internet is Serious Business

I can't believe they missed the obvious typo in the title of Tim Price's Teh Internet is Serious Business - surely that should be "SRS BZNS?" It's the story of the "hacktivists" of Anonymous and LulzSec, and the second show in a row at the Royal Court Downstairs most of whose action takes place online. But both in tone and style it differs a lot from The Nether, as one major stipulation Price gave director Hamish Pirie was that he couldn't use video screens or projection to represent the internet. So, in Chloe Lamford's design, data is represented by a huge ball pit downstage, setting the scene for a - sometimes dangerously - playful world. Following the death of his stepfather, Jake Davis (Sexy Scottish Peter Pan Kevin Guthrie) is crippled by agoraphobia. Barely leaving his bedroom in the Shetlands, his only social outlet is the messageboard 4chan.

Theatre review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Some genres barely ever get seen on stage, and you can definitely count the Western among them. So even though I've never really been a fan of Western films, spaghetti or otherwise, I was interested to see what Jethro Compton would do with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and it turned out to be a great decision. When young lawyer Ransome Foster (Oliver Lansley) embarks on an ill-thought-out journey to the West, he ends up beaten up by outlaws in the middle of nowhere, and needing rescuing. Rance ends up recuperating in a saloon in the tiny town of Twotrees, where he falls for the landlady, Hallie (Niamh Walsh.) As an excuse to stay for a while, he agrees to teach Hallie and some of the locals to read, but his top student is Jim (Lanre Malaolu,) and the local outlaw gang led by Liberty Valance (James Marlowe) aren't too happy about a black man getting an education.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Custom/Practice / Almeida & Edinburgh Assembly)

Doing a few performances as part of this year's Almeida Festival (prior to an Edinburgh Fringe run next month) is new-ish theatre company Custom/Practice's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream. The night before Duke Theseus' wedding, two young couples run away to the woods. Also there are a band of workmen, rehearsing a ludicrous amateur play they intend to perform at the royal wedding. Both groups get caught up in the machinations of Oberon (Liam Mansfield) and Titania (Kemi-bo Jacobs,) King and Queen of the Fairies, and Oberon's henchman Puck (Lanre Malaolu, who coincidentally I also saw play Puck when he understudied the role at the RSC last year.) Rae McKen's production opens with a high concept of a group of schoolkids being made to read A Midsummer Night's Dream for detention, only for Puck to take on the guise of their teacher and make them inhabit the roles for real.