Theatre review: Quality Street

Back in 2010 the Finborough Theatre revived Quality Street, the play that made J.M. Barrie's name, and was his most famous work before it was comprehensively overshadowed by Peter Pan. I've been waiting to see it turn up again ever since - and still find it odd that TV hasn't rediscovered it for adaptation as a Christmas special. What we do finally get is a new touring production courtesy of Laurie Sansom and Northern Broadsides. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it's a farcical twist on Jane Austen romances as Phoebe Throssel's (Paula Lane) heart is broken when, instead of proposing like she expects, Valentine Brown (Aron Julius) announces he's joined the army. As well as the emotional blow there's a financial one, as she's recently lost half of her fortune and needed the support of a good marriage - unbeknownst to Valentine, it was his advice that led to the bad investment.

Theatre review: Genesis Inc.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the first test tube baby, Hampstead Theatre stages Genesis Inc., Jemma Kennedy’s satire of the monetisation of reproduction. The tangled plot follows two couples whose experience of the titular IVF clinic throws them together in unexpected ways: Bridget (Laura Howard) is an ambitious financier who’s had her eggs frozen there in case she wants a baby in the future, and overhears that Harry Enfield’s intermittently South African Dr Marshall wants to float the company on the stock market; she decides to pitch to represent him. Meanwhile her best friend Miles (Arthur Darvill) is a gay, Jewish music teacher who’s just got a job in a Catholic boys’ school, and has gone partly back into the closet in the belief that it’ll help him keep his job. Bridget is bearding for him, but with the fertility clinic on her mind, she wonders if the time has come for her to have a baby, and whether instead of an anonymous sperm donor she should ask Miles.

Theatre review: Nightfall

Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre launched with the announcement of its first three shows, designed to be a showcase of the three main seating configurations the auditorium could use. Of these the third, Barney Norris’ Nightfall, stood out as an unusual choice for a new, large-scale venue: He’s been building a name for himself Off-West End but it seems a big ask for Norris to fill a 900-seat theatre for a month, especially without a headline-grabbing cast. There’s also the fact that the playwright’s previous work has all been very intimate, and I wondered how he’d handle something more epic. As it turns out that’s not really what he’s aiming for anyway: Rae Smith’s set, putting the yard of a farmhouse on the thrust stage, could happily stage a naturalistic Uncle Vanya, but unlike Chekhov’s multiple story strands there’s only four characters to follow here.

Theatre review: Kiss of the Spider Woman

Manuel Puig's novel Kiss of the Spider Woman seems to be of endless fascination to theatremakers - I saw a stage version at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007, and there also exists a notoriously Marmite Kander and Ebb musical on the subject. But for the Menier Chocolate Factory production, Laurie Sansom uses another new adaptation, by Motorcycle Diaries screenwriter José Rivera and American playwright Allan Baker. The setting is a jail cell in 1970s Argentina, a time when the junta regularly imprisoned and tortured political dissidents like Valentin (Declan Bennett.) He shares this space with Molina (Samuel Barnett,) a gay window dresser convincted of gross indecency. The two have little in common, but bond when Molina starts to tell his cellmate bedtime stories to help him sleep.

Theatre review: James III - The True Mirror

Another change of pace from writer Rona Munro and director Laurie Sansom as we reach the end of the epic trilogy The James Plays with James III - The True Mirror. And if the first two Scottish kings to bear that name were complex characters whose actions weren't always easy to sympathise with, Jamie Sives' James III turns out to be an out-and-out dick. Flamboyant, bisexual, and preferring the grand gesture over the actual business of ruling, he's fond of squandering the country's meagre budget. A cathedral is the legacy he speaks of most, but in the meantime he'll settle for a choir to follow him around everywhere commentating on his actions. His relationships with courtiers Cochrane (Andrew Rothney) and Ramsay (Mark Rowley) as well as laundry girl Daisy¹ (Fiona Wood) are barely disguised from the court, least of all the queen. On the surface, his court is a place of safety and pleasure.

Theatre review: James II - Day of the Innocents

Rona Munro's James Plays are a trilogy, but each is meant not only to stand alone, but also to have its own distinct flavour. So it is with James II - Day of the Innocents, although arguably it's got two of them: After the epic action of James I we have something more intimate, centred on friendship and family, but before we can have that the hero, and the audience, have to face horrors. James I having been murdered, James II (Andrew Rothney) becomes king at the age of six. Too young to rule, he is a pawn in the wealthy earls' power struggles, even to the point of being kidnapped a couple of times as leverage. Livingston (Gordon Kennedy) finally gets the upper hand thanks to the infamous Black Dinner¹, in which the Earl of Douglas and his young brother are invited to dine with the king and, in violation of all the laws of hospitality, captured and killed. A childhood of bloodshed done in his name has left James with nightmares that persist well into his teens.

Theatre review: James I - The Key Will Keep The Lock

Laurie Sansom inaugurates his time in charge of the National Theatre of Scotland in epically ambitious fashion, in a co-production with the other National Theatre, Rona Munro's The James Plays. This trilogy of new history plays - a genre that's definitely back in fashion at the moment - looks at the first three King Jameses of Scotland, beginning right in the middle of the period Shakespeare looked at in his own English histories. At the start of James I - The Key Will Keep The Lock, Henry V (Jamie Sives) rules England, but not for much longer: The dysentery that would kill him is taking hold. In an attempt to leave one less source of conflict for his infant son to rule over, Henry frees his prisoner, King James of Scotland, who's been held hostage in England for 18 years. In return for being returned to his throne, James (James McArdle) is expected to pay a hefty ransom, which Henry hopes will leave the country too poor to wander South of the border; but James has other ideas.