Theatre review: Black Comedy

1960s British farces rarely get revived these days, generally because they're built on attitudes and situations that haven't exactly aged well (with the exception of What The Butler Saw, which gets away with it because how horrible those attitudes and situations are is basically the whole point.) But back when I was in school our drama club did a scene from Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy so - about as long after that performance as it was from the play's 1965 debut - I gave the Orange Tree's revival a chance in what I had originally planned to be a weekend of Shaffer, pairing it with his more famous Equus. This is a much less violent affair, other than in the slapstick sense: The high concept is that the play begins in what the audience sees as complete darkness, but in which the characters can see perfectly well.

Theatre review: The Winter's Tale (RSC/RST)

Having clawed her way off my list of creatives I avoid like the plague with a decent Macbeth and a very good King Lear, Yaël Farber now makes her RSC debut by continuing her successful recent strategy of tackling Shakespeare plays where not having a sense of humour is not really an obstacle. Yes, I know The Winter's Tale is officially classed as a comedy, but you know as well as I do that having one scene where a con-man (Trevor Fox) pickpockets a hot young shepherd (Ryan Duval) doesn't make it a laugh riot, any more than having a scene where a porter does a dozen puns about equivocation doesn't make Macbeth a knockabout farce. The story of two kings who violently turn on members of their own family, Sicilia's Leontes (Transphobia Inc Employee Bertie Carvel) has been best friends with his Bohemian counterpart Polixenes (John Light) since childhood.

Theatre review: Pericles(RSC/Swan & Chicago Shakespeare Theater)

The new RSC team's first season ends with half an Artistic Director finally making a debut as unlikely and understated as the rest of the summer run has been: One of the most obscure plays to just about scrape into the canon, the one Shakespeare himself was so invested in he entrusted half the writing to some pimp he met down the pub. Tamara Harvey hasn't directed at the RSC before, so starting in the smaller Swan also seems a sensibly measured way of getting used to the company's deep thrust stages. In context though there is something audacious about the choice of Pericles as her opening salvo - a play perceived as so unpopular that both her predecessors dealt with it by announcing they were going to stage it, then hoping nobody would notice when they didn't. In this meandering late romance Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Startled Giraffe Alfred Enoch) sets out on a variety of fairytale quests to win princesses with, it's probably fair to say, varying results.