Theatre review: Cleansed

A pair of fraternal twins are separated; the female twin, believing her brother to be dead, goes to a strange and possibly dangerous place where she takes on his identity, only to reconnect with him in an unexpected way. It's one of the main plots of Twelfth Night, which Sarah Kane cited as an inspiration for Cleansed, but it's fair to say that she interpreted it in a slightly different way than Shakespeare did. A lot more incestuously, for one thing. Grace (Pearl Chanda) tracks down the hospital-like place where her brother Graham (Jack Riddiford) died of a heroin overdose. The body's long since been cremated so she isn't able to say goodbye to him in that way, instead wearing his clothes and starting to take on his mannerisms. She willingly puts herself under the control of Tinker, the violent and twisted man everyone calls a doctor, but who seems to be anything but a healer.

Theatre review: This Bitter Earth

Harrison David Rivers' two-hander This Bitter Earth follows an interracial American gay couple whose relationship is punctuated by significant events in the country's ongoing violent race relations - mostly the high-profile killings of unarmed black people by the police. They meet at a protest when Neil (Alexander Lincoln,) who is white and from a wealthy family, recites a poem by the little-known black, queer poet Essex Hemphill. It just so happens that Hemphill is a specialist subject for Jesse (Omari Douglas,) a black writer from a less privileged background, who's writing a thesis about him at the time and can mouth the poem along by heart. The coincidence makes him seek out the other man and they begin a relationship that lasts several years and sees them move in together before eventually leaving New York for Minnesota, where Jesse has got a teaching job.

Theatre review: King Lear (Almeida)

Given that it doesn't look like Yaël Farber’s going anywhere anytime soon, I feel like Rupert Goold's Almeida has really found the right match for the highly ritualistic South African director, by sticking to those Shakespeare plays where an apparent complete absence of a sense of humour isn't a major obstacle. So after her Macbeth we now get a nearly four-hour long King Lear that despite being a particularly nihilistic take on the play is easily the best work I've ever seen Farber do. Regular readers of this blog may both decide for themselves how much of a compliment that actually is - but I'd say it's also one of the better Lears I've seen in general. We begin at a live TV broadcast by the Royal Family where the succession is to be formally announced. Lear (Danny Sapani) asks his three daughters how much they love him, and the eldest two go along with the ritual, singing his praises.

Theatre review: Next to Normal

Fifteen years after its Broadway debut Next to Normal gets its London premiere at the Donald and Margot Warehouse, and in many ways you can see why UK producers might have been wary of bringing it here for so long - and not just because it won the Pulitzer for drama, and should therefore automatically be treated with suspicion. It treads a fine line between the emotionally raw and the emotionally manipulative, and I'm still not sure which dominates overall; there's definitely moments that fall on one or other side of that line. Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey’s (book and lyrics) musical is certainly a bold take on mental health issues, as it introduces Diana (Caissie Levy,) her husband Dan (Jamie Parker,) and teenage children Gabe (Jack Wolfe) and Natalie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) as an almost exaggeratedly average family.

Theatre review: A Streetcar Named Desire

Warning, the first couple of rows may get wet: Yes, Rebecca Frecknall's production of A Streetcar Named Desire stars the Internet's official fantasy boyfriend of 2020. Oh, there's also regular floods of rain pouring on every side of Madeleine Girling's in-the-round set. Frecknall returns to Tennessee Williams, and to the star of her career-making Summer and Smoke, although the latter collaboration is a last-minute one: Future Dame Patsy Ferran plays Blanche Dubois only because original star Lydia Wilson got injured. The first week of previews was cancelled to give the new lead at least a little rehearsal time, but apart from a running time that'll likely tighten up by the delayed press night, there's little on stage to suggest the production has only been in front of audiences for a few nights, least of all from the extraordinary leading lady.

Theatre review: The Two Character Play

If it's not common knowledge quite how long and prolific Tennessee Williams' writing career actually was, it's not just a case of not all his Southern melodramas being up there with A Streetcar Named Desire and the other hits; it's also that later in his career he experimented with other styles wildly different from what he's best-known for. As Hampstead Theatre resumes its aborted 2020 anniversary season of shows that premiered there over its long history of new writing, we get to Williams channeling Beckett (worrying,) Ionesco and Pirandello (better) in 1967's The Two Character Play. It does share with earlier work like The Glass Menagerie a personal inspiration: Williams' relationship with his troubled sister Rose, whose mental health problems and the brutal way they were treated give those plays a tragic undertone. But here not only does it seem like we meet a Rose avatar after the lobotomy, that could be the state of mind the whole play takes place in.

Re-review: Constellations(Peter Capaldi/Zoë Wanamaker cast)

I'm calling this a re-review because it's still the same Michael Longhurst production that Nick Payne's Constellations premiered with in 2012, and which I've seen three times before. But don't worry if you're unfamiliar with the play, you don't need to go back and read three previous reviews to understand this one (though if you really want to you can find them on the Nick Payne label on the blog,) I'll still introduce the original high concept. Along with a whole new high concept for this West End revival in particular: The two-hander has four rotating casts, starting with Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah, followed by Zoë Wanamaker and Peter Capaldi, then Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey, and finally Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O'Dowd, each hoping to bring a unique angle to the story. And yes, I was very tempted to book for all four, but after a year of no theatre, a summer of the same play four times might have been too much of a shock to the system, so I decided to pick two that seemed the furthest from the casts I've seen before.

Theatre review: The Wider Earth

You never know where the next pop-up theatre is going to materialise (which I guess is why they're called pop-ups,) and there's particularly majestic surroundings for the transfer of David Morton's Australian and US hit The Wider Earth. In fact the excuse to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum what must be decades since I last went there was one of the attractions of the play, which has set up shop in the Jerwood Gallery, a space that normally houses temporary exhibitions and now has a custom-built theatre in it. The gallery is right next to the museum's Darwin Centre, so it couldn't be better-placed to house the story of the young Charles Darwin (Bradley Foster) on his two-year journey (that actually ended up lasting five years) circumnavigating the globe on the Beagle.

Dance review: Nuclear War

Unusually for a British playwright, Simon Stephens is a vocal fan of European directors' theatre, where the text is a starting point to be treated as faithfully or otherwise as the director decides. So it's not too big a stretch that he's also interested in his work being interpreted through the gift of dance, and the premiere production of Nuclear War is directed by Imogen Knight, who usually works as a movement director, with the instruction that she could use as little or as much of the scripted speech as she wants. In the event, though some of it is spoken by the actors on stage, much is pre-recorded as voiceover by Maureen Beattie, who plays a woman still in mourning for someone she lost seven years ago, but has finally decided to go out into the city again in search of someone - as the short piece goes on it seems increasingly that she's looking for a new man, maybe just to have sex with.

Theatre review: X

A much-anticipated new play from Alistair McDowall, after his sleeper hit Pomona, and following the dark fantasy of that play he goes sci-fi for X, set on a research station on retired planet Pluto. Not that there's much there to research (the Americans get all the interesting missions) and even if there were Ray (Darrell D'Silva) and his team's contracts expired weeks ago - or possibly months, but the clock which keeps the base on Earth time is increasingly unreliable - it might have been much longer than they think. Ray second-in-command Gilda (Jessica Raine) is visibly feeling the strain, prone to regular panic attacks and tears, and snapping at her co-workers Cole (Rudi Dharmalingam) and Clark (James Harkness.) Surprisingly chipper is Mattie (Ria Zmitrowicz,) who rattles around in the ceiling taking care of the life support systems which she refers to as "the girls."

Theatre review: Protest Song

It's a long time since Rhys Ifans was a regular face at the National Theatre but he returns now to take up residence in The Shed as Danny, a homeless alcoholic who's spent the last seven years sleeping on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. The Square Mile is his idea of the perfect place for rough sleepers, as there's business people to beg cash from during the day, but nobody lives there so it's quiet at night. Things start to get a lot less quiet in the winter of 2011 though, as Tim Price's Protest Song is about what happens when someone who has no choice but to sleep rough is faced with hundreds of people who are doing it to make a political statement. St Paul's was of course the focal point of the Occupy London movement, and so for some months Danny shares his home with the protesters.

Theatre review: Constellations

So far I've had a 50/50 response to Nick Payne's plays: If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet I liked, Wanderlust I was less convinced by. The former's star Rafe Spall reunites with Payne for the playwright's most high concept play yet, and his strongest. Constellations attempts to put quantum multiverse theory on stage in the form of a tragicomic relationship. Spall and Sally Hawkins play Roland and Marianne, a couple who meet at a barbecue and... What happens next depends on which universe we're in, as the short scenes are repeated with (often small) variations that can lead to very different results. This may be the only conversation they ever share, or they may get together. He might cheat on her, or maybe she cheats on him, and they separate. A fair amount of time later they meet again by chance and may or may not rekindle their relationship, even get married. As we watch these variables develop, every so often we jump to the end of the play, which in almost all the realities will have a sad conclusion. In its intimate way it's an ambitious play that economically says a lot about the decisions we make from one moment to the next.

With new plays the attention tends to be on the writing but the nature of Constellations makes us very aware of the work director Michael Longhurst and his cast have put in. The scenes sometimes differ by only a single word or not even that, leaving a lot of the variation in how things turn out down to nuance - how much saying something in a jokey way, or seriously, or in a hurt tone, can affect great chunks of your future. Andy (who hadn't seen If There Is... but enjoyed Wanderlust) was already a big fan of Hawkins', but he particularly mentioned Spall's subtlety in how he differentiated the alternate realities. Tom Scutt's design is very simple, the ceiling full of white balloons, the floor tiled in honeycomb shapes as a nod to Roland's job as a beekeeper. One problem though is that a raised in-the-round stage in a small space means you're often being blinded by looking straight into the lights, especially when the lighting (by Lee Curran) changes suddenly, as is part of the production's aesthetic. And though no fault of Payne's, I think 2012 has already used up its quota of a certain downbeat meme. Seriously, ENOUGH NOW. That aside, a haunting and unique experience.

Constellations by Nick Payne is booking until the 11th of February at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs (returns and day seats only.)

Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes straight through.
Strobe lighting is used frequently.