Theatre review: Othello (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

Othello's a part that can be played as quite a young and dynamic soldier who's risen, through skill, quickly through the ranks to become a decorated general. There's also a couple of throwaway lines about him being older than his wife, that have helped foster a different tradition of him being a much older man. So among Shakespearean leading roles it's perhaps the one that's least likely to raise eyebrows when David Harewood revisits, at 59, a part he first played 28 years ago at the National, famously becoming the first black actor to do so there. This time he's in the West End, paired with an equally popular star, Toby Jones, as his Iago. The latter is his long-standing friend and brother in arms, or at least so he thinks; Othello's overlooking him for promotion has brought to the surface long-held resentments, and he now plans to take a convoluted revenge involving the general's new wife.

Theatre review: East is South

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Hampstead Theatre invites the critics in next week.

After The Invention of Love saw Hampstead Theatre's main stage get caught up in classical analysis for a couple of hours, Beau Willimon's East is South threatens to do the same thing but with theology. In a secretive facility somewhere under an American desert, international teams of computer coders have been developing "Aggie," an AI more powerful than any seen yet - one that may not only end up passing for real human intelligence, but supercede it. Developers work in pairs and no new code can be approved without checks by multiple teams, but for all the security checks there's been a breach that might see Aggie escape onto the Internet. Lena (Kaya Scoledario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are one of the teams working on the kill switch, the code that can shut down the programme if it gets too powerful and out of control.

Theatre review: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

This year's big-name West End casting is getting into its stride now, and after her all-conquering Gypsy Imelda Staunton is one of the biggest; although, having long been a stage stalwart the amount of seasons Conleth Hill has managed to survive in Game of Thrones must have made him a draw to much of the audience as well. Add Luke Treadaway and you've got a high-powered cast for James Macdonald's revival of a 20th century American classic. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the archetypal story of a toxic marriage imploding but, as slowly becomes apparent over one very long night, the situation is even more twisted than it initially appears. George (Hill) is a History lecturer at a small East Coast university, and as his wife Martha (Staunton) is the daughter of the all-powerful college president, it might be expected that he'd have easily advanced in his career.

Stage-to-screen review: Richard III (BBC Hollow Crown)

What do BBC budget cuts look like? Geoffrey Streatfeild with some muesli on his face to show that Edward IV is poorly, that's what they look like.

It's been tempting throughout this second series of The Hollow Crown to see adaptors Ben Power and Dominic Cooke as using the re-cut Henry VI Part 1 and especially Part 2 as warm-up for the main event of The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, whether because of  Brobdingnag Arafat being cast in the title role or simply because it's always been the most popular play in the tetralogy. And while there's been some strong moments along the way to belie the fact that these are Cooke's first foray into directing for the screen, there's no denying that he's saved the flourish for the finale. With the exception of the climactic Battle of Bosworth Field, there's not so many wide open spaces as before, instead the "bottled spider" gets to work in claustrophobic rooms with a lot of blue filters (so blue at one point it looks like Barry Chuckle is wearing electric blue nail polish.)

Re-review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I put the original Cottesloe run of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at #2 in my best shows of 2012, and would have probably returned to see it again had it not sold out its entire run before it even opened. The initial success, based on the popularity of Mark Haddon's original novel, was borne out by the overwhelmingly positive reception to Simon Stephens' adaptation, and has led to a West End transfer which seems to be enjoying similar levels of success - it's not been open long at the Apollo but has already extended its booking period twice. The transfer gives me the opportunity to experience it again, as well as to see how the staging that was very specific to the Cottesloe fares when adapted to a proscenium arch stage. Plus I could bring along Andy, who had to miss out the first time, and Penny and Amy, both fans of the book.

Theatre review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a huge hit a few years back and clearly remains beloved: Simon Stephens' stage adaptation for the National Theatre sold out its entire run long before it even started previewing. 15-year-old Christopher Boone has behavioural problems on the autistic spectrum (contrary to what the book's original blurb stated, Haddon doesn't like his character's condition labelled as Asperger Syndrome.) He dislikes strangers and human contact in general, screaming in panic if even one of his parents touches him. He does like animals though, as well as maths and the colour red (but definitely not yellow or brown.) At the start of the play Christopher lives alone with his father in Swindon, his mother, as far as he knows, having died two years earlier. When he finds his neighbour's dog violently killed and is falsely accused of the crime, he sets out to discover who really did it - only to find a lot more secrets than he was expecting.