Theatre review: Women, Beware the Devil

James VI & I's legacy for Britain included a paranoid obsession with witchcraft which would long outlast his own reign; his son's mainly boiled down to a bloody Civil War, the temporary overthrow of the monarchy itself, and Charles I suddenly finding himself shorter by one head. Both of these dark elements of 17th century history feature in Lulu Raczka's new play at the Almeida, although Rupert Goold's slick production never quite gets to the bottom of why Women, Beware the Devil is doing any of this. In rural England in 1640, Agnes (Alison Oliver) has been accused of witchcraft, and accusation would usually be enough to get her hanged. The local lady of the Manor, Elizabeth (Lydia Leonard,) offers her protection and a job as a maid, but there's a catch: She wants Agnes to use the demonic powers she swears she doesn't have to help secure a wife for her brother: If Edward doesn't have a legitimate male heir before he dies, Elizabeth could lose her ancestral home.

Theatre review: Oslo

Getting a quick transfer from a hit Broadway run to the West End, J.T. Rogers’ Oslo first spends a couple of weeks at the Lyttelton; Bartlett Sher’s production gets an all-new British cast to tell the behind-the-scenes story of historic Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It’s the early 1990s and Middle East peace talks are dominated by the Americans, who insist on a negotiating style that puts all demands on the table – it’s never yielded results, and attacks continue from both sides. Norwegian sociologist Terje Rød-Larsen (Toby Stephens) believes he’s come up with a better model, based around smaller groups of negotiators getting to know each other as people, and chipping away slowly at concessions. Terje’s wife Mona Juul (Lydia Leonard) works at the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and helps set up a back-channel between senior Israelis and PLO members, behind the Americans’ backs.

Theatre review: Little Eyolf

Richard Eyre returns to the Almeida to conclude a trilogy he began during the previous regime, and his admirable project of improving Ibsen plays by making them quite short. Little Eyolf is the latest play Eyre has adapted and directed, and though it's not quite got the fireworks of recent productions at the venue, it does have a concentrated intensity. There's a lot of Pied Piper metaphor hanging over this story of a young couple whose marriage is broken apart by guilt. Writer Alfred (Jolyon Coy) returns to his family after a trip to the nearby mountains, having made a decision: He's giving up the moralising book he's been trying and failing to write for years, and instead will focus all his time on raising his disabled son Eyolf (Tom Hibberd, alternating with Adam Greaves-Neal and Billy Marlow,) making the child his legacy.

Theatre review: Bring Up the Bodies

The second Mantel piece at the RSC's Swan, Bring Up the Bodies carries on the story of Thomas Cromwell (Ben Miles) where Wolf Hall left off. That play saw Henry VIII (Nathaniel Parker) saddled with a wife he's gone off and who can't bear him sons, and wanting heaven and earth to be moved so he can replace her with a younger model. He got what he wanted but at the start of Bring Up the Bodies his situation feels remarkably familiar. Anne Boleyn (Lydia Leonard) has produced the future Queen Elizabeth I but a son still eludes her, yet she continues to throw her weight around at court, blind to the potential danger. With Anne wildly unpopular, there's an opportunity to satisfy a lot of people's agendas by getting rid of her when the King's gaze starts to stray towards the silly, timid Jane Seymour. And having been instrumental in securing the second wife, Cromwell knows he has to be similarly useful with marriage number 3.

Theatre review: Wolf Hall

I haven't read Hilary Mantel's double Booker-winning historical novels about Thomas Cromwell (I wasn't too fond of her Beyond Black a few years ago, so wasn't tempted by her more recent literary blockbusters.) Theatre, of course, is always much easier to tempt me with, so the RSC bringing the court of Henry VIII to their smaller Swan stage was intriguing (and, even with the train journeys factored in, quicker than reading the books.) I'm watching each show on its own, so first up is Wolf Hall, in which we join Cromwell (Ben Miles) as the trusted, but still lowly, lawyer in the service of the Lord Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey (Paul Jesson.) We're a couple of decades into Henry's reign, which means he's unhappy about Catherine of Aragon's failure to bear him a male heir - and starting to look at alternatives.