Theatre review: Imogen (Shakespeare's Globe)

Not that theatrical trends are weird and unpredictable, but this time last year I'd only ever seen one production of Cymbeline - and that would have been twenty-odd years ago - but I've since seen it three more times. It's enough to make even this bonkers plot familiar, but the Globe's version makes it clear it's got something different in mind: Matthew Dunster has retitled Shakespeare's play Imogen to put focus back on the character who actually has the most to do; but it also has the effect of warning the audience not to expect the familiar, not a bad idea in a season that's famously angered the traditionalists (or at least those confident they know best what that tradition actually is.) It turns out Imogen becomes the star turn of Emma Rice's first summer season by exemplifying its theme of experimentation that may or may not work - but of all the new productions, finding a lot more that does work.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Southwark Playhouse)

My third Midsummer Night's Dream in less than a month, and there's been at least three other productions or adaptations in London recently that I could have booked but decided not to (plus a TV version I'm saving for when I'm a bit less Dreamed out.) The RSC called their version A Play For The Nation, and that seems apt enough as it might take the entire nation to cast all these productions. At least Simon Evans' at Southwark Playhouse requires less of a hefty cast list than usual, instead putting more pressure on each of its seven actors. Evans turns it into a play-within-a-play-within-a-play, the show opening with a cast using their own names and recreating the first scene with the Mechanicals - except instead of Pyramus and Thisbe, they're trying to figure out how to share out the 17 major roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream itself. Only Melanie Fullbrook gets just the one role as the cack-handed fairy Puck, who also serves as narrator, helping to fill in the gaps.