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: 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: Amélie

My final theatre trip of 2019 isn't explicitly a Christmas show - in fact it very specifically takes place in the late summer and early autumn of 1997 - but it certainly feels seasonally magical and warm-hearted. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2001 film Amélie was an international hit, which got away with its wilfully naïve nature with a genuinely warm and distinct brand of eccentricity. The word here is whimsy, and regular readers will both know that means I'll go into Craig Lucas (book,) Daniel Messé (music and lyrics) and Nathan Tysen's (lyrics) musical adaptation with a great deal of apprehension. Not because I don't necessarily like whimsy, but because in my experience it's incredibly hard to pull off without overdoing it. In fact, thanks to The Other Palace leaving the audience crushed in the foyer with no explanation, only opening the doors at the time the show was meant to start, and therefore inevitably starting late, Amélie had it all to do to get me on side; but it soon did with apparent effortlessness.

Theatre review: The Importance of Being Earnest

Dominic Dromgoole’s Classic Spring company was set up to present late 19th and early 20th century classics in the West End proscenium arch theatres they were written for, the suggestion being that’s something of a unique opportunity. While that might have been the case with some of the more obscure plays that opened the Oscar Wilde season, the concluding part is The Importance of Being Earnest, whose last West End revival wasn’t only three years ago, but in the same theatre, the Vaudeville. At the time I said the twenty-year gap I’d left since last seeing the play was probably about right given its ubiquity and familiarity, and I hadn’t been planning to return for this version. But the combination of Michael Fentiman directing and Sophie Thompson reclaiming the role of Lady Bracknell for actual female actors was tempting, and with a quiet August week on the horizon I decided to fill a spare evening seeing if some well-worn bon mots could feel fresh.

Theatre review: The Harvest

Michael Boyd never did get round to completing that Russian season he kept announcing when he was running the RSC, and he doesn't seem to have got it out of his system now he's back to freelance directing: The Harvest is by Pavel Pryazhko, originally from Belarus and apparently the current darling of Russian theatre. Boyd also brings with him a familiar face from the Ensemble^TM to keep him company: Dyfan Dwyfor plays Valerii, the informal leader - because he's done the job before - of a quartet making a bit of cash picking apples in a large orchard. Valerii instructs the others on how best to store the apples, while competing with Egor (Dafydd Llyr Thomas) for the attentions of Ira (Beth Park) and Lyuba (Lindsey Campbell.) This particular kind of apple is meant to be left to ripen for some months after picking, so a single bruised fruit in a crate is not to be allowed.

Theatre review: The Chronicles of Kalki

Concluding the Gate's patchy "Who Does She Think She Is?" season on women and identity is, for me, the most interesting of the imported American shows we've seen get their UK premieres here. Alex Brown directs a breathless production of Aditi Brennan Kapil's play The Chronicles of Kalki, which sees a pair of teenage girls find empowerment with the help of a friend who may or may not be the living embodiment of a god. Kalki (Amrita Acharia) is the new girl in school, arriving halfway through an RE class about the avatars of Hindu gods. She befriends two girls whom she nicknames Meat (Angela Terence) and Betty (Jordan Loughran.) Never the most popular girls in school, they've even turned on each other recently, each thinking the other is holding her popularity back. Betty wants to be accepted by the resident gang of mean girls, the C-Cups, while Meat just wants the boys to notice her.