Theatre review: Electra/Persona

The latest production to employ the staging conceit of the lead actors alternating roles is Benedict Andrews' Electra Forward Slash Persona, a show that already has a pretty high concept as its starting point: Andrews' play is a mashup of Sophocles' Electra with Ingmar Bergman's film Persona, about the relationship between an actress who's suddenly turned mute and the nurse assigned to look after her. So the play opens with Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss asking an audience member in the front row to toss a coin (or in tonight's case, fling it to the ground in a wild panic.) Given the winner gets to choose which part she wants to play this would be a very easy way to rig the system and have the actors pre-agree who was going to do what*, but regardless of how much it's actually down to chance, tonight saw Blanchett opt to play Clytemnestra in the Greek Tragedy half of the evening.

Theatre review: The Seagull

Hot on the heels of a Three Sisters that found a bit more humour than usual in one of the bleaker Chekhovs comes a Seagull that focuses on the melancholy of one of the ones that's officially a comedy. Duncan Macmillan and director Thomas Ostermeier's adaptation keeps all four acts in the al fresco location where only the first usually takes place: The lakeside dacha of retired civil servant Peter Sorin (Jason Watkins,) whose insistence that the fresh country air doesn't agree with him helps him and everyone else ignore just how bad his health actually is. Spending the summer there as usual is his sister Irina Arkádina (Cate Blanchett,) a famous actress, with her new boyfriend Alexander Trigorin (Tom Burke,) a bestselling novelist. But we begin with Arkádina's son Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee,) an aspiring playwright who's premiering an experimental play he's convinced is the future of art.

Theatre review: The Cherry Orchard

The Donald and Margot Warehouse is back in its occasional in-the-round configuration for Benedict Andrews' version of The Cherry Orchard, with Magda Willi covering the stage and walls in heavily-patterned orange carpet, signalling from the start a different aesthetic for Chekhov's final play, and the one widely interpreted as anticipating the Russian Revolution. The formerly wealthy family hurtling towards a doom they refuse to see coming have owned a large estate for generations, but are now seriously in debt: Gaev (Michael Gould) has been in charge of managing the estate, which he's done good-naturedly but ineptly; his sister Ranevskaya (Nina Hoss) on the other hand seems to actively haemorrhage money, whether through her attraction to dodgy men who invariably rip her off, or through genuinely seeming not to understand the value of the cash she spends or gives away.

Theatre review: Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train

Kate Hewitt's production of Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train is the first time Stephen Adly Guirgis' play has been revived in London since 2010, when I saw a production at the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios. The Young Vic's main house is a much larger space but set designer Magda Willi has found interesting ways to evoke the different kinds of confinement and freedom in this prison-set drama. The location is New York's Rikers Island prison, and as the play opens the glass walls on Willi's traverse set form a small central cell where Angel Cruz (Ukweli Roach) waits to hear his fate. He's there because, after all his attempts to free his friend from a cult failed, he shot the "son of god" cult leader in the ass. He's facing an attempted murder charge but insists he only planned to hurt the man, and his lawyer should be able to plead the charge down; until complications in surgery kill his victim and he suddenly finds himself up for First Degree Murder.

Theatre review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In a Young Vic production that, for the first time, skips the Young Vic entirely and goes straight to the West End (and its prices,) the theatre follows up Benedict Andrews’ revolving Streetcar Named Desire with another of the most famous Tennessee Williams plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We’re still in a sweltering part of the American South (Tennessee itself, this time,) but unlike most Williams characters nobody here is strapped for cash: Big Daddy (Colm Meaney) owns the largest plantation in the state, and his whole family have gathered to celebrate his 65th birthday. What most of the family knows but he doesn’t is that this is his last birthday: The tests he was told came back negative actually revealed he has terminal cancer and very little time left. We see the action from the perspective of alcoholic younger son Brick (Jack O’Connell) and his wife Maggie (Sienna Miller.)

Theatre review: A Streetcar Named Desire

If a sign of what makes "event theatre" is how hard it is to get tickets, then Gillian Anderson in A Streetcar Named Desire must be the biggest show of the year. Even for a ticket-booking ninja like me the experience was traumatic, featuring as it did a woefully unprepared and overloaded website, and nearly 24 hours' worth of assaults on the booking link before I could get anything. At least those who do manage to get seats will have as good a view regardless of where they end up, thanks to one of the most notable features of Benedict Andrews's production. Andrews was last at the Young Vic two years ago with a Three Sisters that brought Chekhov both into the present day and out of the traditional trappings, and he does the same now for Tennessee Williams. The New Orleans of this Streetcar is decidedly modern-day white trash, Magda Willi's set the skeleton of a small prefab apartment that Stella Kowalski (Vanessa Kirby) shares with her husband Stanley (Ben Foster.)