Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

I doubt too many people would be surprised to know that A Midsummer Night's Dream ranks as the most frequently-produced play in the Open Air Theatre's history, although in my personal experience (this is now my third) they've not yet managed a production that's lived up to the perfect summer setting. Atri Banerjee's won't buck that trend, though at least in a year that's not served the play particularly well it's streets ahead of the Globe's current infantile attempt. The big idea behind Banerjee's version is to build up the role of music in the play, with the fairies becoming a folk band, playing songs Maimuna Memon has composed out of the lyrics Shakespeare has provided, as well as out of a lot of the poetry usually spoken. It's an idea that provides a lot of charm, lifting the scenes that the band underscores, but it does come at the expense of the comedy.

Theatre review: Are You Watching?

The Royal Court Upstairs seems to be making a new specialist subject out of hardcore prawn of the most disturbing and misogynistic kind, as six months after Prawn Play the venue takes another - different, angrier and more scattergun but no less memorable - stab at the genre in Georgie Dettmer's debut play Are You Watching Question Mark. Jess Edwards' production takes place on a tiled traverse set by Georgia Wilmot, at one end of which are bunk beds with colourful bedding. The childlike setting is at odds with the actual, unnamed teenage girls (Kosar Ali and Abby McCann) we meet there, whose sleepover chat revolves around one-upping each other in the most disturbing thing they've seen online. Inevitably this involves a lot of violent prawn, and the particular focus becomes a series of videos Ali's character has seen.

Theatre review:Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

The year's theatre starts for me, as it often seems to, at the Donald and Margot Warehouse, where Tim Sheader's first production as Artistic Director follows on from the tradition of big musicals he established in his time at the Open Air Theatre. I approached this one with a certain amount of trepidation as I've only intermittently got on with the work of off-Broadway royalty Dave Malloy's jarring musical style in the past, but Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 has been the composer's big breakout hit, and it receives its UK premiere here with an impressive cast. Based on a subplot from War and Peace, it sees wide-eyed young aristocrat Natasha (Chumisa Dornford-May) arrive in Moscow (or MscoW, as Leslie Travers' industrial set styles it,) where the family of her fiancé Andrey lives.

Theatre review: The Grapes of Wrath

It turns out The Grapes of Wrath isn't actually about haemorrhoids - John Steinbeck's Great American Novel^TM, in an adaptation by Frank Galati which Carrie Cracknell revives at the Lyttelton, wouldn't be dealing with anything as light-hearted as that. Instead this is a definitive story of the Great Depression, and the production opens with a dramatic, balletic series of scenes (movement direction by Ira Mandela Siobhan) showing the wind ravaging the people and the overfarmed land, creating the famous Dust Bowl which left farming families across America without an income. We follow the extended Joad family, led by the endlessly kind Ma (Cherry Jones) and terminally passive Pa (Greg Hicks,) as they drive to California where, according to flyers that have been distributed across the country, there are many good jobs to be found picking peaches and grapes.

Theatre review: Portia Coughlan

One of those instances where I probably should have trusted my instincts, rather than booking everything at the Almeida to make the most of my membership, I definitely had a feeling Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan might not be my thing. As it turns out the only thing I can find fault with in Carrie Cracknell's production is the choice of play itself - Carr's 1996 tragedy certainly has some things to say about the expectations for women even at the end of the 20th century, but the way it does so is so relentlessly grim it qualifies for this year's occasional theatrical meme of misery porn. It follows the titular Portia (Alison Oliver) on the day of her thirtieth birthday, a day she spends the same way as the previous 15 years: Haunted, metaphorically and perhaps literally, by her twin brother Gabriel, who drowned himself the day after their 15th birthday.

Theatre review: Standing at the Sky's Edge

Thanks to its original run at Sheffield Theatres, Richard Hawley (music & lyrics) and Chris Bush's (book) Standing at the Sky's Edge had barely started playing at the National Theatre when it became the most-nominated musical at this year's Olivier Awards. Both venues it's played feel appropriate: Sheffield is the city its sprawling cast of characters call home; and now one of the most famous brutalist buildings in the country is a fitting place to house another surprisingly beloved concrete structure. In fact, when Ben Stones' design puts several floors of a Park Hill Estate tower block on the Olivier stage, it blends right into its surroundings. The band gets pride of place in a first-floor flat for a musical history of one specific home, where in three overlapping timelines, three generations of residents move in - starting with steelworker Harry (Robert Lonsdale) and his wife Rose (Rachael Wooding) in 1960, when the building is brand new.

Theatre review: Henry VIII (Shakespeare's Globe)

Despite being named after a monarch more famous than any of Shakespeare's other History Plays, Henry VIII has always languished in obscurity - this is only the second time I've seen the play, and I've yet to see any evidence that it deserves better. It's one of the late collaborations with John Fletcher, with all the unevenness that implies, but it's also a play that reflects the way Shakespeare's work tended to bow to the trends of its time, in this case the popularity of big spectacle and pageantry (so much so that it's best known for including the special effect that burned down the original Globe.) It also came a decade after the death of the last Tudor monarch, meaning it was now safe to portray that particular dynasty on stage, while also tapping into nostalgia for Elizabeth I's reign. All solid commercial reasons for creating a show, and the latter element feels topical, seeing it on the Jubilee weekend, but they don't suggest a great play for the ages.

Stage-to-screen review: Nine Lessons and Carols - stories for a long winter

My "stage to screen" reviews were meant to be a very occasional feature in among the live theatre trips, but of course in 2020 they've ended up dominating. For my last one of the year it's one more of the shows I'd actually booked to see live but the government's Department of Tossing a Coin to See if Theatres Can Stay Open This Week put an end to that; having dipped their toe into digital content a couple of months ago when The Duchess of Malfi was briefly made available, I wasn't surprised when the Almeida offered a recording of their seasonal show to ticket-holders as an alternative. I say seasonal, but while the short preparation time led most theatres to dust off some version of A Christmas Carol, director Rebecca Frecknall, writer Chris Bush, songwriter Maimuna Memon (who also performs) and the cast were sent off to devise a more melancholy reflection on the season and the year leading up to it with Nine Lessons and Carols - stories for a long winter.

Theatre review: Ghost Quartet

Hot on the heels of Preludes another Dave Malloy musical makes its London debut, as does the venue where it plays: The Boulevard Theatre is built on the site of a long-lost theatre of the same name in central London; the website says the Boulevard “sits in the centre of Soho’s infamous streets and alleyways,” and I don’t know that I would have personally led with a reminder of the chances of getting mugged but hey, you do you. The building was formerly the Raymond Revue Bar and still has a massive sign for it on the wall, but once you run the gauntlet of shops selling poppers and Viagra the inside is less tits’n’minge, more the looking-like-a-mid-range-hotel feel that the front of house areas of new-build theatres always go for these days. The auditorium itself is promising though – the seats are comfortable with actual leg room, and the venue looks well-equipped and flexible: Simon Kenny’s design puts us in the round but it looks like various other layouts would be possible without losing the good sightlines.