Theatre review: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

A new production of Christopher Hampton's best-known play, an adaptation of a novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos at the Lyttelton, marks Marianne Elliott's first time back at the National since Angels In America. Although this, and most other elements of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, seem to have been overshadowed by Lesley Aisons Manville, who's turned out to be surprisingly camera-shy for a film star. Manville plays the Marquise de Merteuil, the most in-demand guest of 18th Century Paris aristocracy's social life. Merteuil is a widow who, comfortable in her wealth and standing, entertains herself by taking numerous lovers, as well as orchestrating affairs and scandals for others. She's particularly fond of corrupting wide-eyed innocents, but has managed to keep her activities in the shadows, and her own reputation spotless.

Theatre review: The Unbelievers

It's a bit too vague for me to put my finger on as a meme of the year, but I definitely feel like there have been a lot of shows recently where the overall tone has been at odds with the subject matter, but in a deliberate way that works surprisingly well. Nick Payne's return to the stage is one of the clearest examples of this: We can use the word "hysterical" to mean two very different things, and the way The Unbelievers applies it to the story of a traumatised mother is unexpected and unpredictable. FD Nicola Walker plays Miriam, whose 15-year-old son Oscar didn't show up at school one day, and was never seen again. Payne's story jumps backwards and forwards seven years, from the days shortly after the disappearance when the police are mobilising a task force, to the point where the rest of the family are trying to persuade her that holding a memorial for Oscar might be a good idea, and various moments in between.

Theatre review: Cock

You're subconsciously trying to prove something, and we won't blame you for that, but you have to understand it has consequences for the people involved. Parklife!

This spring is going to be busy with new Mike Bartlett work, but before that a high-profile revival: It's been over a decade since he first showed London his Cock, but now it returns, and with it return limited runs with big-name casting. The original production starred Ben Whishaw and Andrew Scott, but that was very much when they were mainly known to theatre audiences, before Peruvian bears, horny priests and Bond films brought them to a wider audience. For the play's West End debut at the Ambassadors, Marianne Elliott has got the male leads very much at the height of their popularity (with prices to match, although it turns out the more reasonably priced back of the Circle has decent sightlines, and legroom that's... not great, but not technically a human rights violation.) The attention-grabbing title has various possible meanings, but at the heart is a man whose relationships deteriorate into something resembling a cockfight.

TV review: Talking Heads -Nights in the Garden of Spain / The Hand of God

I do like a random connection in my shows and the new 2020 remake of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads has featured Martin Freeman, plus Sarah Lancashire, his intended co-star in James Graham's 2017 comedy Labour of Love, and now Tamsin Greig, who actually appeared as his sparring partner in that play when Lancashire had to pull out. Greig appears in the latest of my double bills, a pair from the second, 1998 series, and although still laced with sadness these are two of the most straightforwardly funny monologues from the collection. The comedy is very dark in Nights in the Garden of Spain, which Marianne Elliott directs, as Greig's quietly unhappy Rosemary uncovers the dark underside of her bland suburban neighbourhood. And all it takes is helping her neighbour deal with the sudden death of her husband - because she's just shot him.

TV review: Talking Heads - A Lady of Letters /An Ordinary Woman / Soldiering On

I can't realistically brand the new Talking Heads as "stage-to-screen" since they originated on TV in the first place; but Alan Bennett's beloved '80s and '90s monologues have occasionally been produced on stage as well, and this new lockdown version corralled by Bennett's regular collaborator Nicholas Hytner features a new collection of current and future dames who are mostly stage regulars, and some big theatre names directing. So I think we can call them stagey enough to keep my blogging muscles exercised on. Monologues filmed on an existing set - the Eastenders complex - are a clever way of making socially-distanced TV without resorting to the ubiquitous Zoom calls, and while I agree that giving some out-of-work playwrights the job of creating new ones might have been a better way of supporting talent, there's nothing stopping the BBC from doing that as well, and if something's acclaimed as a modern classic it should be able to stand up to reinvention.

Theatre review: Death of a Salesman

Spoiler alert: The salesman still dies.

If London's unofficial Arthur Miller festival has been all about the playwright's unforgiving criticism of capitalism, it's only fitting that its finale is Death of a Salesman, in which an unremarkable man gives his life to the system in hope of its promised rewards, and is instead discarded by it as soon at his usefulness is done. But as is very clear in Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell's production this is actually the tragedy of two men, father and son, each broken by a different aspect of what the American Dream promised them. Willy Loman (Wendell Pierce) is a 63-year-old travelling salesman who's been doing the job since his teens, and returns home early from a trip after a near-miss car accident. It's one of many in recent months and his wife Linda (Sharon D. Clarke) has reason to believe they've not been accidents at all but suicide attempts.

Theatre review: Company

Marianne Elliott’s production of Company has been a long time coming – tickets have been on sale for a year and a lot of excitement has been built up over Elliott’s twist to the famous 1970 musical: Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s story of the one singleton in a friendship group full of couples has gender-flipped the lead, with a number of other characters either following suit, or having their roles mixed around a bit to suit the new premise. Bobbie (Rosalie Craig) is turning 35, and her friends are waiting at her apartment to throw a surprise birthday party; when she arrives they will inevitably keep bringing the subject round to her single status and asking when she’s going to get married. The show’s original working title was Threes, because that’s what Bobbie keeps finding herself in as her married friends invite her to be a third wheel and see how great coupled life is – something that’s not as convincing as they think it is.

Theatre review: Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle

Getting in on the Breaking Bad theme before Bryan Cranston himself arrives on the London stage, Marianne Elliott launches her new production company with Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle. But there's neither a real scientist nor a fictional drug kingpin to be seen because this is the latest play from Simon Stephens, a writer more than a little fond of cryptic titles whose connection to the subject matter is hard to pin down. 75-year-old butcher Alex (Kenneth Cranham) is minding his own business, listening to music on a bench in a train station, when 42-year-old American waitress Georgie (Anne-Marie Duff) kisses him on the back of the neck. She says she couldn't help it because he reminded her of her late husband, but she soon confesses that everything she said to him at first was a lie: She's actually a primary school receptionist who's never married but has a 19-year-old son, who's moved back to New Jersey to get away from her.

Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 2: Perestroika

Previously, on Angels in America...

I can joke but while I may have seen the two parts of Angels in America a week apart, Phill, who could only get tickets two months apart, wondered if he'd need a "Previously..." at the start of Part 2 to refresh his memory. And it turns out the National have thought of people in that predicament, as my reminder email about Perestroika included a short YouTube video summarising the major events of Millennium Approaches. These included the brief appearance by Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown,) a woman convicted of treason decades earlier, whose execution Roy Cohn ensured by dubious means. Her ghost continues to appear to Cohn (Nathan Lane) as a patient, ominous harbinger of his own much slower death from AIDS. There's also a bigger role now for Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett,) who's got the unenviable job of being Cohn's nurse, and whose acidic put-downs make him the right man to stand up to the notorious lawyer's vitriol.

Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 1: Millennium Approaches

For the second year in a row London's hottest theatre ticket, with reviews to match the level of anticipation, is an epic play in two parts with a supernatural element. But far from the obvious appeal of Harry Potter, this year it's a 25-year-old American play about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s that was the instant sell-out. Tony Kushner's Angels in America comes in at well over seven hours, the first three acts of which are haunted by a sense of dread at something apocalyptic on the way - hence its subtitle, Millennium Approaches. Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) is a flaboyant gay man who's just found out he's got the virus. His boyfriend of a few years, Louis Ironson (James McArdle,) is still deeply in love with him but very quickly realises a fact he hates himself for: He can't handle staying with Prior to watch him get sick and die.

Theatre review: Husbands & Sons

The National's new epic is called Husbands & Sons but it's the wives and mothers - underappreciated and overbearing, respectively - who hold centre stage. Ben Power adapts three DH Lawrence stories of a coal-mining town between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in 1911, having them play out in parallel in a single neighbourhood. Three houses are marked out on Bunny Christie's in-the-round set: At the Holroyds', Lizzie (Anne-Marie Duff) is always saying she's finally had enough of her husband Charles (Martin Marquez,) an angry drunk who's not above stumbling home in the middle of the night with other women in tow. But she always takes him back, despite the efforts of the plant's electrician Blackmore (Philip McGinley,) even when he reveals he's in love with her, and his plan to help her escape with him to Spain.

Theatre review: Rules for Living

For the final production in Nicholas Hytner's 12 years in charge of the National Theatre, he brings out one of the star directors of his tenure, Marianne Elliott. But in a final season that has brought big-name actors and writers back to the South Bank, it seems a bit surprising that his swansong would be a family comedy - set at Christmas, but premiering in March - by a less well known playwright, in the smallest of the permanent theatres. All becomes clear though on watching Sam Holcroft's high-concept comedy Rules for Living: Hytner wanted to go out with a party. The unseasonal setting isn't distracting as Christmas is just the easiest excuse to bring a family together: Matthew (Miles Jupp) brings his girlfriend Carrie (Maggie Service) to stay at his parents' home for the first time, where they'll be joined by his brother Adam (Stephen Mangan) and his wife Sheena (Claudie Blakley.) Before lunch they'll play an unnecessarily complicated board game, as is the family tradition.

Re-review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

If you don't know the plot of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, or anything about the adaptation by Simon Stephens and Marianne Elliott's hit production, you can read my previous reviews from when it ran at the Cottesloe and the Apollo, to get up to speed. The latter run came to an abrupt end when the ceiling fell in, but after a 7-month hiatus it's back, crossing the road to the Gielgud. It's not a desire to see the show in every theatre it sets up camp in that brought me back a third time (I won't be following it around on its upcoming tour or to Broadway, I'm not a crazy person.) It was rather the second major cast change that made me want to witness its return. Not just Graham Butler as the painfully literal-minded protagonist Christopher Boone, but Nicolas Tennant as his father Ed also seemed like perfect casting.

Theatre review: The Light Princess

A lot of long-awaited projects have been finally making their way to the stage at the National this year; after the Lester/Kinnear/Hytner Othello and before the SRB/Mendes Lear, comes Tori Amos' debut as a composer of musical theatre. With Samuel Adamson she's adapted The Light Princess from a fairytale by George MacDonald. Two warring kingdoms separated by a dangerous forest, Lagobel is rich in gold but plagued by drought, a problem that, as its name suggests, Sealand doesn't have. When Princess Althea of Lagobel (Rosalie Craig) loses her mother, she deals with it by becoming unable to find anything serious again, her lightness of spirit manifesting itself literally as she starts to float. When the same thing happens to Prince Digby of Sealand (Nick Hendrix) he goes the other way and becomes a humourless warrior. When the nations' animosity finally breaks out into war, the two are pitted against each other but, of course, opposites attract.

Theatre review: Sweet Bird of Youth

Tennessee Williams is almost always a hit with me so one of his plays I hadn't seen before, Sweet Bird of Youth, was something to look forward to. The Old Vic's new production is probably guaranteed success anyway as it's coaxed Kim Cattrall back to the London stage to play the drink and drug-addled, faded Hollywood star Alexandra Del Lago. When her attempt at a comeback goes badly wrong, she goes into hiding (although her attempt to go incognito does involve her calling herself The Princess Kosmonopolis, so not exactly hiding very well) along the way picking up a young gigolo, Chance Wayne (Seth Numrich.) Chance drives her around the anonymous towns of America, but when Alexandra wakes up in a hotel room in St Cloud she doesn't realise Chance hasn't brought them there by, well, chance: This is his home town, and he's got a plan to get back his childhood sweetheart Heavenly (Louise Dylan) and find stardom for both of them.

Re-review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I put the original Cottesloe run of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at #2 in my best shows of 2012, and would have probably returned to see it again had it not sold out its entire run before it even opened. The initial success, based on the popularity of Mark Haddon's original novel, was borne out by the overwhelmingly positive reception to Simon Stephens' adaptation, and has led to a West End transfer which seems to be enjoying similar levels of success - it's not been open long at the Apollo but has already extended its booking period twice. The transfer gives me the opportunity to experience it again, as well as to see how the staging that was very specific to the Cottesloe fares when adapted to a proscenium arch stage. Plus I could bring along Andy, who had to miss out the first time, and Penny and Amy, both fans of the book.

Theatre review: Port

It's been almost half an hour since Simon Stephens wrote a new play and the National Theatre are clearly worried audiences might be suffering withdrawal symptoms. So they've dug into his archives and Marianne Elliott (who directed this play's premiere in 2002 and most recently collaborated with Stephens on The Curious Incident) directs Port in the Lyttelton. Over two-and-a-half hours Stephens makes the case for his home town of Stockport as the most depressing place on earth, a concrete tomb in Lizzie Clachan's design, where we first meet Racheal (Kate O'Flynn) in 1988, aged 11. In a drunken fit of violence her father Jonathan (Jack Deam) has locked himself into the flat so Racheal's mother Christine (Liz White) has taken her children to the car, where they sit all night waiting for a sign that Jonathan might let them back into their home.

Theatre review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a huge hit a few years back and clearly remains beloved: Simon Stephens' stage adaptation for the National Theatre sold out its entire run long before it even started previewing. 15-year-old Christopher Boone has behavioural problems on the autistic spectrum (contrary to what the book's original blurb stated, Haddon doesn't like his character's condition labelled as Asperger Syndrome.) He dislikes strangers and human contact in general, screaming in panic if even one of his parents touches him. He does like animals though, as well as maths and the colour red (but definitely not yellow or brown.) At the start of the play Christopher lives alone with his father in Swindon, his mother, as far as he knows, having died two years earlier. When he finds his neighbour's dog violently killed and is falsely accused of the crime, he sets out to discover who really did it - only to find a lot more secrets than he was expecting.