Theatre review: All My Sons

Outside of Belgium and the Netherlands, it was A View From The Bridge that really announced Ivo van Hove as a big-name director, and more than a decade later he returns to Arthur Miller in a production that mirrors a lot of what made that show distinctive, without feeling like an outright copy. In fact visually this seems, if not a complete change of aesthetic, definitely freed from the very strict house style that has sometimes felt like a straitjacket in recent years. So An D'Huys' costumes are timeless rather than aggressively, anachronistically modern, and Jan Versweyveld's set, though still minimalist, has an almost Japanese spareness dominated by a large sun-like window, and a stage scattered with petals that could be cherry blossom: All My Sons opens with a tree crashing to the ground during a storm.

theatre review: hang

for her new play, hang, debbie tucker green returns to the subject of her 2008 hit random, which saw an ordinary family devastated by a sudden crime. but this production, which tucker green also directs, has a much more high-concept starting point: she takes us to an alternate present day where not only is the death penalty still in use, but the victims of crime have a say in the punishment. one (claire rushbrook) and two (shane zaza) are civil servants working in an anonymous office, where they have a meeting with three (marianne jean-baptiste) to discuss a decision she's had the last couple of years to come to. she knows on the way in what she's going to say - and the play's title means it's no huge secret from the audience - but the necessary bureaucracy before we get to that point is where the play's story lies, as the tensions of the last few years come to the surface.

Theatre review: The Amen Corner

Marianne Jean-Baptiste makes a rare return to the London stage to take the lead in James Baldwin's 1965 play The Amen Corner at the National. She's sister Margaret, pastor at a Harlem church, with very strict rules she expects her flock to live by (despite the fact that one of her parishioners is desperate for work, she refuses to condone him accepting a job driving a whiskey delivery truck, even though he wouldn't be drinking himself.) Her style of preaching seems to have made her popular in the church but the first sign of weakness prompts the animosity of the church elders to come to the surface. Sister Margaret's absence for a week is the first thing to rile them - her trip to visit an affiliate church in Philadelphia makes them wonder why they're paying for it out of church funds. But it's her family life that'll prove the real Achilles heel.