Theatre review: The Motive and the Cue

The National Theatre has lured a couple of the most commercially successful British playwrights amd screenwriters to the South Bank to premiere new shows this season, starting with Jack Thorne in the Lyttelton, with stage and screen director Sam Mendes at the helm of a play about screen stars, and what draws them to the stage. The Motive and the Cue is inspired by the real story of Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn,) who in the middle of the honeymoon for (one of) his marriages to Elizabeth Taylor (Tuppence Middleton) went to Broadway to rehearse for Hamlet. John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) had already become a legendary Shakespearean actor by his mid-20s, but by 1964 and at the age of 60 his glory days seem to be far behind him.

Theatre review: The Way Old Friends Do

In programming that seems targeted at the gaiety but seems to have mainly attracted parties of women whose body composition is 60% Prosecco, the Park's main stage hosts Ian Hallard's latest, less kinky look at gay midlife crises. In The Way Old Friends Do, set between 2015 and 2020 with the occasional throwaway reference to topical events from those years, Peter (Hallard) has a surprise blast from the past when his Grindr date turns out to be Edward (James Bradshaw,) the best friend from school he hasn't spoken to in decades. A hookup's not on the cards but they do reconnect, and when Peter's friend Sally (Donna Berlin) mentions an ABBA tribute act has dropped out of an upcoming performance at the theatre where she works, Edward suggests they take over. Peter is a lifelong ABBA fan who can step into Agnetha's platform shoes, while Edward has always wanted to be Frida.

Theatre review: The Unfriend

Former Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat goes back to his sitcom roots for his playwrighting debut, and brings along some more TV connections - his regular collaborator Mark Gatiss directs black comedy The Unfriend, first seen in Chichester and now transferring to the Criterion. It mines familiar comic territory by throwing some truly objectionable people on stage together, and some of the characters aren't very nice either. Grumpily-married London couple Peter (Reece Shearsmith) and Debbie (Amanda Abbington) meet brash Denver widow Elsa (Frances Barber) on a cruise, and after a lot of emails invite her to stay for a few days. It's only on the day she arrives that they decide to do a quick Google search on her name, and discover she's suspected of being a serial poisoner who's killed at least six people - but had never left quite enough evidence behind for a case to stick.

Stage-to-screen review: The Madness of George III

National Theatre At Home, which uses recordings made during the NT Live cinema screenings that have become very popular internationally in the last ten years, has been at the forefront of online theatre in lockdown, with whole shows being made available on YouTube for one week only. I only haven't mentioned them on this blog yet because, being predominantly shows from the NT itself, I'd already seen them live and reviewed them at the time*. In recent weeks the NT has expanded the project's horizons though, offering shows from other venues, and with it the opportunity to share in the fundraising drive. This week this means a trip to Nottingham Playhouse, and Adam Penford's production of The Madness of George III. Alan Bennett's enduring play looks at the institution of royalty in all its alienness and pomp, and the frail, sometimes banal humanity holding it up.

Theatre review: Queers Part 2

A companion piece to Friday's one-off performance at the Old Vic, Max Webster joins Mark Gatiss on directing duties for the concluding four monologues from BBC4's Queers series. Once again the stories take us through the decades before and after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, beginning during the Blitz with Keith Jarrett's The Safest Spot in Town. Kadiff Kirwan plays a dapper West Indian who immigrated to London a few years earlier, finding a more insidious, two-faced form of racism than he'd expected. The arrival of German bombers has created, for a while at least, a more inclusive atmosphere as everyone's up against a common enemy. But, in what is probably the slightest of the eight short plays, he finds it hard to forget being turned away from the places that now want his custom, and goes cottaging instead - a life-changing decision.

Theatre review: Queers Part 1

It hasn't been marked quite as ubiquitously on stage as the centenary of the First World War, the 4th centenary of Shakespeare's death or even the King James Bible were, but theatres are now starting to step up the events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. The Old Vic has paired up with the BBC, whose Queer Britain season includes the upcoming Queers on BBC4, eight monologues curated by Mark Gatiss giving snapshots of gay life before and after decriminalisation, to give each one of the short plays a one-off live performance. About half of the performers from the TV version have been able to reprise their roles, with the rest recast, and Gatiss shares directing duties with Joe Murphy on Part 1 as well as writing the first of the four stories in this first collection.

Theatre review: The Boys in the Band

A genuine classic of gay theatre - groundbreaking in its subject matter at the time, and with a clear influence on later writers' work - Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band gets revived by Adam Penford for the Park Theatre. A look at gay life in 1968 New York, its characters have found a subculture they feel reasonably safe in, but their sexuality is still something they need to keep behind closed doors. Michael (Ian Hallard) is hosting a birthday party for Harold (Mark Gatiss) who, as always, is expected to show up late. An early arrival is Donald (Daniel Boys,) Michael's on-off lover and a neurotic who's had to move out of the city as can't handle it full-time. The rest of the invited guests all soon turn up, as does an unexpected one - Michael's college roommate Alan (John Hopkins,) who hasn't been told about his friend's sexuality.

Theatre review: Three Days in the Country

The summer of Patrick Marber Must Have Some Dirt On Rufus Norris concludes in the Lyttelton (although he hasn't had a show in The Artist Formerly Known As Shed yet, so maybe there's more to come?) This time Marber turns to Russian theatre and Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, which he re-writes, directs and compacts down to Three Days in the Country. Rakitin (John Simm) is visiting old friends at their country estate, but while he's been not-so-secretly in love with Natalya (Amanda Drew) for the best part of 20 years, her husband and his best friend Arkady (John Light) never seems to have cottoned on. Rakitin arrives for another bout of declarations of love she never quite reciprocates, but there's a new dynamic now: The couple recently hired a new tutor for their son, the handsome and brooding Belyaev (Royce Pierreson.) All the women in the house seem to have fallen for him, including Natalya herself. In fact she's quite convinced that she's in love with Belyaev to an extent that she never felt for Rakitin or her husband.

Stage-to-screen review: The Vote

The second James Graham political play to have been running in London concurrently with The Angry Brigade, tickets for The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse were allocated by ballot, so although I applied I wasn't able to see the show at the theatre. I guess that's democracy for you, Donmar members didn't get preferential treatment, and neither did critics - it's just a fortuitous coincidence that all the newspaper critics' applications successfully got them tickets for the same night. And just in time to give it a boost for its showing on More4 on election night! That was the alternative option for those of us who didn't get to see the starry cast in the flesh, a live broadcast at the exact time that the show is set: 8:30 to 10pm, the final 90 minutes of voting in a Lambeth polling station. It's a marginal seat and, with the election looking like a closer-run thing than it actually turned out to be, every vote could be crucial.

Theatre review: Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse)

"Tom Hiddleston showering on stage." According to my blog stats, I've already been getting hits from people Googling that phrase long before I even saw the show. So there you go, at least now those people will actually find something for their troubles. Yes, Hiddles does take a shower on stage, although it's more like a quick splash. Calm down, he doesn't even take his trousers off, it's not like he's getting his Coriolanus bleached. He does also share a kiss with a man, but that's more of a quick peck on the lips than anything to get the Internet too moist in the gusset. But if these two headline-grabbing moments are nothing much to write home about, it's fortunately because they're throwaway elements of a solid production, as Josie Rourke tackles a simply staged but interesting Coriolanus.

Theatre review: 55 Days

Howard Brenton's run of historical/political plays continues with a look at the English Civil War, and the 55 Days leading up to Charles I's execution. Hampstead Theatre's main house has been configured in traverse for the clash between Charles (Mark Gatiss) and Oliver Cromwell (Douglas Henshall,) the man who would go on to lead the country's brief period as a republic. Cromwell speaks of the power of the people but right from the start this is a story of rules being bent, broken and rewritten completely to get the desired result. When Parliament votes overwhelmingly against putting the king on trial for treason, the republican-leaning army "purges" the Commons by getting rid of all the MPs who voted in Charles' favour.

Theatre review: The Recruiting Officer

Captain Plume has been courting Silvia for some time, and Mr Worthy has been courting her cousin Melinda. But when both women come into unexpected fortunes, the men find themselves socially inferior to their prospective brides, and so no longer considered worthy of marrying them. Josie Rourke opens her first season at the Donmar Warehouse with George Farquhar's 18th Century comedy set in Shrewsbury, where Plume (Tobias Menzies) is on the hunt for more soldiers for the endless wars in Europe. Together with his recruiting officer Sergeant Kite (Mackenzie Crook) he's more than willing to use underhand tactics to get the local men to sign up.