Theatre review: The White Factory

Created by Russian Jewish theatremakers who've been targeted because of their opposition to the war in Ukraine, Dmitry Glukhovsky's The White Factory looks back at the Second World War, and a group of people whose story I don't think I've seen foregrounded before: You sometimes hear of the Jewish collaborators who helped the Nazis control and eventually round up their own people, in the hope that they and their families might get favourable treatment. They tend to be offered up as a cautionary tale, as their stories generally ended in the concentration camps like everyone else's, but Glukhovsky offers - if not an unquestioningly sympathetic view - a more nuanced one. The story of Yosef Kaufman (Mark Quartley) is equally charged with a steely survival instinct, and crippling survivor's guilt.

Stage-to-screen review: Henry VI Part 1Open Rehearsal Project (RSC)

The Phantom Menace of Shakespeare's Plantagenet history cycle, Henry VI Part 1 is the unloved prequel that seems to exist mainly to cause a headache for companies like the RSC and Globe: There's an expectation that they'll make their way through the entire canon every decade or so, but a couple of the plays feel like a hell of a lot of effort and expense for a show nobody will actually want to come and see. As the least popular part of an extended sequence of plays Henry VI Part 1 suffers the most from this - I've only seen it live in its own right once - and theatres tend to go for some variation of not actually staging it and saying they did. Usually this involves merging it into the other two Henry VI plays, like the Swanamaker's last attempt did particularly ruthlessly, but the RSC chose instead to make a virtue out of necessity and knock this one out as a lockdown project online: Gregory Doran and Owen Horsley directed a professional cast in rehearsals last summer, which were live-streamed for anyone interested in seeing the company's rehearsal process.

Theatre review: Wars of the Roses (RSC / RST)

I'm back in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Empire Strikes Back of Shakespeare's York v Lancaster trilogy: Originally titled Richard, Duke of York, most commonly (and confusingly) known as Henry VI Part 3, the RSC have opted for the blindingly obvious title that both Shakespeare and the First Folio editors managed to miss, Wars of the Roses. Following straight on from Rebellion, the gloves are off and so are any masks hiding who's behind the threats to Henry VI's reign. The Duke of York (Oliver Alvin-Wilson) makes his challenge known, and begins to muster forces, supported by his sons Edward, later Edward IV (Ashley D Gayle,) George (Ben Hall) and Richard (Arthur Hughes.) When the "kingmaker" Warwick (Nicholas Karimi) pledges his allegiance to the Yorkist cause as well, their victory seems assured.

Theatre review: Henry VI: Rebellion (RSC / RST)

After a couple of years kept away from Stratford-upon-Avon by Miss Rona, followed by a further delay caused by Miss Eunice, it is at least apt timing that I should return to the RSC on Shakespeare's birthday. And, leading up to the end of Gregory Doran's tenure there and the conclusion of his staging the Complete Works (some exclusions apply, the amount of plays we say Shakespeare wrote may go down as well as up) that began with Richard II, the inevitable end point was the series of Henry VI plays leading up to Richard III. The play usually known as Henry VI Part 1 is probably Shakespeare's least-loved work and the company must have been dreading having to convince people to come see it, so they used the excuse of lockdown to present it as a streamed rehearsed reading, aka Let's Not Stage It And Say We Did. Which does have the added advantage of being able to skip ahead and present a trilogy of plays that were actually intended as such.

Theatre review: Armadillo

It's hardly a fresh observation to say Americans have a uniquely odd, unhealthy relationship with guns; so it says something about Sarah Kosar's new play that she's found a new and disturbing twist on the subject. Armadillo follows three people in their late twenties who've grown up in families where firearms were seen as essential, to the point of fetishisation. For newly-married Sam (Michelle Fox) and John (Mark Quartley) the fetish has literally become sexual - they use loaded guns as foreplay, until an accident six months into their marriage leaves Sam with a gunshot wound in her arm. Realising that it's not just dangerous but an addiction, John comes up with a regime for them to give up having guns in the house. For a while they seem to be managing it, except for the fact that gunplay was so tied up in their love life that Sam can't have sex without it.

Theatre review: The War Has Not Yet Started

Southwark Playhouse's Little space kicks off the year with a rep season transferring from Plymouth. The banner name it's been given is "Strange Tales From The West Country," something certainly borne out by The War Has Not Yet Started - the strangeness at least, the country it comes from is actually Russia. Mikhail Durnenkov's play, translated here by Noah Birksted-Breen, is a darkly surreal sketch show in which Hannah Britland, Sarah Hadland and Mark Quartley run through a series of scenes of very modern paranoia and isolation. Gordon Anderson's production matter-of-factly casts the roles age- and gender-blind, so in a couple of permutations Quartley is a mother, Britland a father and Hadland their son. In the same costumes throughout they bring a naturalistic performance style to scenes that are anything but.

Theatre review: The Tempest (RSC & Intel / RST & Barbican)

At some point during rehearsals at the RSC the following conversation must surely have taken place:
"You know how we've marketed this production of The Tempest as being especially family-friendly and a good first Shakespeare for younger kids? Well there's a scene coming up that's basically a 25-minute information dump where the whole plot gets described and nothing happens visually. So you know how this production uses some of the most sophisticated projections ever seen on stage? Maybe we could use some of those to illustrate that scene?"
"... Nah."
That's right, I'm getting my usual gripe about Prospero's Basil Exposition speech out of the way early this time, and no, except for one moment Gregory Doran's production doesn't use its theatrical toolbox to make it any less dry.

Theatre review: Another Country

The past may be Another Country but I had to double-check when Julian Mitchell's play was set, as the real foreign environment in his fictionalised take on Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt is public school. It's an insular world with its own rules and language, and one that seems to exist outside of time. The play is a look at the formative years of the men who would grow up to be the country's most notorious spies for the USSR, through two fictional public schoolboys in the 1930s. Judd (Will Attenborough) is the school's resident Marxist, awake in the small hours studying theories that oppose the system he's at the heart of, and dreams of changing from within. Judd seems to be one of the few pupils in his house not to have had sex with his friend Bennett (Rob Callender,) a brazenly effeminate boy in an environment where everyone else is trying to assert their masculinity.

Theatre review: Armstrong's War

There's not much need to adapt the hospital set from As Is for the Finborough's alternate show this month, as Colleen Murphy's Armstrong's War also features someone ill - although this time there's more chance of recovery, physically at least. Michael (Mark Quartley) is a Canadian soldier recovering from a bomb injury. Between physiotherapy sessions he's pretty much left forgotten in his room, so he's agreed to let a girl guide read to him once a week so she can earn a merit badge. It's a decision he quickly regrets when wheelchair-bound 12-year-old Halley (Jessica Barden) wheels into his room, an onslaught of perkiness reading from her favourite "girl detective" novel to a man who's happiest hiding under the bed, and who occasionally stops to have a chat into thin air with an old army buddy he lost in Afghanistan.

Theatre review: Macbeth (Trafalgar Studios)

A slew of big-name productions are on their way to the West End this spring, starting with James McAvoy as Macbeth. Following the example of Michael Grandage, director Jamie Lloyd has launched his own production company with a residency at a London theatre. They're calling the season Trafalgar Transformed as designer Soutra Gilmour has turned Trafalgar Studio 1 into a traverse, with the first few rows of seating moved onto the stage, which has been raised a few feet. From my usual perspective of the (comparatively) cheap seats at the back this reconfiguration is a success - the stadium seating means sightlines have always been good, but coupled with the small stage make the view from the gods feel very disconnected. Bringing the stage a bit closer and surrounding it with audience gives a bit more of a sense of intimacy to a sometimes soulless space.