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: A View From The Bridge

It's ten years since Ivo van Hove's production of A View From The Bridge not only made a star of the Belgian director in London and New York, but also tangibly influenced the way a lot of theatre has been approached since then. It feels a lot more recent than a decade, but then all that influence is probably part of that (along with the fact that I have seen it a bit more recently than that, as a streamed recording during lockdown.) So in some respects it probably is time for someone to revisit Arthur Miller's domestic tragedy as a whole new generation can see it with fresh eyes; but for many of us it'll be slightly odd to see a production that keeps the original details and trappings of post-War New York, where Italian-American families live under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and work - when they can find work - loading and unloading ships on the docks.

Theatre review: Sweet Charity

I started this blog in 2012, which coincided with when Josie Rourke took over the Donald and Margot Warehouse; barring the odd performance that got cancelled, that means I’ve now covered her entire run as Artistic Director as we get to her grand finale. Having had a hit with City of Angels, Rourke returns to Cy Coleman, who provides the music (with book by Neil Simon and lyrics by Dorothy Fields) for Sweet Charity. Anne-Marie Duff plays the titular Charity Hope Valentine, a New York “taxi dancer” – a barely-veiled front for prostitution, except unlike most of the other women Charity doesn’t do anything more than advertised. Nor has she really made the connection between this and the fact that she’s not managed to make any money in her eight years on the job – her tragedy is that she’s just not very bright, which combined with a romantic sensibility that makes her believe in a Hollywood ending means she invariably trusts the wrong men.

Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare's Globe)

Lots of hey! but no nonnny nonny in the Globe's latest Much Ado About Nothing, as Matthew Dunster takes the play's opening, with soldiers returning triumphant from a battle, as his cue to set the action during the Mexican Revolution in 1914. A group of fighters take a break at the home of Leonato (Martin Marquez,) where young soldier Claudio (Marcello Cruz - Hispanic Daniel Radcliffe, amirite?) falls for Leonato's daughter Hero (Anya Chalotra.) As the soldiers wait for the wedding to be hastily arranged, they amuse themselves by tricking the battling exes Benedick (Matthew Needham) and Beatrice (Beatriz Romilly) into getting back together, by convincing each that the other is desperately in love with them.

Theatre review: Imogen (Shakespeare's Globe)

Not that theatrical trends are weird and unpredictable, but this time last year I'd only ever seen one production of Cymbeline - and that would have been twenty-odd years ago - but I've since seen it three more times. It's enough to make even this bonkers plot familiar, but the Globe's version makes it clear it's got something different in mind: Matthew Dunster has retitled Shakespeare's play Imogen to put focus back on the character who actually has the most to do; but it also has the effect of warning the audience not to expect the familiar, not a bad idea in a season that's famously angered the traditionalists (or at least those confident they know best what that tradition actually is.) It turns out Imogen becomes the star turn of Emma Rice's first summer season by exemplifying its theme of experimentation that may or may not work - but of all the new productions, finding a lot more that does work.

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: Ah, Wilderness!

The Young Vic website describes Ah, Wilderness! as "Eugene O'Neill's most delightful play," a field that with the best will in the world can't have that many runners in it. Elsewhere I've seen the blunter "Eugene O'Neill's only intentional comedy." It is a surprisingly sweet affair though, something of a love letter not just to a particular woman in the playwright's life, but to young love itself. It's the Fourth of July and an extended New England family gather at the home of local newspaper editor Nat Miller (Martin Marquez.) The obvious stand-in for a young O'Neill is the middle son, George MacKay's Richard, a likeably recognisable emo teenager in Natalie Abrahami's modern-dress production. Fond of reading the works of European playwrights and poets like Wilde and Shaw - much to the concern of his mother Essie (Janie Dee) - Richard has been sending overwrought love letters to a local girl. When her father catches on, he order her to break it off immediately.

Theatre review: From Here To Eternity

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Tim Rice says he doesn't believe in long preview periods, but his producers do so the official reviewers are being kept at bay until next week.

Although based on a novel by James (not Earl) Jones, the film of From Here To Eternity is so well-known it probably qualifies Tim Rice's new musical as the latest in the movie-to-musical trend. Rice has teamed up with composer Stuart Brayson to tell the story of US soldiers stationed in Hawaii in late 1941, knowing that they're bound to be joining World War II sooner or later but not realising the incident that draws America in will come to them directly. In the meantime they're in a limbo state with little to occupy their time. Newcomer Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Robert Lonsdale) is a boxer who no longer boxes, a bugler who no longer blows the bugle, and uninterested in casual sex, which marks him out as different to the other soldiers. He falls in love with Lorene (Siubhan Harrison,) a prostitute who's also uninterested in casual sex, which marks her out out as a woman who makes poor career choices.