Theatre review: Between Riverside and Crazy

Most actors take a bit of a break after playing King Lear; Danny Sapani barely seems to have taken a breath between his run at the Almeida and another intense, deeply damaged leading man at Hampstead, in Stephen Adly Guirgis' 2014 play Between Riverside and Crazy. Eight years ago Walter "Pops" Washington (Sapani) had to retire from the NYPD after being shot six times by a rookie cop - not actually in the line of duty, although his former employers have more or less treated him as if he was. But Pops has turned down every compensation offer they've ever made, preferring to continue being a thorn in their side and an embarrassment to them, who's still convinced he can get a settlement worth millions. Now Pops' wife has died after a long illness, and he's filled his large rent-controlled apartment with a collection of ex-cons he's trying to help reform.

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: The Tragedy of King Richard The Second (Almeida)

Simon Russell Beale first made his name as a Shakespearean actor taking on roles that didn't always seem immediately obvious fits for him (I first saw him as Edgar in King Lear, then Ariel in The Tempest.) By contrast Richard II seems like a part he was born to play, but in recent years he's often said he regretted never getting the chance while he was young enough (the real king died aged 33, inasmuch as historical accuracy ever matters where Shakespeare's Histories are concerned.) If someone was going to come along and give him the chance to play the part in his fifties, it makes sense for it to be Joe Hill-Gibbins, never a director to get too hung up on the literal. Hill-Gibbins has restored the full original title The Tragedy of King Richard The Second but elsewhere he and Jeff James have ruthlessly cut down the text so the play comes in at a little over 90 minutes.

Theatre review: An Adventure

It may only have a cast of six, rarely putting more than three of them on stage at the same time, but coming in at nearly three and a half hours and spanning three continents An Adventure fits the bill if Vinay Patel was aiming to create an epic. Inspired by his grandparents’ journey to the UK, it begins in India where Jyoti (played initially by Anjana Vasan, later by Nila Aalia,) has to pick between four suitors. She doesn’t particularly want to get married but her father wants her out of the house and the only choice she’s getting in the matter is whose arm she’ll be walking out on. Turning up in a borrowed suit and bumbling his way through his interview with her, Kenyan-born Rasik (Shubham Saraf, later Selva Rasalingam) seems an unlikely candidate, but the quick-witted Jyoti has a quip and an answer for everything, and Rasik’s willingness to try and keep up with her verbal sparring puts him at the top of the pile.

Theatre review: Luce

What starts as a look at modern-day paranoia around terrorism turns into a sometimes sinister drama about communication and how well we know our own families in JC Lee's Luce. Liberal American couple Amy (Mel Giedroyc) and Peter (Nigel Whitmey) adopted an orphaned seven-year-old boy from an unnamed, war-torn African country. Many of the kids adopted in the scheme were traumatised and had major behavioural problems, but Amy and Peter were lucky - Luce (Martins Imhangbe,) now 17, has been a model son and his school's star pupil. But when one of his teachers, Harriet (Natasha Gordon,) sets her class an essay that asks them to "think outside the box" and imagine themselves as a historical figure at a significant moment, she's disturbed when Luce chooses an obscure 1970s terrorist. She searches his locker and finds dangerous, illegal fireworks, but as Luce has an otherwise unblemished record she doesn't inform the police, instead inviting Amy to discuss what she's discovered.

Theatre review: Octagon

The titular Octagon in Kristiana Rae Colón's play is the venue for a US national poetry slam competition; but it's also the shape of the relationship between the eight characters, which makes a love triangle seem positively straightforward. A former poet herself, Pen (Estella Daniels) runs a bar that holds regular slam nights, where the crew who've qualified for the Octagon are local celebrities. Chimney (Solomon Israel) is the captain, although nobody seems to have told the others that; Chad (Harry Jardine) is a teacher by day, whose religious beliefs come with a judgmental side; and Palace (Asan N'Jie) is currently in the doghouse after sleeping with the fourth member's girlfriend, prompting him to quit. Not wanting to go to the nationals as a trio, they hold an open-mike slam at Pen's club; the winner gets to become the new fourth member.