Theatre review: An Enemy of the People

Trigger Warning: This review contains references to an actor who doesn't really seem to understand what trigger warnings are for.

Paul Hilton has catapulted himself across the river and straight from one Ibsen play into another, as the corrupt mayor in Thomas Ostermeier, Florian Borchmeyer and Duncan Macmillan's adaptation of the overtly political An Enemy of the People. Matt Smith is the star turn in Ostermeier's production, playing Thomas Stockmann, the (medical) doctor who works at a spa known for its borderline miraculous water, and which is at the heart of a small town's economy. But an industrial complex that was built a few years earlier has been polluting the waters, and Thomas has just completed a study proving as much. He informs his brother Peter (Hilton,) the town's mayor, but doesn't get the enthusiastic spring into action he's rather naïvely expecting: Closing the springs to make repairs wouldn't make the shareholders too happy.

Theatre review: Lungs

Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs was first seen in London in 2012, and though even then it was obvious that its environmental politics was heartfelt, there was an inevitable touch of the First World Problems to its middle-class couple worrying about whether they were destroying the world by buying imported avocados. So 2019, right in the wake of London’s Extinction Rebellion protests, is a canny time to revive the play as its unnamed couple’s concerns have become much more universally relatable – the play is still funny, but the fear of contributing to the planet’s extinction is no longer a punchline. Except for the bit about the avocados, for some reason the very mention of them will forever be automatically funny to the sort of people whose laugh sounds like “fwaw fwaw fwaw fwaw.” Still, topical or not, a two-hander about a couple facing an environmental and personal crisis might have been a hard sell to fill the Old Vic with if director Matthew Warchus didn’t have another trick up his sleeve.

Theatre review: Unreachable

As Anthony Neilson's plays are created in rehearsal, you never know what you're going to get when a new one premieres, even down to what genre it'll be - although odds are something surreal is on the cards. Unreachable has had its press night so is presumably now finalised, but it does at times feel as if the actors are still being taken by surprise. The setting is unnamed, but the character names would suggest somewhere in Eastern Europe, where indie filmmaker Maxim (Matt Smith) has just won the Palme d'Or. This recognition has led to his producer Anastasia (Amanda Drew) being able to secure a bigger budget for his next feature, a dystopian thriller he's wanted to make for the last decade. But the director seems oddly determined to sabotage his own dream project, constantly interrupting and restarting filming - as the play starts he's demanding they reshoot the last three weeks' worth of footage on film as he's gone off digital - as he seeks to capture an elusive, perfect light.

Theatre review: American Psycho

The last two Doctors have both undergone remarkable physical transformations on the London stage at the moment, and while David Tennant's makeover as Alanis Morisette is... special, I reckon it's trumped by Matt Smith's ridiculously buff, frequently scantily-clad regeneration into Patrick Bateman, the titular character of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. Smith's casting has of course been the only talking point ever since it was announced, rather overshadowing the other unusual thing about this premiere production: The songwriter behind Spring Awakening has turned the blood- and sex-drenched 1980s satire into a musical. When Smith's Bateman is first raised onto the stage through the trapdoor, he's perfecting his tan on his own sunbed. The skin, like the muscles under it and the clothes over it, is all part of the image that has to radiate success.