Theatre review: Habeas Corpus

The Menier Chocolate Factory tends to feel like London's most conservative, if not most Conservative theatre, and as such some of its safe programming choices for a coffin-adjacent audience base can translate to disinterring creaky old farces that should have stayed buried in the 20th century. But if the farce in question is an early Alan Bennett play (early, I mean he was forty but these things are relative,) and it's directed by the prolific but usually reliable Patrick Marber, I'm prone to think it might be worth checking out anyway. Unfortunately both writer and director seem to have made a colossal error of judgement where Habeas Corpus is concerned: With a plot set in a doctor's surgery and an approach that tries to dig up the darker side of farce's obsession with sex, the play feels like it could be paying homage to Joe Orton's What The Butler Saw*. Except that play's genuinely sexy, shocking and funny.

Theatre review: The Windsors: Endgame

I'm not sure I like the increasing trend for popular TV sitcoms to get a West End outing and haven't been to many of them, but George Jeffrie & Bert Tyler-Moore 's The Windsors has been one of my favourite shows of recent years so I made an exception: The TV version is presumably not going to be returning following Jeffrie' s (non Covid-related) death just under a year ago, but he had managed to finish the first draft of The Windsors: Endgame with his writing partner. For those unfamiliar with the sitcom, it essentially plays the current members of the British Royal Family (minus the Queen and Prince Philip) as an overwrought soap opera, with Camilla Parker-Bowles as the overarching villain, plotting to get Charles the crown, and then grab power for herself. This stage finale sees what would happen when she finally got her way - funnily enough the broad strokes of the plot are similar to King Charles III, although this being a much sillier affair it doesn't actually kill off Elizabeth II, it just follows up on the real-life death of Prince Philip to have her abdicate in favour of Charles (Harry Enfield.)

Theatre review: How The Other Half Loves

It's a phenomenon that's already certain to turn up in my theatrical memes of the year, and one nobody will be looking back on fondly: Theatres' insistence on programming long shows without an early start time to compensate for it. Adding its name to the National, Almeida and, worst offender, the Old Vic, the Theatre Royal Haymarket joins in with what seems almost spiteful scheduling: At just over two and a half hours, How The Other Half Loves is just longer-than-average rather than an epic, but an inexplicable 7:45pm start time makes sure nobody gets home before 11pm - if they're lucky. That unwelcome slice of 2016 aside, it's like any other year: If it's spring there must be an Alan Ayckbourn revival somewhere, and Memorable Actor Matthew Cottle must be in it. Vanessa loves Ayckbourn so she always gets an early birthday present she'll like, even if my own feelings about his work are more variable.

Theatre review: Our Country's Good

Whenever I review a Shakespeare play, I make a note in the subject line of the company or venue, as there's so many productions of his plays I think it's best to be clear which one I'm talking about. I almost feel like I should do the same for Our Country's Good, because despite only first seeing it in 2012, this is now my third production. Timberlake Wertenbaker's play is an undisputed modern classic (though not one of the 101 best play ever according to Michael Billington but it's fine - he asked an imaginary woman what she thought and she agreed with him.) Based on true events, it follows one of the first shipments of convicts to be transported to Australia in 1788, to the area that would become Sydney. For the duration of their sentences they will remain prisoners, watched over by the army, but when their time is done they'll be sent out to colonise the new land.

Theatre review: Communicating Doors

Ever since we saw the Old Vic's production of The Norman Conquests in 2008, Vanessa has been an Alan Ayckbourn fan, and as you can pretty much put money on there being at least one production of his plays a year, it's ended up reliably being my birthday present to her. But while she's continued to love the plays, for me there's been seriously diminishing returns. So maybe my expectations were low, but it turns out Communicating Doors is the Ayckbourn I've enjoyed the most since that first trip. Perhaps it's the fact that, while still recognisably Ayckbourn in many ways, the play has quite a different feel to it to the domestic comedies I've been used to in the last few years. It's a very English take on a time travel adventure as, in the year 2020, dominatrix Phoebe (Rachel Tucker) travels through a riot-torn London, past where Big Ben used to be, to meet a wealthy old client in a five-star hotel.

Theatre review: A Small Family Business

Did you know that every year as many as 47 seconds can go past without an Alan Ayckbourn play being staged in London? For as little as £5 a month you can help ensure that ageing middle-class white people like Susan and Jeremy can have a place where they feel safe and loved, outside of Waitrose's opening hours. The dream of 24/7 Ayckbourn coverage is within our grasp, but until it becomes a reality the National Theatre's remit includes a compulsory revival every couple of years. Of course, I'm being unfair to a point, but only to a point: With the right play and the right production I've been known to have a lot of fun at the playwright's comedies. But while there's no question the Olivier was full of people laughing their socks off tonight, I wasn't with them as A Small Family Business was neither the right play nor the right production to grab my interest.

Theatre review: What the Women Did

Southwark Playhouse is the latest venue to commemorate the First World War's centenary, and does so with a trio of plays by different writers that all look at some aspect of women's experience of the Great War. Although it's perhaps a bit unfortunate that each play in What the Women Did deals with women in terms of their relationship to men - first as wives, then as single women who've found the pool of available men suddenly diminished, and finally as mothers. And it's an odd little triple bill, in which the final segment is so superior to the other two it seriously overbalances the evening. But first up we've got Gwen John's Luck of War, which takes place in T'North, where Ann's (Victoria Gee) husband has been missing in action long enough to be declared legally dead, and for Ann to remarry.

Theatre review: Quartermaine's Terms

It can be very tempting sometimes to make "meh" the entirety of a review. Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms has thundered back into the West End thanks to the involvement of Rowan Atkinson, in a rare stage appearance, in the title role. With the star casting come prices to match, the cheapest ticket in the gods almost £30, and little sign of ticket deals around. The hefty payday for the producers seems a churlish way to open a review but Richard Eyre's production at Wyndham's leaves you wondering what other motivation there could be to create such a bland evening at the theatre. We're in "the 1960's" (I won't pretend that misplaced apostrophe in the opening caption didn't prejudice me a bit right from the off,) in the staff room of an English language school in Cambridge.

Theatre review: A Chorus of Disapproval

I do hope that somewhere there's a theatre called the Alan Ayckbourn Theatre that predominantly shows plays by Pinter, as a bit of balance because since getting renamed, the Harold Pinter Theatre seems to have mainly specialised in Ayckbourn. The latest is Trevor Nunn's revival of A Chorus of Disapproval, a 1980s (though in this production at least, the setting is largely cosmetic) trip to a small English town and its troubled amateur operatics company. We follow their production of The Beggar's Opera from early rehearsals to public performance, through the eyes of newcomer Guy (Nigel Harman,) a shy widower. Over the three months' worth of rehearsals, Guy goes from socially awkward nonentity to star of the show, resident stud and the man everyone wants to be friends with, all the way out the other end to least popular man in the company - largely by accident, and to his great confusion.

Theatre review: Neighbourhood Watch

There's nothing worse than an annoying neighbour - I should know, I had Vanessa sitting next to me at the latest Alan Ayckbourn play. (Well I say the latest; it premiered late last year so he's probably written another three by now. The amount of plays he's credited with increases the further into the programme you get.) Ayckbourn also directs Neighbourhood Watch, a rather dark little satire about middle class paranoia and prejudice getting out of control. A middle-aged, virginal brother and sister, Martin and Hilda (Memorable Actor Matthew Cottle and Alexandra Mathie) have just moved into a new house in a leafy suburb. Somewhere in the distance is a housing estate, demonised by the locals as the source of unimaginable evils. When they invite the new neighbours round for a housewarming, their horror stories of violent crimes that could theoretically happen lead Martin to start a Neighbourhood Watch scheme; and when his beloved garden gnome gets broken, he's angered into extreme measures.