Theatre review: Macbeth (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

Michelle Terry’s summer season at the Globe was the first time the venue didn’t have an official overall theme for the year, but for her first winter at the Swanamaker she has two: She’s split her season into two themed “festivals” starting with “Ambitious Fiends,” looking at power and corruption, with an optional supernatural element. That option is taken and really played with in the opening production: The candlelit playhouse has been open for a few years now so I find it a bit surprising that this is its first Macbeth, a play thought to have been written with this kind of theatre in mind. Indeed, given it’s notoriously an enthusiastic rimjob on James I, there’s a popular theory that the mirror that displays the line of kings in Act IV scene 1 would have once ended up reflecting the actual king in an intimate setting. Robert Hastie doesn’t have any royalty to play with, unless you count the theatrical royalty of Terry herself as Lady Macbeth, with real-life husband Paul Ready as her on-stage husband.

Theatre review: The Inn at Lydda

Although the initial description didn't instantly grab me, I eventually booked for The Inn at Lydda based on the cast - not only a strong cast but one largely made up of faces familiar to the Globe, suggesting that the new regime doesn't entirely want to burn bridges with the old one (something tricky to do anyway in the Swanamaker, where Dominic Dromgoole's face is part of the decor.) John Wolfson's play, getting a short run in the indoor playhouse, imagines a meeting in ancient Judea: The Emperor Tiberius Caesar (Stephen Boxer) is sick and dying, but has heard of a miracle worker in a distant part of his empire, who he's sure can cure him. Unfortunately by the time he and his entourage make it to Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth has been crucified by Rome's own representatives. But unlike the last version of the story we saw on a London stage, this one is based on Christian apocrypha, so the story doesn't end there.

Theatre review: King Lear (Shakespeare's Globe & tour)

King Lear divides his kingdom between the two of his daughters who flatter him the most, banishing the third for her refusal to play the courtly game. But words turn out to mean little when all your power's gone, and when Goneril and Regan refuse him the honours he still expects, Lear is cast out to the elements. Storms, war and madness bring the former king down to man at his most basic level, and in the process he learns what it means to be human. Following Hamlet and As You Like It in past years, King Lear is the latest play to get the patented Shakespeare's Globe stripped-down treatment, in a touring production that this week pitches up on home ground. Eight actors plus two musicians, 1940s costumes and a lot of doubling are used to tell one of Shakespeare's best-known stories.