Theatre review: The Invention of Love

Crazy to think Tom Stoppard has spent an entire career writing plays about human beings, despite all the evidence suggesting he's never met one. In fact despite having enjoyed some of his work it may be time to add him to my very short list of creatives I've given enough chances to for one lifetime, as The Invention of Love is based around a premise that should be effortlessly moving, but ends up far too interested in deconstructing Catullus to get round to deconstructing emotions: Simon Russell Beale plays A E Housman, the Victorian poet and classicist who, by the time of his death, seems to have decided that the two pursuits don't really go together, as one requires rules, facts and logic to be set aside in favour of emotional truth, while the other involves picking apart every comma in the name of strict accuracy.

Theatre review: King Lear (Almeida)

Given that it doesn't look like Yaël Farber’s going anywhere anytime soon, I feel like Rupert Goold's Almeida has really found the right match for the highly ritualistic South African director, by sticking to those Shakespeare plays where an apparent complete absence of a sense of humour isn't a major obstacle. So after her Macbeth we now get a nearly four-hour long King Lear that despite being a particularly nihilistic take on the play is easily the best work I've ever seen Farber do. Regular readers of this blog may both decide for themselves how much of a compliment that actually is - but I'd say it's also one of the better Lears I've seen in general. We begin at a live TV broadcast by the Royal Family where the succession is to be formally announced. Lear (Danny Sapani) asks his three daughters how much they love him, and the eldest two go along with the ritual, singing his praises.

Theatre review: The Pillowman

Not only do the shows cancelled for the 2020 lockdown keep coming back to life, it does seem like that lost year of theatre had an extraordinary amount of shows I'd been particularly looking forward to: Like The Pillowman, the 2003 play widely regarded as Martin McDonagh's best, but which I hadn't seen yet. Originally slated to star Tom Sturridge, I did wonder if it was a coincidence that the production's rescheduling was announced shortly after The Sandman's renewal, as if they'd been waiting to see if Sturridge could still make it, or if they should go in a different direction. Quite a different direction at it turns out: Lily Allen's casting is apparently the first time the lead character of Katurian has been reimagined as a woman. Katurian and her brother Michal (Matthew Tennyson) led a childhood of cruel and unusual abuse by their parents, whom she eventually murdered.

Radio review: Don Juan

Not for the first time, and to be honest I think it's unlikely to be the last time this year, Covid has caused the show I was due to see tonight to be cancelled. And once again I've turned to BBC radio drama for an alternative, and Robin Brooks' Don Juan, an adaptation of the first few cantos of Lord Byron's epic satirical poem. Byron's version of Juan (Matthew Tennyson) isn't a famed lothario, or at least not yet, but a beautiful but gormless teenager who proves irresistible to all the young women he meets, especially those with husbands or fathers who'd disapprove. So he first catches the eye of neighbour Donna Julia (Pippa Nixon,) unhappily married to a much older man, who seduces Juan and then gets caught with him in a bedroom farce when her husband returns. Juan flees the city and is shipwrecked, and found by Haidée (Dolores Carbonari,) who also falls for him - and this time it's her fearsome pirate father who causes them trouble.

Theatre review: Salomé (RSC / Swan)

It's not the subtlest form of flirtation but if you ask a lady nicely she might get her cock out for you - although you might have to give her head in return. Yep, it's the story that's been striking dread into London's theatregoers but I'm not crazy enough to see the National's Salomé again - this time it's Stratford-upon-Avon and Oscar Wilde's one-act tragedy. But even this isn't quite the version Wilde imagined, although he'd probably have enjoyed watching it for a couple of reasons: The text is unchanged but director Owen Horsley is using it to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The online trailer for the show has the feel of a gentleman's specialist film, and Bretta Gerecke's designs immediately suggest a gay club, the kind that probably isn't too surprised or bothered if more than one person uses the same toilet cubicle.

Theatre review: Cleansed

It can be hard to buy the critical opinion that underneath the torture porn Sarah Kane's work is essentially about love; but it's a fact that seems strangely obvious, yet hard to quite grasp, in the two hours of body horror that is Cleansed. Heroin addicted Graham (Graham Butler) dies of an overdose injected into his eye by Tinker (Tom Mothersdale,) in a decrepit institutional building (grungily designed by Alex Eales.) Some months later his (twin?) sister Grace (Michelle Terry) voluntarily checks herself into Tinker's care in an attempt to connect with her dead brother. There she witnesses, and becomes part of, the sadistic experiments that go on there: A couple, Rod (George Taylor) and Carl (Peter Hobday) are made to declare their love for each other, and Carl unwisely says he'd die for his lover, a statement the torturer decides to test - piece by piece.

Theatre review: A Breakfast of Eels

I don't think I can be blamed for approaching Robert Holman's plays with a little trepidation. It's not the fact that they're largely impenetrable; but while his thoughtful poetic works can sometimes be moving there's always the risk that, like Making Noise Quietly, they'll tip over into the downright boring. Fortunately his latest work falls into the former category and is, for my money*, the most entertaining of his plays I've seen. Holman's written A Breakfast of Eels specifically for its two stars, and it's the second role he's tailor-made for Andrew Sheridan (the role of Jonah in Jonah and Otto, which Alex Waldmann recently played in the revival, was the first.) Sheridan has an older-than-his-years quality - I've always thought his face looks like it belongs in the 1940s - while Matthew Tennyson, whom Holman wanted to work with again after Making Noise Quietly, has the disconcerting quality of seeming like an overgrown child, to the point of playing Puck as a creepy toddler a couple of years ago.

Theatre review: Blue Stockings

An accomplished director, Jessica Swale's clearly been learning a thing or two in the rehearsal room about what makes plays tick, because her debut as a playwright is an assured one. Having worked at Shakespeare's Globe before, this becomes the venue for the premiere of Blue Stockings, and having championed the work of trailblazing women in her choice of plays to direct, she finds another group of them in Cambridge at the end of the 19th century. For a few decades, women had been allowed to study there at colleges like Girton, but any achievements they made had to go unrecognised: At the time we join the bluestockings (Swale takes her play's title from the sneery nicknmae given to female students) they are trying to secure a historic vote that would allow them to graduate.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare's Globe)

Never let it be said that Dominic Dromgoole doesn't like the jig that ends every performance at Shakespeare's Globe. For his new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream he's not just reserved it for the end but given us one to open the show with as well - in this case it's a dance representation of the battle between Athenians and Amazons that sees Theseus take Hippolyta as his queen. And since we have Michelle Terry as Hippolyta you can be assured the conflict hasn't quite ended there - she may have accepted him but right from the start Terry makes it clear she won't be sitting back and letting him make all the decisions. This prickly brand of affection between her and John Light's Theseus is one the two actors carry over to their other roles as the Fairy King and Queen of the forest, Oberon and Titania - here a very earthy, animalistic pair of deities, the animal heads of the fairies not making it that much of a stretch to see Titania fall for Bottom when he gets one of his own.

Non-review: Playwright's Playwrights - Across Oka

Word of mouth must have got out for the Royal Court's Playwright's Playwrights season of Friday afternoon readings at the Duke of York's, as its final installment was reasonably well-attended despite having probably the least starry cast of all the plays featured. The play itself might have been expected to keep people away as well, since David Eldridge is the last playwright asked to choose and direct one of the works that inspired him, and somewhat inevitably he's plumped for Robert Holman, whose Making Noise Quietly baffled, bored and irritated audiences in equal measure when it was revived at the Donmar a couple of months ago. The play Eldridge has chosen is another 1980s piece with themes of war at its heart, Across Oka, Holman's quietly tragic culture clash between East and West during the (by now thawing) Cold War.

Theatre review: Making Noise Quietly

Josie Rourke continues her first season at the Donmar with a show that links it to her previous theatre - Robert Holman's Making Noise Quietly premiered at the Bush in 1986, and director Peter Gill has worked at both theatres before. The play is a triptych, and in a programme note David Eldridge says its format directly influenced his own play Under The Blue Sky (which I liked, so I'll take that as a recommendation) and Simon Stephens' Wastwater (which I'm sure is also meant to be a recommendation but I don't think I know anyone who actually saw Wastwater who'd consider the comparison as a good thing.) Eldridge and Stephens also, of course, co-wrote A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky with Holman, and he seems to be a writer with a huge influence on other playwrights.