Theatre review: The Grapes of Wrath

It turns out The Grapes of Wrath isn't actually about haemorrhoids - John Steinbeck's Great American Novel^TM, in an adaptation by Frank Galati which Carrie Cracknell revives at the Lyttelton, wouldn't be dealing with anything as light-hearted as that. Instead this is a definitive story of the Great Depression, and the production opens with a dramatic, balletic series of scenes (movement direction by Ira Mandela Siobhan) showing the wind ravaging the people and the overfarmed land, creating the famous Dust Bowl which left farming families across America without an income. We follow the extended Joad family, led by the endlessly kind Ma (Cherry Jones) and terminally passive Pa (Greg Hicks,) as they drive to California where, according to flyers that have been distributed across the country, there are many good jobs to be found picking peaches and grapes.

Theatre review: Tom Fool

I can see why prolific German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz' 1978 play Tom Fool might seem ripe for revival: Its attack on capitalism dehumanising workers is particularly focused on the way it defines the roles and priorities of men and women, a relevant subject when clichés about masculinity are being interrogated. Whether that's enough to make an incredibly dry and dusty play feel worth another look in 2022 is a different story altogether. Otto (Michael Shaeffer) works on the assembly line at a BMW plant. He makes enough money to support his family and afford a few luxuries, but not so much that he doesn't need to keep an eye on the cost of everything, or treat his valuables with care: When the boss borrows his Parker pen and forgets to give it back, it's a matter for sleepless nights and worried rants to his wife for weeks.

Theatre review: A Very Expensive Poison

It's seven years since Lucy Prebble has written for the stage, a self-imposed exile because - as the playwright herself admitted when that play got adapted for radio - she was so happy with The Effect that she genuinely didn't believe she'd ever match it. Well, she's finally braved the weight of her own high expectations to debut A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic, and instead of taking similar ground to her last play it instead goes back to ripping its story from the headlines like her earlier hit ENRON. It also uses something like that play's genre-hopping, metatheatrical style, although director John Crowley can't quite bring the flair of a Rupert Goold to it. Based on Luke Harding's book of the same name, A Very Expensive Poison follows the murder of Russian whistle-blower Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210, a radioactive substance so rare it could be traced back to the precise nuclear plant where it was produced; and despite this the trouble Litvinenko's widow Marina had getting anyone in power to point the finger at the most obvious suspect.

Theatre review: Girl From The North Country

If a Meat Loaf jukebox musical at the ENO seemed like the summer’s most eccentric bit of programming, how about a Bob Dylan jukebox musical at the Old Vic? Conor McPherson writes and directs Girl from the North Country, which I hadn’t initially planned to see but some very interesting casting convinced me otherwise. Cast mostly with actors-who-can-sing rather than predominantly musical theatre actors, I already knew the likes of Sheila Atim, Bronagh Gallagher, Jack Shalloo, Debbie Kurup, Michael Shaeffer and Karl Queensborough could sing, but there’s also a number of pleasant surprises in a show that, music aside, I didn’t quite know what to make of. Set in Depression-era Duluth, the story centres on a guest house run by Nick Laine (Ciarán Hinds,) whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) has early-onset dementia, and whose main relief from the financial and personal pressures he faces is an affair with one of his guests, Mrs Neilsen (Kurup.)

Theatre review: How To Hold Your Breath

Vicky Featherstone has had a rather unusual tendency since taking over the Royal Court, of matching other directors with scripts they can make a lot out of, while keeping some decidedly dodgy ones for herself. It's a trend that continues with her latest directorial effort, a take on the financial crisis and the future of Europe... at least maybe that's what it is? In Zinnie Harris' How To Hold Your Breath, Dana (Maxine Peake) is about to apply for a research post at an Egyptian university, but a couple of weeks beforehand she has a fateful one-night stand: She sleeps with a man who's mistaken her for a prostitute and when, the next morning, he realises his mistake, insists on paying her anyway. Dana refuses to take his money, but Jarron (Michael Shaeffer) turns out to be a demon, and much like a Lannister, a demon always pays his debts.

Theatre review: Little Revolution

Alecky Blythe's biggest hit, the verbatim musical London Road, debuted in 2011, but away from the theatre that year's biggest news story was one that Blythe was out recording as the basis for her latest play. Little Revolution debuts three years on from the riots and looting that followed the killing of Mark Duggan by police, and focuses in particular on Hackney. Joe Hill-Gibbins' production goes back to Blythe's trademark performance style, which sees the play's "script" edited as an audio file from original interviews; the actors perform with earpieces through which this is played, so their performances retain the pace and cadences of the real people they're portraying. In keeping with the chaotic events it deals with the play has a particularly rough-and-ready feel, Ian MacNeil's design seeming to have almost blasted the Almeida apart to form a chipboard in-the-round set.

Theatre review: Mr Burns

Some shows come with such a Marmite reputation that it feels odd to find yourself quite firmly on the fence about them. Anne Washburn's Mr Burns had a love/hate response when it debuted off-Broadway, and the reaction to its London premiere has ranged from one star to five from the critics. Its basic conceit is certainly an interesting one: Some time in the near future, disasters at a series of nuclear power plants have wiped out most of the US population. The survivors are left to try and get by in a world without power (Mr Burns is subtitled "A post electric play.") Small groups band together for safety, and as one of these welcomes, cautiously, a newcomer (Demetri Goritsas,) we see the ways they've tried to maintain a network of communication. But we also see how they try to keep their spirits up by reliving a comforting story from their earlier lives: Around the fireside they try to remember and retell an episode of The Simpsons.

Theatre review: Table

While the Cottesloe regenerates into the Dorfman, the National Theatre are continuing to operate as a 3-house venue thanks to a big red temporary structure they're calling the Shed, which is currently adding a splash of colour to the South Bank (but it does sadly mean the familiar oversized AstroTurf furniture won't be making its customary summer appearance this year.) Instead a more traditional-sized piece of furniture takes up residence inside the Shed, as the pop-up venue's season starts with a piece developed by the NT Studio, Tanya Ronder's Table. The result of workshops with Rufus Norris, who directs, Table follows the titular piece of furniture down the decades from 1898 to the present day, as it stays in the family of the carpenter who built it, but in the process acquires as many scars as there are memories associated with it, as well as managing to travel to Africa and back.