Theatre review: Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy

It's been a summer of rewriting and reinterpreting the House of Atreus, and after Simon Stone gave us a version so loose it was unrecognisable, and Benedict Andrews a comparatively faithful one that took an abrupt turn into a different story altogether, Ava Pickett decides the only way left to take the story is Essex. Bloodsport Colon After Helen of Troy takes us to the part of the return from the Trojan War that doesn't get looked at much by the original Greek Tragedies: What happened when the woman an army spent a decade trying to bring home actually got there, and what did she think about that homecoming anyway? Helen (Michelle Dockery) was never abducted; she just met a charming and handsome foreign man called Paris in the pub, and realised that the life she'd been living wasn't the only option available to her.

Theatre review: Network

It’s been a week of US TV stars on stage for me, with Mr Robot on Monday, Sideshow Bob on Tuesday, and now the big one: The dad from Malcolm in the Middle (he’s also done some… slightly edgier stuff since then.) Very much the director all the big names want to work with now, Ivo van Hove brings Bryan Cranston to the London stage for the first time to play Howard Beale in Network, Lee Hall’s adaptation of the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky film. Beale is the lead news anchor on a poorly-performing TV network, and the news is struggling more than anything. When he’s told he’s being replaced Beale, taking advantage of the fact that nobody’s really paying attention to him, announces that he’ll commit suicide live on air during his final broadcast. It turns out to be exactly the thing to give his ratings a boost.