Theatre review: Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre)

Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre is intended to predominantly showcase new writing, but in only his second production there Hytner can’t resist going back to Shakespeare. This is in part because the opening season is also meant to show off the flexibility of the auditorium, and Julius Caesar is a play that lends itself to promenade staging, or in this case in-the-round staging with a section of the audience in promenade (of sorts.) Making the audience part of the action fills in the play’s reliance on crowds – whether as baying mobs, horrified onlookers, armies or, most crucially, the general populace of Rome in whose name the central characters act. Hytner’s production is modern dress, and David Calder’s Julius Caesar certainly has a visual nod to one current political figure as he shuffles onto the stage wearing a red baseball cap and revelling in the attention as much as anything.

Theatre review: Road

In a rare instance of the Royal Court revisiting a past work, John Tiffany directs a 30th anniversary production of Road, Jim Cartwright’s slice of life in an unnamed Lancashire town. It seems a rather pointed revival of a play which comes down hard on Thatcher’s Britain, as despite the – nostalgic and funny by turns – period trappings it still feels relevant, its characters going out to get drunk and try to pull, covering up their desperation at the dead end their lives are in. Some have been led to unusual extremes, like Mike Noble’s Skin-Lad, a Buddhist skinhead, or Joey (Shane Zaza) and Clare (Faye Marsay,) dying in bed on hunger strike over something they can’t quite articulate. Most have more familiar stories of trying to cope though, and unemployed ex-sailor Scullery (Lemn Sissay) offers to be the audience’s tour guide over one typical Saturday night from dusk to dawn.

Theatre review: Splendour

Last year Robert Hastie revived My Night With Reg to give the Donmar Warehouse a summer hit with an all-male cast; this year he's back with an all-female cast and a less obviously crowd-pleasing play. An early work by Abi Morgan, now better-known as a TV writer, gets its belated London preview as four women meet in a room whose Splendour may soon be gone. We're in an unnamed country, in the palace of a dictatorial president who's commissioned a new photo-portrait from foreign photojournalist Kathryn (Genevieve O'Reilly.) He, however, has not shown up so the first lady, Micheleine (Sinéad Cusack) is playing hostess. Although the whole play is spoken in English, the conceit is that Kathryn doesn't speak the local language, so also present is Zawe Ashton as interpreter Gilma, who may be pretty bad at her job, or may understand a lot more of what both women are saying than she's willing to let on.

Theatre review: Huis Clos

Yep, it's definitely January - after the fluffier fare of Xmas^TM there's a definite heavier mood to London's theatre - even Noises Off feels a long time ago as the final Donmar Trafalgar instalment takes us to Hell. In a Shock!Twist! it turns out Trafalgar 2 is in fact a flexible space, Paul Hart's production of Huis Clos being configured in the round. Designer Lucy Osborne gives us a distressed, hotel-like room but with no bed, only three "second Empire" chairs or couches and a couple of seemingly random objects whose relevance will surely become apparent to the room's new inhabitants. Garcin (Will Keen) is (or was) a South American journalist who mistreated his wife when alive, Ines (Michelle Fairley) a predatory lesbian murderer and Estelle (Fiona Glascott) a beautiful, cold-hearted French socialite. They are all recently deceased and though they don't know quite what the rules are yet they do know they're in Hell. The valet (Thomas Padden) who shows them in is quite used to the newcomers' confused questions about where the torturers are.

Of course, as the most famous quote from Sartre's play has it, Hell is other people, and the trio gradually realise they are to be each other's torturers. Not only because the combination of people has been chosen to clash but also because, as is repeatedly affirmed from the start, the room contains no mirrors: The damned must instead see themselves through their cellmates' eyes, stripped of the illusions they project onto themselves to make existence more bearable. The atmosphere in Hart's production is always intense and uncomfortable as befits the subject matter while Tom Mills' snatches of music and sound add atmosphere at unexpected moments. Although at times it's all a bit too much and the play felt a bit overly long to me, the points made more times than necessary and I did wonder if it was the characters or the audience who were meant to be in Hell (the front row of the seating bank opposite me seemed to be a designated napping area.) But it's powerfully performed, Fairley's character in particular taking a perverse glee in their situation that adds another level of the sinister to what was hardly a party to begin with.

Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre in a translation by Stuart Gilbert is booking until the 28th of January at Trafalgar Studio 2.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes straight through.