Theatre review: Under the Shadow

While I'm generally happy to trust in Rupert Goold's judgement and have been booking every show in his final Almeida season, the announcement that the latest was an adaptation of an Iranian film about the 1980s Iran-Iraq War seemed like it might be a hard sell to get any of my friends to join me, so I only bought a ticket for myself. Maybe if I'd realised it was based on a horror film I might have got an extra seat, as there's a couple of people that Under the Shadow would have appealed to. Set in 1988 Tehran, Carmen Nasr's adaptation of Babak Anvari's film could of course be using supernatural horrors as a metaphor for war and carnage in general, but in fact the story being told here is much more specific to the time, the place, and particularly the experience of women whose rights have recently been curtailed, perhaps more than some yet realise.

Theatre review: English

Marking both one of the last shows from Indhu Rubasingham at the Kiln, and one of the first from the Harvey/Evans regime at the RSC, this co-production of Sanaz Toossi's English is a great reflection on both companies. A play about language and identity, this was the 2023 Pulitzer winner for drama, and marks another year to buck the trend of underwhelming winners of that prize. Some while ago Marjan (Nadia Albina) spent nine years living in Manchester, before returning to her native Iran. She's married and settled now, but is constantly trying to reconnect with how she felt then, which she does by teaching English classes. Over a five-week course she helps four adults prepare for their TOEFL exam in a classroom she optimistically announces will be a Farsi-free zone (the fact that the play uses the conceit of the actors speaking English in Iranian accents, with "Farsi" represented by English in their own accents, tells you how successful they are at sticking to this.)

Stage-to-screen review: The Madness of George III

National Theatre At Home, which uses recordings made during the NT Live cinema screenings that have become very popular internationally in the last ten years, has been at the forefront of online theatre in lockdown, with whole shows being made available on YouTube for one week only. I only haven't mentioned them on this blog yet because, being predominantly shows from the NT itself, I'd already seen them live and reviewed them at the time*. In recent weeks the NT has expanded the project's horizons though, offering shows from other venues, and with it the opportunity to share in the fundraising drive. This week this means a trip to Nottingham Playhouse, and Adam Penford's production of The Madness of George III. Alan Bennett's enduring play looks at the institution of royalty in all its alienness and pomp, and the frail, sometimes banal humanity holding it up.

Theatre review: Emilia

Like most new Artistic Directors, Michelle Terry's had a mixed first season in charge of the Globe, but one area that for me has seemed an unqualified success has been her approach to gender parity in casting. Although she's stuck to her predecessor's target of 50/50 casting, Terry has amended this to be across an entire season rather than on a production-by-production basis, so directors of individual shows don't feel too restricted by it. One way to make sure a lot of classics dominated by men can be balanced out is by having one production cast entirely with women, and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's specially-commissioned Emilia is no random choice to get this treatment: The story of a possible muse of Shakespeare's bubbles over with anger at the absence of women from Jacobethan theatre, so the way Nicole Charles's production flips the era's all-male casting doesn't feel like meeting a quota, but like an essential part of the play's reclaiming of women's voices.

Theatre review: Quiz

My policy on making theatre trips to Chichester changed from "never" to "three times this year" in part thanks to each of the three shows feeling like they completed some kind of set: The decider was the chance to bookend a decade with different Ian McKellen performances of King Lear, but Sweet Bird of Youth made for a double bill of Tennesse Williams plays starring Brian J. Smith, and now the final show in Daniel Evans' first season in charge concludes a trio of new James Graham plays in 2017. Quiz is less obviously political than most of Graham's plays but you don't have to scratch too deep to find some of the wider themes that often come up in the playwright's work, particularly Privacy, about transparency in personal life, politics and the law; and whether the tendency towards leaving nothing secret in the name of full disclosure is in fact harming the chance of fair treatment behind closed doors. The reason this comes up is that Graham's creating a fictionalised version of a legal case considered to have become trial by media.

Theatre review: Othello (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

With its black title character Othello is, unsurprisingly, most often used as a way of looking at racism, but for the last of this year's Swanamaker season Ellen McDougall has a different approach in mind. After all, the only overt racism in the play comes from Othello's enemies, but with help from a little tinkering with the text McDougall exposes how the misogyny in the play's world is even more deep-rooted. General Othello (Kurt Egyiawan) has made Michelle Cassio (Joanna Horton) his new lieutenant, to the fury of his ensign Iago (Sam Spruell,) who'd been expecting the promotion. Using his reputation as the most trusted of the officers, Iago decides to take revenge in a slow, insidious way.

Theatre review: I Call My Brothers

Once again theatre feels like the medium responding the fastest to worrying trends around the world, with a Swedish play touching on the rise of a far-right party to power in that country, but more so on the way this sentiment trickles down to the man on the street. In Jonas Hassen Khemiri's I Call My Brothers, that man is Amor (Richard Sumitro,) an Asian man in his twenties who's out clubbing on a Saturday night when a car bomb, soon to be attributed to an Islamic terrorist, goes off in downtown Stockholm. We follow Amor over the next 24 hours as he goes into town to do chores, chatting to friends and family members on the phone. The more the day goes on the more he feels targeted and under suspicion by the police and the public, but whether he's really being looked at differently or is imagining it might be up for debate.

Theatre review: Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe)

Emma Rice's first season at the Globe is called "Wonder," as in "I wonder where all the shows have gone?" I feel like I've barely set foot in there this summer yet, but in fact I'm nearing the end of the main season. The last of the three shows that make up the majority of the summer schedule is Iqbal Khan's take on Macbeth. Like Rice herself and Caroline Byrne he's been given free rein to break out of the venue's old house style, and like them he gets mixed results. When the Scottish king Duncan (Sam Cox) rewards his best general Macbeth (Ray Fearon,) he little imagines he will take these new honours and seek out much greater ones: A supernatural apparition has foretold to Macbeth that he will be the next king, and his wife is keen for him to speed up the process with a spot of regicide.

Theatre review: Hecuba

While the Almeida's spent the summer giving us radical rewrites of Greek classics, the RSC has cut Euripides out of the picture altogether and, in what would probably have been a more accurate description of Icke's Oresteia and Cusk's Medea as well, commissioned Marina Carr to write an entirely new play based on the legend - in this case, that of Hecuba. There's a lot of dead children in this story too but Hecuba (Derbhle Crotty) isn't as okay with this as Medea: A mother of eighteen and the former queen of Troy, as the play begins the city has just been taken after ten years of war, and she's not yet quite understood the "former" part of her title. The Greeks have demanded that no male Trojans be left alive, and as most of her children were sons, she sits in her throne room surrounded by their dismembered bodies. Taking comfort from her two remaining children, she stands up to the triumphant Agamemnon (Ray Fearon.)

Theatre review: Othello (RSC / RST)

Iqbal Khan's production of Othello opens with a coup de théâtre courtesy of Ciaran Bagnall's set: The initial setting is Venice, and as Iago (Lucian Msamati) and Roderigo (James Corrigan) plot to reveal the secret of Othello's recent marriage, water bubbles up through grills in the floor, flooding part of the stage and creating the canal their boat floats in. It's an understated and effective start to a production that stays strong on visuals and atmosphere throughout. Hugh Quarshie plays Othello, the black general whose military skill makes him the go-to man when the Duke of Venice (Nadia Albina) needs someone to deal with a conflict in Cyprus. He takes with him his young lieutenant Cassio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd,) newly promoted over Iago, who hasn't forgiven his general for overlooking him. He plots revenge on both men, and Othello's new wife is the tool he plans to use against them: If he can convince Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio, his jealousy might destroy them all.

Theatre review: The Merchant of Venice (RSC / RST)

With three productions of The Merchant of Venice in the same year it might be difficult for each one to establish its own identity, but they've managed it; Polly Findlay's at the RSC does so by stripping everything back to the bare essentials, both of text and staging. One thing that isn't pared down though is the story's homoerotic potential: Antonio (Jamie Ballard) is the wealthy titular merchant, Bassanio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) his young friend, and with Findlay showing the pair kissing from the outset, it's clear they're more than just friends, and there's a reason Antonio is so smitten he'd do anything to help him. Anything including signing a decidedly dodgy bond to guarantee a loan on Bassanio's behalf: He's been openly abusive to Jewish moneylender Shylock (Makram J. Khoury,) but to finance Bassanio's get-rich-quick scheme Antonio agrees to forfeit a pound of his flesh if he fails to repay the debt. It's impossible for all his outstanding investments to fail at the same time - except of course they all do.

Theatre review: Secret Theatre Show 3

I've had a numerically-themed week at the theatre, with 1984 on Thursday, Two on Friday and Show 3 tonight. But I'm about to spoil the pattern because, as with all the Secret Theatre shows, I'll be ditching the code number after the text break and calling the show by its real title. So if you're planning to see it yourself and want it to stay a secret, this is as far as you should read.

Theatre review: Secret Theatre Show 2

Once again, the Lyric Hammersmith is closed for several months to allow building of their new educational annexe. But although the front-of-house is a construction site, the auditorium itself is not being touched, so this time around Sean Holmes has come up with a new plan to keep things going: A young ensemble of 20-something actors will be resident for a year alongside other creatives, who will build up a repertory season.

As an additional twist, the shows are being billed as Secret Theatre, and initially sold to audiences who have no idea what show they've booked to see. (I don't know, realistically, how long they expect the secret to be kept, and if they intend to extend the runs they'll have to relax the secrecy sooner or later, most people won't want to leave their evening's entertainment entirely to chance.) In the spirit of the thing, I won't be revealing the titles of the show on the front page of my blog (you might want to avoid looking at the labels as well) for the sake of anyone who wants to play along (and who wasn't spoiled by HIGHLY PROFESSIONAL theatre reviewers tweeting the title in the interval so they can say they got the exclusive, like one of those people who comments "FIRST!" after an online article.) For those who want to know what they're booking for, I'll review after the cut. The first two shows are now running in rep; tonight I caught Show 2.