Theatre review: Three Sisters

Last winter season saw the Swanamaker take a successful first crack at Ibsen; this year, and in the annual onstage appearance by the Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe adds Chekhov to the repertory. In a remote part of Russia the titular Three Sisters live in the house their father bought when he was appointed commander of the resident military garrison. A year after his death, his children are still there, talking about moving back to Moscow but tied to the area by a few circumstances. Over the next five years, instead of freeing themselves from them, they'll end up with ever more reasons they can't escape the depressing small town they only ever thought was a stopgap. Olga is the eldest, the schoolteacher who has little love for the job and certainly doesn't see it as a career she'll progress in.

Theatre review: This Much I Know

My theatrical 2024 kicks off in chaotic fashion, with me trying to find a last-minute replacement for my second show of the year after a friend had to drop out of the trip, and next week's shows looking unlikely for me to get to because of tube strikes. As for my first play of the year, I was doubting I'd actually get to see the whole thing after a technical issue at the interval made it unclear whether or not we'd actually get a second act - we did, with the show eventually running 20 minutes over the advertised 2 hours 20. On the other hand if this start is anything to go by quality-wise, I could end up having a much less disappointing time at Hampstead Theatre than I did in 2023. Jonathan Spector is the playwright behind the Old Vic's big, starry 2022 show Eureka Day, and while this three-hander in Hampstead's studio space is a more modest proposal in some ways, its storytelling is more ambitious and, to me, more consistently satisfying. Although it does also get laughs from projections of emojis.

Theatre review: Nora: A Doll's House

You can't move without tripping over a production of A Doll's House lately and the Young Vic, whose last production of it feels comparatively recent in the scheme of things, is back at it with a production first seen in Glasgow last year. Ibsen's play is a proto-feminist story whose heroine finding her strength and identity caused a scandal in its day, and rather than present it as written or relocate it to a single new setting Stef Smith's version attempts to see just how much Nora's story would change over the course of a century. The retitled Nora: A Doll's House casts three versions of its leading lady: Amaka Okafor is 1918 Nora, a dutiful housewife still feeling some of the thrill of being allowed to vote for the first time. Natalie Klamar is 1968 Nora, a pill-popping mother of three idly, or not so idly wondering how her life might be different if the Pill and legal abortions had come along just a little bit sooner. And Anna Russell-Martin is Nora in 2018, propping up a family who've been living on credit.

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: 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: Future Conditional

To herald the Old Vic's new era with a heterosexual Artistic Director at the helm, it's had a bit of a facelift: There's a new, simpler logo without the coat of arms that screamed "heritage theatre," while the black-and-white photos of century-old productions have been hidden away at the top of the stairs, and above the entrance to the stalls a neon sign says "Dare always dare." Why a theatre would choose "they're always there" in an Irish accent as its motto is anyone's guess, but the message that things will be different under Matthew Warchus extends to the first show he's programmed - a new British play would have been unheard of in Dame Kev's day. And to counteract the "old" in the venue's name, it's a play with a young cast - unusually in a world where 30-year-olds routinely play teenagers, it's even a show where many of the actors are actually playing characters older than themselves.

Theatre review: The Cherry Orchard

Katie Mitchell uses a new translation by Simon Stephens to present a streamlined version of Chekhov's final full-length play at the Young Vic. The Cherry Orchard's action takes place over a few months, a comparatively short period for Chekhov, made to feel even shorter in just under two hours without interval. Ranevskaya (Kate Duchêne) returns to the country estate she grew up on after a long absence. While her family's old money has been dwindling, their estate manager Lopakhin (Dominic Rowan,) the son of serfs, has been gradually amassing a fortune of his own, and has some ideas about how they can keep their land. Too absorbed in their own personal dramas, though, and unwilling to face the prospect of change, Ranevskaya and her family ignore his warnings until it's too late.

Theatre review: This May Hurt A Bit

How do you follow up a musical about piss? If you're the St James Theatre, it seems, you do it with a play that's really quite shit. Over at Out of Joint, writer Stella Feehily and director Max Stafford-Clark have discovered this exciting new form of political theatre from Russia called agitprop, which they've taken less than a century to bring to the UK. The destruction by stealth of the National Health Service is an incredibly disturbing subject that should be more honestly reported by the media, and one that deserves a lot better than Feehily's This May Hurt A Bit. The play feels so dated it has the opposite effect of what it intends: The topic is an urgent and current one, but the hackneyed attempts to bring it to the stage make the play, and consequently the subject it tries to highlight, feel like a museum piece.

Theatre review: All's Well That Ends Well (RSC / RST & TR Newcastle)

The final play in the RSC's main house season this summer is a bona fide Problem Play - although just how problematic can vary from production to production of All's Well That Ends Well. Helena (Joanna Horton) is the daughter of a famous doctor, and when the King of France has an apparently incurable fistula she uses her late father's techniques to cure him. In return the King (Greg Hicks) promises her the hand of whichever man she wants. She chooses the man she's loved since childhood, the Count Bertram (Alex Waldmann.) But not only does the object of her affection see her as his social inferior, he doesn't even remotely find her attractive. Forced into a marriage, he refuses to consummate it and runs away to war, telling her he'll only consider them truly married if she can get from him the ring he never removes, and bear his child despite his refusal to have sex with her. Not the kind of girl to take a hint the size of an anvil, Helena interprets this as a challenge, and hatches a new plan that'll see her follow him to the battlefield.

Theatre review: As You Like It (RSC / RST & TR Newcastle)

From a Shakespeare play that's new to me to one I'm very familiar with, As You Like It having been the first Shakespeare comedy I saw on stage in 1989, and the one that made me realise their humour can still work today. Accordingly it's also a play I can be very particular about, and have been known to get stroppy if I think it's been poorly served by the production. This year's RSC offering though comes with a promising pedigree: Maria Aberg directed my favourite Shakespeare of 2012, King John, and here she reunites with its leads, Pippa Nixon and Alex Waldmann, to take on Rosalind and Orlando. Rosalind's father, the Duke Senior, has been deposed and exiled by his younger brother Frederick. When she spots the mistreated young nobleman Orlando de Boys winning a wrestling match, he and Rosalind fall in love. Shortly afterwards they're banished, separately, to the forest, and by the time they meet again Rosalind is disguised as a boy - a subterfuge she now uses to test and toy with her lover.