Theatre review: Titus Andronicus (RSC / Swan)

There's splashguards for the front row of the Swan and grates have been installed on the voms to drain off a variety of bodily fluids, it must mean Titus Andronicus is back at the theatre where I first saw it. This time, a few decades after Actor Brian Cox famously advised him to play the role, it's finally Simon Russell Beale's turn to take on the Roman General who finds out to his (and his family's) cost that the trouble with hanging out with mad emperors is that they're mad, and also they've got the power of emperors. Titus is given the casting vote on who should be the next autocrat of Rome, and chooses Saturninus (Joshua James,) who instantly decides to abuse his power by demanding the hand (in marriage) of Lavinia (Letty Thomas,) his own brother's (Ned Costello) fiancée. When she refuses, her whole family are considered to have offended his honour, and as he's her father that instantly takes Titus from kingmaker to pariah.

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: Mlima's Tale

Theatres really make it hard for me to keep my visits under control sometimes: Although no doubt worth seeing, Lynn Nottage's story of the ivory trade through the eyes of an elephant sounded bleak enough that it might be better to give it a miss, but then the casting for Miranda Cromwell's production was announced, and made it harder to say no. In its opening moments, Mlima's Tale gives us a bit of a misdirect that it might actually be what the title promises, as Mlima (Ira Mandela Siobhan,) a 48-year-old bull elephant, begins to give us a potted history of his life, the rainy seasons he's seen, the children he's sired. But these are the final moments of his life before he's brutally killed by poachers - after numerous attempts evidenced by a dozen bullet scars, it's a desperate, amateurish Somali pair who finally take him down.

Theatre review: TINA

Weeder needer nudder hero!

When I was growing up I had Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album on cassette, and there was a period when I needed to listen to it every night to get to sleep, so there are memories associated with many of her songs for me; still, making them the subject of a jukebox musical didn’t automatically appeal. But TINA has a book by Katori Hall (with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Pris) and, having waited a long time to see another play by the author of The Mountaintop, it seemed silly to miss this chance when it presented itself. And while the script isn’t going to be either Hall’s finest hour or the standout part of the evening, the show’s biographical nature means it has to have a darker edge that puts it miles away from director Phyllida Lloyd’s most famous production, Mamma Mia. It undercuts any expectations of being a singalong from the start – the opening notes of “The Best” play, but within a couple of minutes we have the first instance of violence against women.

Theatre review: Don Quixote

The RSC are of course marking the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death on the 23rd of April 1616*, but they're also acknowledging that Miguel de Cervantes died on the same date¥, with his epic comic novel Don Quixote getting a new stage adaptation by James Fenton. Angus Jackson directs David Threlfall as the titular impoverished lord who's spent his life in his library, absorbed in tales of Mediaeval knights-errant. As he gets old and senile he starts to believe himself one of them, and sets off on a mission to have adventures and bring the age of chivalry back to Spain. He promises the local layabout Sancho Panza (Rufus Hound) an island of his own to rule if he'll be his loyal squire.