Theatre review: Oedipus (Old Vic)

Oedipus cements his place as London's favourite motherfucker by returning with a new face mere weeks after he finished appearing in the guise of Mark Strong, while the Old Vic continues to pair Indira Varma with Bond villains: She plays Jocasta in Ella Hickson's new version of Oedipus, opposite Rami Malek as the titular king. A couple of decades earlier, the Corinthian prince arrived in Thebes and solved the riddle of the Sphinx that had been tormenting its people. The hero of the hour, he married the newly-widowed queen Jocasta, becoming king of the city and ruling successfully while raising a young family. But now a drought has brought misery back to the citizens and, supported by his queen, he proposes an extreme solution: Abandon the ravaged land completely, and move the entire city to a place that can actually support them.

Theatre review: Life of Pi

Another show I've had rescheduled a couple of times over the last 18 months, the stage adaptation of Life of Pi that originated in Sheffield finally gets its West End opening. Yann Martel's novel was a huge bestseller twenty years ago and has already had a CGI-heavy film adaptation, and its fantastical story of animals on the high seas lends itself to stage spectacle - if they could figure out how. Lolita Chakrabarti writes the adaptation and Max Webster directs, but it's puppet designers Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell who ultimately make it possible. Piscine Patel, known as Pi (alternate Nuwan Hugh Perera) is an Indian teenager whose father (Nicholas Khan) runs a zoo. When 1970s politics turns violent and the family get stuck in the middle, they accept an offer from a Canadian zoo to relocate there along with all their animals. But along the way the cargo ship they're on sinks, and Pi is the only survivor.

Theatre review: Approaching Empty

Ishy Din’s Approaching Empty takes place in 2013, specifically between the announcement of Margaret Thatcher’s death and her state funeral. It’s an on-the-nose framing for the story of two lifelong friends whose lives were largely defined by the dead sociopath’s policies: Mansha and Raf moved from Pakistan to Middlesbrough in the 1970s to work in a steelworks specialising in bridge-building, but in the ’80s Thatcher’s policies saw the factories close and the onus put on the workers to make their own way. Raf (Nicholas Khan) largely views this as a success, as he used his redundancy package to start a minicab business; it’s managed day-to-day by Mansha (Kammy Darweish,) who used his own redundancy to pay off his mortgage, but then spent the next thirty years stuck in a rut professionally. So when out of nowhere Raf expresses an interest in selling the business to a larger cab firm, Mansha finally sees an opportunity to be his own boss.