Theatre review: Mother Courage and Her Children

Although the run of popular Shakespeares that make up most of the 2026 Globe season are clearly going to be the big sellers, for me the show I was most looking forward to this year was the one that was most obviously the passion project for the Artistic Director, as she took on the lead in the first Brecht play ever staged at the venue. So it's unfortunate timing that Michelle Terry was indisposed for the performance of Mother Courage and Her Children that I caught. All things considered Ayla Wheatley did a pretty heroic job of performing script-in-hand, covering the role of Mother Courage or, as she's often called in Anna Jordan's new version, MC. Though young for the role Wheatley managed to inject some of the character's exhausted gruffness, and the blunt, smutty humour that's a feature of Jordan's script. Being thrown in at the deep end means she had a lot of audience goodwill behind her, so technically I guess the playwright himself would have disapproved*.

Theatre review: Manhunt

In 2010 Raoul Moat, a former nightclub bouncer from Newcastle, was released from prison after serving two months, and within days had got hold of a sawn-off shotgun which he used to shoot at his ex-girlfriend, injuring her and killing her new boyfriend. He also blinded a policeman before escaping into the countryside, setting off one of the most notorious (and sometimes downright bizarre) police manhunts in British history, that only ended when he shot and killed himself. In 2025, Moat's story inspires Robert Icke's Manhunt, his contribution to the recent spate of dramas exploring violence and toxic masculinity that have included high-profile entries like Punch and Adolescence. Opening with him stalking around Hildegard Bechtler's prison yard-like set while CCTV films him from above, Moat (Samuel Edward-Cook) turns to address the audience in what looks like it'll be very much his side of the story.

Theatre review: The Homecoming

Matthew Dunster's production of The Homecoming at the Young Vic sets Pinter's play firmly in the 1960s when it was written: The all-male family of East End gangsters at its heart are an insular group, buried away listening to jazz; the female interloper is a vision of the swinging sixties, up on all the latest fashions and wanting the best of them. What the power balance is by the end of the play is always enigmatic, but Dunster's apparently clear telling of the story may leave it murkier than ever. Max (Jared Harris) is the widowed patriarch who raised his three sons on his own - it's unlikely he'd ever acknowledge that his probably-gay brother Sam (Nicolas Tennant,) who's lived with them for decades, might have helped at all.

Theatre review: The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi won't let any man decide who she can or can't marry; as played by Joan Iyiola at the RSC, this seems to include her prospective husband, who doesn't entirely get a say in her decision to pursue their dangerous love affair. In Maria Aberg's interpretation of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi it's this strong will and independence, rather than the social inequality of the match, that is her downfall. The widowed Duchess' brothers, the unhinged Ferdinand (Alexander Cobb) and lecherous Cardinal (Chris New) advise her against remarrying, largely because they think if she dies without heirs they might inherit her wealth. The Duchess, though, has other ideas, but knowing a marriage between herself and her steward Antonio (Paul Woodson) will cause a scandal she marries him in secret.

Theatre review: The Seagull

Despite the bleak turn it takes in its final act, The Seagull makes by far the best case for Chekhov’s claim that many of his plays are comedies, and Sean Holmes’ production makes a particularly good example: We laugh at the characters’ flaws and vanities, before the same things turn around and destroy them. Irina (Lesley Sharp) is a famous actress on one of her rare visits back to her childhood home, a working farm whose running she’s passed over entirely to her brother Peter (Nicolas Tennant) and his staff. Still living there is her son Konstantin (Brian Vernel,) an aspiring writer who, in the opening act, is preparing to premiere a surreal new piece of theatre he’s written to family and friends. It stars his neighbour Nina (Adelayo Adedayo,) whom he’s desperately in love with, so a lot rides for him on the performance going well – but his mother has other ideas.

Re-review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

If you don't know the plot of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, or anything about the adaptation by Simon Stephens and Marianne Elliott's hit production, you can read my previous reviews from when it ran at the Cottesloe and the Apollo, to get up to speed. The latter run came to an abrupt end when the ceiling fell in, but after a 7-month hiatus it's back, crossing the road to the Gielgud. It's not a desire to see the show in every theatre it sets up camp in that brought me back a third time (I won't be following it around on its upcoming tour or to Broadway, I'm not a crazy person.) It was rather the second major cast change that made me want to witness its return. Not just Graham Butler as the painfully literal-minded protagonist Christopher Boone, but Nicolas Tennant as his father Ed also seemed like perfect casting.

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.

Theatre review: Hamlet (RSC / RST & TR Newcastle)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This production invites the critics in next week.

Although I'd like to approach every show with no preconceptions, some productions are easier to get excited about than others. I like Hamlet, and the cast the RSC has assembled, enough to warrant a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. But David Farr is one of the company's most prolific directors, and Jonathan Slinger has been an almost constant presence in Stratford for the last few years. It's hard not to feel as if the pair have been let loose on the "big one" having paid their dues, rather than because of any really exciting idea they wanted to explore. It's a feeling not helped by the fact that Slinger isn't an obvious match to the role at this point in his career - at 40 he's the oldest Hamlet I've seen, overtaking Simon Russell Beale who was 39 when he tackled the role. Having put my preconceptions on the table from the outset I will say that as the show approached I got more excited about it; the production photos revealed an interesting set by Jon Bausor, and the publicity suggested a particular focus on the fencing that gives the play its climax, and I was intrigued by how that conceit would work.

Theatre review: Three Kingdoms

Simon Stephens' last premiere in this country, The Trial of Ubu, was notable for how much director Katie Mitchell's stylistic choices overshadowed Stephens' play as written. For the playwright's latest, Three Kingdoms, he once again puts a lot of faith in his director, in a multicultural production - the British writer is paired with a German director (Sebastian Nübling,) Estonian designer (Ene-Liis Semper) and a cast from all three countries (Estonians make up the majority of the cast, although English is the most-spoken language, with the rest surtitled.) The story appears at first to be a hard-boiled crime drama, as detectives Ignatius Stone and Charlie Lee (Nicolas Tennant and Ferdy Roberts) interrogate Tommy (Rupert Simonian,) a young man caught on CCTV trying to dispose of a bag. The bag turns out to contain a human head, belonging to a murdered Eastern European prostitute. The policemen try to find the man who paid Tommy to dump the bag, but the trail they end up following leads them first to Germany, then to Estonia, with each of the play's acts taking place in a different country.

Non-review: Where the Shot Rabbits Lay

Again, not a review as Brad Birch's Where the Shot Rabbits Lay is not a fully-staged play but the last rehearsed reading in this year's Young Writers Festival (I really want there to be an apostrophe in there somewhere but there isn't) at the Royal Court; although director Nick Bagnall allows his cast to act out some of the action, with the odd prop thrown in.

Birch's short play (I also saw an in-development work by the writer here last year) is a father-son bonding moment, as a Man (Nicolas Tennant) and surly 13-year-old Boy (Lewis Lempereur-Palmer) go camping for a weekend. Following his divorce, the father is keen to make a connection with his son and, he hopes, impart a bit of wisdom if he has any. Though things don't end up going as smoothly as he might hope, the two do end up improving their relationship a bit by the end. Along the way there's confrontations and a lot of witty lines which Tennant times beautifully even with script in hand. Quite a sweet, entertaining playlet, on the strength of this I'd go see full-length work from Birch.

Where the Shot Rabbits Lay by Brad Birch is booking until the 14th of April at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

Running time: 45 minutes straight through.