Theatre review: Britannicus

In a year that's been dominated by stories of swings and understudies keeping the theatre industry going - halfway through and I've probably already seen more people covering roles than in any other year - another show having to cope with cast illness has been the Lyric Hammersmith's take on Jean Racine's Britannicus: Ben and I were meant to see the show last Friday but it got cancelled, and there were further cancellations this week. With the theatre, like so many, not being able to afford to carry regular understudies, it's only by bringing in two actors to cover roles script-in-hand that they've managed to reopen tonight, in time for us to be second time lucky and catch it before it closes next week. And even if not quite at its best I'm glad I managed to see a show I'd been particularly looking forward to - I've seen and enjoyed a past production that used the same Timberlake Wertenbaker translation that Atri Banerjee's production uses.

Theatre review: Wonderland

Wonderland seems an unlikely description of life in a coal mine but Ashley Martin Davis' show-stealing set goes some way to making it seem plausible, in Ed Hall's premiere production of Beth Steel's play. 30 years on from the miners' strike, miner's daughter Steel tells its story without featuring the two faces that came to represent the opposing sides, Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. Instead we're thrown into the lives of the people on (and in) the ground, and as with many stories of this kind we open with people just starting out: We first meet Jimmy (Ben-Ryan Davies) and Malcom (David Moorst) on their first day in a Nottinghamshire mine, shown the ropes by Colonel (Paul Brennen) and Bobbo (Nigel Betts) and taken under their wing by Spud (Gunnar Cauthery) and Fanny (Paul Rattray.) We see the dangers they face as well as the pride they take in their work, but there's also another story being told that puts their way of life into question.

Theatre review: Facts

Jewish Canadian playwright Arthur Milner's father was a right-wing Zionist, so in writing a play about Israel and Palestine he takes the opportunity, in part, to deal with some of his issues around his disagreement with his father's politics. Inspired by a true story, Facts takes place in a police interrogation room in the Occupied Territories where Palestinian detective Khalid (Philip Arditti) has asked an Israeli colleague he's collaborated with in the past to help him with a murder case that's going nowhere. Khalid and Yossi (Michael Feast) start to piece together the events around the shooting of an American archaeologist whose work made him controversial in the region: Publishing evidence that directly contradicts the version of history in Exodus, he's casting doubt not only on the Old Testament as a factual source, but also on the entire basis for the Jewish claim on modern Israel.