Theatre review: The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus

Whatever else I might have to say about it, there's something to admire about a play that's had to stick a note on the doors of the pub below, apologising for the noise. Still, there's also good reason to be apprehensive about any play by Tony Harrison, a poet whose Fram still gives its name to one of the less flattering of my annual awards. But a much shorter running time makes it worth risking when he's attempting something that anyone interested in Ancient Greek theatre will want to see: I've often heard of the satyr plays that would provide the comic relief after a day of full-on tragedy, but I don't know much about them - probably because to the best of my knowledge only one survives. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus is Harrison's attempt to recreate one of the lost satyr plays.

Theatre review: Magnificence

Nowadays Howard Brenton is our top writer of history plays but in the 1970s he was a more overtly political writer, and things don't get much more overt than Magnificence, which opens with a group of idealistic young protesters breaking into - what they think is - an abandoned flat. In the first sign of why the Finborough might have seen the play as ripe for revival, they're planning to squat there in protest at people being made homeless all over London while houses are left empty, as tenants get kicked out of flats they've lived in all their lives so they can be redeveloped and rented out at an inflated price. They're enthusiastic and somewhat naïve, but as the days go by the squat is watched by bailiff Slaughter (Chris Porter) - a man profiting from the situation they're campaigning against, and one with a reputation for dangerous practices.

Theatre review: Merit

Alexandra Wood’s Merit takes place in Spain, where the recession has hit jobs particularly hard, and opens with Sofia (Ellie Turner) a few weeks into a new, well-paid job with a high-powered banker. Her mother, '80s blouse-wearer Patricia (Karen Ascoe,) confronts Sofia with her suspicions about how her daughter got a PA job that, by her own admission, other people were better-qualified for. Did she offer her new boss Antonio something extra in return for a job so well paid it's now not only supporting her, but also helping pay her parents' mortgage? Although offended, Sofia doesn't actually deny the accusation, instead moving away from home to sleep on a friend's couch. Over the next few months Patricia tries to reconnect with her daughter, turning up outside her work, informing her of the ways the recession is affecting them - her father first losing his job, then attempting suicide - and asking to meet Antonio, because if he really did give Sofia her job on merit, presumably he'll give one to her equally-qualified mother.

Theatre review: The Grand Tour

Unusually for the Finborough, their first show of 2015 is running for two months rather than just one - like one of its characters, they must be optimistic about the chances of The Grand Tour, a 1979 Jerry Herman musical that has never before been staged in Europe, finding a large audience. Set in France in 1940, it follows Polish Jew Jacobowsky (Alastair Brookshaw,) who's been fleeing persecution all his life, and now buys a car to make his latest escape - except he can't drive. Antisemitic Polish Colonel Tadeusz Stjerbinsky (Nic Kyle) has a list of names he needs to deliver to London to help the resistance against the Nazis back in Poland. He can drive, but has no means of transport, so with only the country of their birth in common the two team up for a journey to freedom - stopping along the way to pick up Marianne (Zoë Doano,) the French woman the Colonel loves.

Theatre review: The Curing Room

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This was a London preview of a show officially premiering at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

Regular readers of this blog (both of them) might have spotted that among the many things I like to see on stage, male nudity and a spot of gory violence are perennial favourites. So a play that combines large amounts of both should be very much my idea of fun (in fact I only found out about this play because a number of people contacted me about it, as if I have a reputation or something¹.) But among the many strengths of The Curing Room, "fun" isn't too high on the list. Inspired by a couple of brief, anecdotal accounts from the Second World War, as well as taking in elements from famines in Stalinist Russia, David Ian Lee's play sees seven Russian soldiers thrown naked by the Nazis into the cellar of a Polish monastery. They try to keep their spirits up but after a few days it becomes increasingly apparent they're unlikely to be rescued - indeed, they may have been forgotten altogether. (Some NSFW imagery after the text break.)

Theatre review: Rooms - A Rock Romance

In the speculation over who will succeed Nicholas Hytner as Artistic Director of the National Theatre in two years' time, one name unlikely to even cross the selection panel's minds is Neil McPherson. But he runs an unsubsidised, 50-seat room above a failed pub as if it were the National; I can only imagine what he could achieve if you gave him some actual resources to work with. The Finborough regularly punches above its weight in new writing, political theatre, classic revivals and international work, and now it reminds us it can also do the unashamed crowd-pleaser. The venue's occasional musicals tend to be revivals but this is the European premiere of Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon's 2005 off-Broadway hit Rooms - A Rock Romance. There's not much that's new about the story of co-songwriters who fall in love, but Andrew Keates' production makes it fresh, helped by some strong tunes.

Theatre review: Fair Em

Director Phil Willmott has made a bit of an annual tradition of reviving Shakespearean obscurities at the Union Theatre, with the dubious Double Falsehood and the largely neglected King John in past years. I would have thought there were enough relatively unpopular Shakespeare plays left in the canon (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus, The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Henry VIs) to keep him busy for a while yet before having to dip into the Apocrypha - the collection of anonymously-authored plays falsely attributed to Shakespeare around the time of the Restoration. But that's what he's done this year with the "modern world premiere" of Fair Em, a charmless romantic comedy where the funniest joke is the suggestion that anyone could have ever actually thought Shakespeare wrote it.

Theatre review: Somersaults

Russell Bolam directed my top show of 2012, and he kicks off 2013 with an English premiere, Iain Finlay Mcleod's Somersaults. The main show at the Finborough, it shares with the venue's current alternate show a Scottish lead character with Scots Gaelic as his first language, but is a very different, and in many ways even odder, creature. When he first reconnects with old university friend Mark (Simon Harrison) via Facebook, James (David Carlyle) seems to have it all: Thanks to a canny discovery and good investments, he's got a lot of cash and free time, which he's used to fill the Hampstead flat he and wife Alison (Emily Bowker) share with lots of desirable stuff. But his finances aren't what he thought they were, and soon an unusually posh bailiff, Barrett (Richard Teverson) turns up and his belongings and home are gone, with Alison not far behind.

Theatre review: The Fear of Breathing

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The Fear of Breathing doesn't open to official reviewers until tomorrow.

Last night on the way back from the theatre Richard asked me what I was seeing next; I said it was something about the Syrian revolution. Richard thought I must have got it wrong because that's still happening, but that's the thing about Dame Theatre, in many ways it can be one of the most up-to-the-minute ways of responding to a situation. The Fear of Breathing is a verbatim piece by Zoe Lafferty based on interviews she conducted along with Ruth Sherlock and Paul Wood, probably putting themselves in some danger in the process as there was a ban on journalists, as well as restrictions of the movements of foreign nationals within Syria. What the play, which Lafferty also directs, achieves is to give a vivid picture of revolution from the inside, as activists ranging from those making symbolic (but still potentially dangerous) gestures all the way to members of the revolutionary Free Army, tell and relive their stories.

Theatre review: The American Clock

In recent years a number of theatres have commissioned new plays looking at the current financial crisis, its causes and historical precedents. True to form, Neil McPherson at the Finborough has instead done some digging to find a theatrical great who'd already written such a play, only for it to fall into obscurity. Arthur Miller's The American Clock was nominated for an Olivier in 1986 but hasn't been seen in London since. Arthur A. Robertson (Patrick Poletti) was a wealthy businessman who predicted the Great Depression, put all his money into gold and managed to hold onto his wealth as a consequence, able to observe the chaos the USA fell into in the 1930s. Robertson acts as narrator, as Miller uses Studs Terkel's book of interviews Hard Times as inspiration to tell the stories of dozens of people who faced financial ruin.