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: The Tempest (Donmar King's Cross)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I can't see any sign of the papers having been invited to this yet.

Phyllida Lloyd's all-female Shakespeare productions were announced as a trilogy, and the theme of "red hands" that ran through the other two plays made me think Macbeth might be the final bloody part. As it turns out Lloyd's idea was actually to do one tragedy - the original Julius Caesar - one history - the condensed Henry IV - and one comedy, which turns out to be The Tempest. As with the other two productions, the framing device is that Shakespeare's play is being staged by the inmates of a women's prison, a setting that would seem to lend itself better to the other two genres, but in fairness this is one of the comedies that's rarely actually funny. Instead the more accurate term of "late romance" would seem particularly appropriate here, as the prison story focuses even more on a character whose backstory has been becoming more prominent over the trilogy, and who of course is also the real-life company's big name: Hannah, the character Harriet Walter uses in the framing device, based on a real American lifer with no hope of parole.

Theatre review: Henry IV (Donmar Warehouse)

Following 2012's Julius Caesar, which saw the inmates of a women's prison perform the play but find some of its themes too close to home, for the Donmar's 2014 Shakespeare production they've returned to Phyllida Lloyd's concept to see the prisoners try again. Lloyd has now said she enviasages these all-female Shakeaspeares as a trilogy; the third play hasn't been revealed yet but the middle installment is a merging of the Henry IV plays. Although in practice it's a shortened version of Part 1, with Part 2 represented by its two most iconic scenes, plus a third that mops up some plot points. So this is largely the story of Prince Hal (Clare Dunne,) his life of petty crime and carousing with drunken knight Falstaff (Ashley McGuire,) and the first major indication that he's more of a formidable figure than he chooses to present: An uprising against his father, led by the charismatic Hotspur (Jade Anouka,) is crushed partly due to Hal's unexpected transformation into a fighting machine.

Theatre review: Josephine and I

The first of two consecutive playwrighting debuts from popular stage actors at the Bush, Josephine and I also sees Cush Jumbo take to the stage in her one-woman show that's actually about two women: The "I" in the title is a fictionalised version of herself, a young black actress in the present day who's just auditioned (having been recalled seven times now) for an American cop show that could make her a star; and she's often distracted by thoughts of this job opportunity and how it impacts on her personal life, from the story she's actually trying to tell: That of another black performer, except in those days the word would have been "coloured" as we're going back to the mid-20th century to meet a woman who found ways to overcome the limitations put on her race, the vaudeville legend Josephine Baker.

Theatre review: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This production has toured festivals, but this review is of the first London performance.

I'm not much of a poetry fan, but having missed Fiona Shaw's much-praised performance of The Waste Land I decided to make up for it with her interpretation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Apart from its most famous (and usually misquoted) line, all I knew about the poem was that seeing an albatross at sea isn't unlucky - it's killing it that's going to get you into trouble. And so it proves for the ancient mariner, who accosts a guest at a wedding and makes him listen to the grisly tale of what happened when, as a younger man, he'd shot the albatross that had until then brought his ship good luck. Soon the luck and wind run out, along with the fresh water, and the guilty sailor is strapped to the mast with the albatross around his neck, supernaturally staying alive to suffer and watch the rest of his crew die. Also, there's zombies.

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse)

My final Shakespeare trip of a Bard-heavy year takes me back to one of those plays I've never warmed to, Julius Caesar. Back in the summer, Gregory Doran's Africa-set production was probably the best I've seen the play done, so this one at the Donmar Warehouse had a lot to live up to. And Phyllida Lloyd's is another take to go for high-concept casting, this time an all-female version of the story. We still follow the conspiracy of Brutus (Harriet Walter,) Cassius (Jenny Jules) and a select group of Roman senators to assassinate the hugely popular Julius Caesar (Frances Barber) before his increasing political power leads him to tyranny. But we're now in a women's prison, where the inmates have been given permission to stage the play in the recreation room, and some of the cast are taking it all much more seriously than others.