Theatre review: The Beaux' Stratagem

I can't remember when I last saw a Restoration comedy at the National, but it feels like it's been quite some time. Simon Godwin makes up for this with George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, which takes up residence in the Olivier with an impressive cast. Aimwell (Samuel Barnett) and Archer (Geoffrey Streatfeild) are a pair of noblemen whose love of the high life has left them close to penniless. Their stratagem is to travel the country, Aimwell posing as a wealthy lord and Archer as his footman, until they can find a pair of heiresses to marry. Aimwell finds one in Lichfield, but of course he falls for Dorinda (Pippa Bennett-Warner) for real. Archer also soon has eyes for her sister-in-law Mrs Sullen (Susannah Fielding) but she's still unhappily married to Dorinda's waster brother Sullen (Richard Henders.)

Theatre review: The Get Out

The Royal Court tends to have a bit of a siesta over August, but before it shuts up shop, three performances only of a sketch show that doesn't look anywhere near as hastily put-together as it actually is: Based on a project done as part of last year's Open Court, Anthony Neilson, who also directs, asked for submissions a few weeks ago for comic sketches, by anyone who'd ever worked at the Royal Court in any capacity. He and Robin French went through 50 submitted pieces and have compiled the best into The Get Out (unfortunately the cast-sheet doesn't list the writers who made the final cut.) Pippa Bennett-Warner, Imogen Doel, Nathaniel Martello-White, Jonjo O'Neill, Barnaby Power and Sophie Russell are the cast, and the framing device is an awards ceremony where some kind of disaster has reduced the venue to rubble, but everyone's still desperate to pick up a statuette.

Theatre review: The Witness

The Royal Court has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the last week, what with the Jez Butterworth debacle, and them freezing their loyal friends and members out of advance bookings for £10 Mondays Upstairs (look out for the next podcast to find out how much of my extended rant on the subject made the cut.) It's a shame that this rather overshadows a prime example of how the theatre got such a loyal fanbase in the first place, in an Upstairs play about a difficult subject, but one which creates one of the most compelling human dramas on the London stage at the moment. Following her hit debut Mogadishu¹ last year, Vivienne Franzmann's second play The Witness looks at the world of war photographers, people who bring atrocities to the attention of the wider public, but at a cost both to themselves and the victims. It does so through an intimate family drama, Lizzie Clachan's ingenious in-the-round set putting the audience by the walls, behind the bookcases and up the stairs of a North London family home.