Theatre review: The American Clock

London's improptu Arthur Miller festival continues with my second of his more obscure works in a week. The Old Vic will be featuring one of the more famous plays in a couple of months when All My Sons opens, but first The American Clock, which has another close link to The Price in that it's once again a story of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the resulting Depression. Except this is a much more on-the-nose approach, a sweeping review of the way people were affected throughout America, although it does have a single Jewish family at its heart, played in Rachel Chavkin's production by three sets of actors: We follow Moe Baum, initially played by James Garnon, his wife Rose (Clare Burt) and teenaged son Lee (Fred Haig - you know when you suddenly realise something like "oh he must be David Haig's son seeing as how they have the same last name and THE EXACT SAME FACE" and then feel stupid for not noticing it the first second you saw him? That.)

Theatre review: Hadestown

It would be unfair to say it left me cold, but the latest American musical to be heralded as the next big thing certainly left me a bit nonplussed. Anaïs Mitchell’s 2010 concept album Hadestown has been steadily gaining a following as a musical in the last couple of years, and having been performed off-Broadway and in Canada it’s due to open on Broadway next year. This is the production, directed by the show’s co-creator Rachel Chavkin, which opens first in the Olivier for what is essentially a big-budget try-out. A meandering rewrite of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Hadestown takes its musical style from New Orleans folk and jazz, and has accordingly transplanted Greek mythology to something like Depression-era Louisiana and a bar run by narrator Hermes (André De Shields.) The seasons are determined by the movement to and from the Underworld of its queen Persephone (Amber Gray,) but in recent years something’s gone wrong, leaving the world mostly in winter, with occasional bursts of summer but no autumn or spring.

Theatre review: RoosevElvis

A couple of years ago American company the TEAM brought their show Mission Drift to The Artist Formerly Known As Shed, a Vegas-based piece of Americana that was generally well-liked but which I didn't warm to. I believe in giving second chances though, and this time they're at the Royal Court with a show that had many moments that entertained me, but as a whole struggled to remain memorable even as far as the journey home. Ann (Libby King) is a butch, shy lesbian who works in a meat processing plant in South Dakota; having started on reception she was moved to the factory floor as her bosses thought she was "more suited" to that environment, and she's been there for 15 years. She loves Elvis Presley and when she gets back home has imagined conversations with him to stave off her loneliness, until she finds Brenda (Kristen Sieh) on a dating site. After a couple of days together they decide it isn't going to work out, but their extended date includes a trip to Mount Rushmore, where Brenda tells her she comes from the same town as Theodore Roosevelt, whom it seems Elvis idolised in turn. Emboldened by her recent experiences, Ann decides to drive to Graceland in RoosevElvis.

Theatre review: Mission Drift

A play that looks at American capitalism through characters from the nation's early history sounds like a worryingly familiar prospect, but fortunately Mission Drift isn't another Low Road. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what it is instead. The latest guests in the National Theatre's Shed are US company the TEAM, whose play charts the rise and fall of the American Dream in Las Vegas: Known for its resorts and casinos, it's also a place where everything is transitory. The famous buildings where Elvis and Sinatra played are regularly destroyed in controlled implosions to make way for the next biggest, most expensive hotel, which will in its turn become a relic sooner rather than later; the only reminder of past glories the signs saved and exhibited at a tatty museum called the Neon Boneyard.