Theatre review: Twelfth Night, or What You Will(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

Well it's a good job I'm already more than familiar with the plot of this one, because any show featuring Nicholas Karimi as a sugar daddy in a low-cut top is going to be a tricky one to remember anything else about. Drew McOnie's first season of programming at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre starts with Twelfth Night, but it does share a thematic connection with his predecessor's final production, La Cage Aux Folles: Owen Horsley sets his production in a faded cabaret club, and even gives us a drag queen version of Sir Toby Belch. If the club's not heaving with customers it's probably because the owner, Olivia (Anna Francolini) has imposed a lengthy period of mourning for her dead brother, whose ashes she carries around with her everywhere, addressing her soliloquies to the urn. One regular patron is Orsino (Raphael Bushay,) who's performatively in love with Olivia, and keeps hoping despite all signs to the contrary that he might be able to woo her.

Rehearsed reading review:A Brief List of Everyone Who Died

Not all theatres can reopen in person just yet: If the Finborough attempted to do social distancing that'd be one audience member in the theatre and the next one at Earl's Court station, so for the moment they're still going strong with online content. Some brand-new content in the case of Jacob Marx Rice’s tragicomic A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, which gets its world premiere as a Zoom rehearsed reading, directed by Alex Howarth. At the age of 5 Graciella (Vivia Font) has her first experience of death; her parents (Caoimhe Farren and Paco Lozano) try to get her to say goodbye to her pet dog before he's put down, but she's distracted. The next day she's forgotten what they told her, and when she realises she'll never see her dog again she blames them for the loss. It becomes a frequently-recounted anecdote but it also feeds into Marx Rice's recurring question of whether someone's first experience of death in childhood influences the way they deal with it for the rest of their lives.