Theatre review: Blackout Songs

Joe White's Blackout Songs is an alcoholic love story, which Guy Jones' production plays as a kind of twisted rom-com: Anisha Fields' traverse set design is bordered by rows of chairs that call to mind AA (Alcoholics Anonymous, not the Automobile Association.) That's because an AA meeting is where the protagonists meet, but it soon becomes apparent they're not ready to commit to sobriety: Rebecca Humphries' Alice and Alex Austin's Charlie (the characters are listed as just "Her" and "Him" in the programme) both claim this is their first-ever AA meeting, and they don't even stay past the coffee: When she finds out he's going cold turkey, Alice tells Charlie that has a one-in-twenty fatality rate, and they should go out and get him one last drink to save his life.

Theatre review: Mephisto [A Rhapsody]

Deconstructing itself as it goes along, Samuel Gallet's Mephisto [A Rhapsody] is based on a novel by Klaus Mann which was banned for decades – as argued successfully in court by his family, the real-life target of his satire was all-too-easily identifiable. That target was a German actor whose liberal principles went out the window when he realised the Nazis could be good for his career, and ended up performing Faust for Hitler. Gallet transposes the action to present-day France, and the actor making a deal with a metaphorical devil is Aymeric (Leo Bill,) a company member in a provincial rep. They tour Chekhov around a region with poor transport links to the rest of the country, which leaves it a financial and cultural backwater, and a centre for the rise of neo-fascism. Aymeric, along with colleagues Luca (Elizabeth Chan) and Nicole (Subika Anwar-Khan) urge the artistic director Eva (Tamzin Griffin) to ditch the classics in favour of more urgent work addressing the current political crisis.

Theatre review: Wild Honey

Nobody could accuse Ed Hall's Hampstead Theatre of wild programming, but the word itself is one they're very fond of - we've had Wildefire, Wild and now Wild Honey, Michael Frayn's version of Chekhov's unfinished Platonov. This revival was due to be directed by Howard Davies, who sadly died at the beginning of rehearsals, and his replacement should be well-versed in the play: Jonathan Kent directed a different version of Platonov as part of his Young Chekhov trilogy at the National only a few months ago. There's another connection to that day-long epic, as Geoffrey Streatfeild returns to the one play out of the three that he didn't appear in this summer. Frayn's play is a shorter, broader version of the story of Platonov (Streatfeild,) a provincial schoolteacher who's spent the winter in virtual hibernation with his wife Sasha (Rebecca Humphries) and their baby son.

Theatre review: The Argument

The title of William Boyd's The Argument does relate to one argument in particular - the one in the opening scene, which has repercussions for the rest of the play - but every scene sees a different pairing of characters lock horns. Pip (Oliver Dimsdale) and Meredith (Marianne Oldham) are disagreeing about a crappy movie they've just watched, when the topic suddenly gets darker, leading to Pip admitting that, after only three years of marriage, he's had an affair with a colleague. He moves out of the house, leading their friends to try and get them to reconcile, while Meredith's parents Chloe (Diana Hardcastle) and Frank (Michael Simkins) can't agree on whether they want their daughter to get back with her husband, or move on. A lot of alcohol seems to be fueling both the characters' aggression, and their bad decisions, a fact which Anna Ledwich's production highlights by leaving their empty wine glasses and beer bottles to litter the stage as the play goes on.

Theatre review: Temple

Following his Lear last year Simon Russell Beale has said he's not quite ready to find a way of topping that challenge in the classics, so this year he's appearing in two new plays instead. First up is Temple, Steve Waters' fictionalised version of the Occupy London movement in 2011, which ended up camped outside St Paul's Cathedral. Among safety fears, the Cathedral was closed - an unprecedented event in a church that stayed open throughout the Blitz, and a place of worship that predates the City of London itself. SRB plays an unnamed, fictional version of the Dean of St Paul's, on whom responsibility for every decision taken eventually falls. It's St Jude's Day - patron saint of lost causes - and after a fortnight closed to the public, the Cathedral will be reopening its doors, with the Dean himself leading the morning Eucharist.

Theatre review: Pomona

A huge amount of Twitter buzz saw me make a last-minute trip to Richmond for Alistair McDowall's wildly surreal Pomona, a mix of urban thriller, epic fantasy quest and Lovecraftian horror. Ollie (Nadia Clifford) is searching for the identical twin sister who vanished some weeks earlier. There's also been a number of disappearances at the brothel where Fay (Rebecca Humphries) fled to after her policeman husband abused her. Both mysteries may find a solution in Pomona, a concrete island in the middle of Manchester isolated by canals and defunct train lines. Nobody seems to quite notice Pomona is even there, but just in case anyone gets curious the gangsters who make mysterious deliveries there have hired Moe (Sean Rigby) and Charlie (Sam Swann) as security guards. But their boss Gale (Grace Thurgood) now wants them to take a more hands-on role in the business.

Theatre review: I Am a Camera

Cabaret returns to London next month but first up we get the play that inspired it, John Van Druten's I Am a Camera, based on Christopher Isherwood's recollections of his time in Berlin. In the suitably dingy space of Southwark Playhouse's Vault, designer James Turner has created a room in Fraulein Schneider's boarding house on a two-sided raised thrust - it doesn't come with any mod cons, but it does come with a three-piece band playing mournfully behind the walls. It's the room that Isherwood (Harry Melling) occupies at the start of the play, but his ailing finances mean he's about to move to an even smaller and cheaper room across the hall. Replacing him in this room will be another English ex-pat, Sally Bowles (Rebecca Humphries,) an aspiring actress with a fondness for all the wrong men. Over the summer and autumn of 1932 we follow their friendship, and the way they and their bohemian circle of friends react to the rise of the Nazis.