Radio review: The Oresteia - The Furies

When I started listening to and reviewing Radio 3's 2014 Oresteia earlier this week, I suggested a couple of practical reasons why we don't really see theatres staging it as three separate plays, instead usually getting a playwright to create a single epic out of them. Getting to the end of the trilogy, it also suggests how on an artistic and storytelling level it would make quite an unusual experience for modern audiences. Of course one reason the jump from one play to the next is quite jarring is that this production took the idea of treating them as separate plays to its natural conclusion, entrusting each to a different writer. Rebecca Lenkiewicz takes over for The Furies, with Sasha Yevtushenko directing as Orestes (Will Howard,) who was last seen fleeing the titular ancient goddesses because he murdered his mother (in revenge for her murdering his father, in revenge for him murdering their daughter,) arrives at Apollo's temple in Delphi for sanctuary.

Theatre review: Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkern

You don't see a lot of theatre about witch-hunts - presumably because Arthur Miller's The Crucible is so widely regarded (if not necessarily by me) as a masterpiece, that anything else would be held up to comparison. It's not put off Rebecca Lenkiewicz though, as she not only revisits the paranoia in Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkern, she also finds a new and bitingly topical metaphor in the theme: Society's poor, old and disabled being demonised, scapegoated and ultimately disposed of. The village of Walkern in Generic Rural Accentshire saw its share of witch trials and executions in the 17th century, and decades later, when everyone thinks things are calming down, they flare up again. As the play opens a woman has just been hanged as a witch, leaving behind a distressed and sexually confused daughter, Ann (Hannah Hutch.)

Theatre review: The Invisible

The Bush Theatre's skylights and lack of air-conditioning make it one of the least comfortable London theatres during the hotter months, so its summer show needs to be something that can distract from this. It managed it flamboyantly in 2013 with Josephine and I, and with family tensions as heated as the atmosphere in 2014's Perseverance Drive, but this year's offering is a much drier affair, and I'm still not sure what - except the vague, as it turns out false suggestion of a cliffhanger - even brought me back to The Invisible after the interval. It's not for lack of an important topic: Rebecca Lenkiewicz's play looks at the brutal government cuts to Legal Aid, which in the Magna Carta anniversary year seem to break one of that document's major tenets, that Justice is not to be either bought or denied. But three of the characters in The Invisible can't pay for justice, so they may have to go without: Aisha (Sirine Saba) is an Indian arranged bride being beaten and restrained at home by her husband and his family; Ken (Nicholas Bailey) is being denied access to his children.

Theatre review: Unusual Unions

Yet another collection of short plays to include a contribution from the ubiquitous Tom Wells, this is a one-day event playing a total of two performances only, and commissioned by the Royal Court as one of a number of companion pieces to their main-house show The Mistress Contract. Inspired by that piece's unorthodox relationship, five writers have been asked to come up with something on the theme of Unusual Unions, and each one of them has contributed, in my opinion, something far superior to the main event. The way this promenade show works is actually very similar to I Do: The audience is colour-coded into "teams," who are led round the building to various areas, so the order anyone saw the plays in is fairly arbitrary and varies from group to group. So, as part of the green team Phill, Andy and I started by being taken to an unused Downstairs dressing room, for Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Anhedonia, directed by Simon Godwin. We meet a girl (Rona Morison) wearing a hijab, although not for the reasons we might expect. A violent incident has left her in a very dark place and interestingly, in contrast to the dramatic cliche, her encounter with the friendly foreman (Nathan Osgood) of a building site she's walked into doesn't leave her in a good place exactly, but it does make her that one step closer to coping. The subtle use of changing pronouns is a clever way of showing how the story develops in Lenkiewicz's powerful little piece.

Theatre review: The Turn of the Screw

Theatre rarely attempts horror, but when it does it can be a profitable experiment, as The Woman in Black and Ghost Stories proved. Latest to give it a go is the Almeida, teaming up with horror movie legends Hammer, who are launching a live performance arm. Rebecca Lenkiewicz adapts The Turn of the Screw, Henry James' endlessly popular ghost story, more commonly seen on stage as an opera.

An unnamed Governess (Anna Madeley) is hired by the distant Mr Sackville (Orlando Wells) to care for his orphaned niece and nephew, on the understanding that she never contacts him should anything go wrong. Which, of course, it immediately does - she forms an instant affection for Miles and Flora, but is just as quickly convinced they are in grave supernatural danger from the ghosts of their former governess and her lover.