Theatre review: Twelfth Night (RSC / RST)

The RSC's apparent reverse-Globe scheduling policy of rarer Shakespeare plays in the summer and the most famous ones in winter continues with Twelfth Night as the holiday show. Prasanna Puwanarajah's production even embraces the play's seasonal title with a few Christmas songs and decorations - all fairly subtle though, this story does after all feature a high-profile Puritan, and they were famously not big fans of Christmas. In fact I was meant to see this closer to the season itself but with the train service between That London and Stratford-upon-Avon being nonexistent for most of this month I had to reschedule to the final matinée: I'd rather not have to publish a review after the show's closed but needs must when Chiltern Railways exists. Opening not with the big storm but with Gwyneth Keyworth's Viola spluttering out of the water, the sense of understatement extends from the Christmas trimmings to many elements of the play.

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.