Theatre review: Reykjavik

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I caught Reykjavik's final preview performance before they invite the press in.

Add Richard Bean to the ever-growing list of playwrights who really just want to write a ghost story: It's fair to say I've had mixed reactions to his plays, but while the writer's biggest hits have been with comedy, the mournful, haunted Reykjavik is probably the best of his plays that I've seen. Set in 1976, with the Cod Wars (Iceland demanding, and invariably getting, an increasingly large area of exclusivity for fishing its waters) nearing their end, the fishing industry that makes up a huge proportion of Hull's economy looks under serious threat. But for Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth,) whose company owns several boats, there's a more immediate problem: One of his trawlers has sunk in the freezing waters off Iceland, and all but four of the crew are dead. It's something all the trawlermen know is a possibility, and the city has traditions for dealing with it.

Theatre review: To Have and to Hold

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: To Have and to Hold was meant to be well into its run by now, but following the cancellation of its preview period this is now a review of the second public performance.

So yes, a shaky start for the divisive Richard Bean's new comedy-drama To Have and to Hold; no official announcement has been made about why its opening was put back, but the show was originally slated to be directed by Richard Wilson, who's now credited as co-director with Terry Johnson. You can see why an octogenarian director might have been a good fit for a story revolving around a couple in their nineties: Jack (Alun Armstrong) and Florence (Marion Bailey) have lived in Wetwang in Yorkshire for 70 years of married life, and both their children have long since moved away. Now, with it becoming apparent that Jack at least is very ill and nearing the end, mystery novelist Rob (Christopher Fulford) and private medicine entrepreneur Tina (Hermione Gulliford) are visiting to convince their parents to sell the house, and move in with Tina's family where they can be looked after.

Stage-to-screen review: London Assurance

When NTatHome first launched I tried it out with the oldest recording they'd put on the platform; I think Phèdre still holds that title but another of the early NTLive screenings has recently joined it, giving me a chance to rewatch a show I remembered fondly, and see how well it held up. A far cry from Peloponnesian angst and bloody horse-related deaths (although they do have a bit of forbidden lust in common,) in 2010's London Assurance Nicholas Hytner revived the early hit for largely forgotten 19th century theatrical juggernaut Dion Boucicault. Boucicault's work generally hasn't stood the test of time, and tends to work best when radically reconceived or flat out parodied, and this too has needed some tinkering: In an ongoing collaboration that would have its most famous example the following year, Hytner got Richard Bean to do a thorough rewrite of the script.

Theatre review: Jack Absolute Flies Again

For many of us One Man, Two Guvnors is now remembered as the show that stopped us from ever trusting a theatrical ad-lib again, but there's no denying what a huge international hit Richard Bean's rewrite of Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters was. So it's not surprising if the National Theatre have tried to recreate the alchemy as Bean, now with one of the original Masters, Oliver Chris, on board as co-writer, takes another 18th century comedy and transposes it to more recent history. This time the source material is perhaps the most enduring Restoration Comedy, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals, and while it remains to be seen if its financial success can match its predecessor, Jack Absolute Flies Again is certainly a hit in terms of providing laughs when they're most needed. From a flippant world of fops and wigs the scene moves to men and women in a higher-stakes setting, during the aerial Battle of Britain in 1940.

Theatre review: Young Marx

Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr finally unveil what they've been working on since they left the National - the Bridge Theatre, billed as the first new-built commerical theatre in London in 80 years, with a promotional drive that seems to focus much more on baked goods than you would usually expect (they're trying to make interval madeleines A Thing.) Who knows how many unused shells of theatres are knocking around London basements at the moment thanks to the tax breaks luxury developments get for including a community arts space* - Hytner and Starr picked one next to Tower Bridge to occupy and flesh out, with what looks like a very effective design: Front-of-House is a bit Expensive Hotel but the auditorium has a touch of the RST about it, with three galleries above the stalls, and what look like good sightlines from most seats and a comparatively intimate feel. The opening three productions are designed to showcase the three possible seating configurations, starting with end-on.

Theatre review: The Hypocrite

2017 is the year of Hull as UK city of culture, and although they're based in Warwickshire the RSC have got in on the act, co-producing a new commission with Hull Truck Theatre. The city is at the heart of The Hypocrite, which although being written in the style of a Restoration comedy takes its story from true events from well before the Restoration, indeed before there was any need for a Restoration, as the titular character, Sir John Hotham (Mark Addy,) was the Governor of Hull in 1642, just as the Civil War was about to break out. His story was a scandal that put the city at the centre of the action, so it's natural that Hull's best and funniest living playwright should be chosen to tell it. But he must have been busy so they just got Richard Bean in to recycle some of the more successful bits from One Man, Two Guvnors.

Theatre review: Kiss Me

He's still considered something of a big-hitter after the success of One Man, Two Guvnors, but Richard Bean's more recent plays have tended towards the disappointing, so a step back to something a bit more low-key and intimate could be a good move. And so it proves as Kiss Me is a two-hander running just over an hour, and premieres at Hampstead's Downstairs studio space. A romantic comedy-drama with a period setting but some unexpectedly modern attitudes, it takes place a few years after the First World War, which has left women all over Britain widowed, or with husbands so badly injured they can't father children. Enter the unseen and mysterious Dr Trollope, who finds desperate women and offers them an extreme solution: With fertility treatment still in its infancy, she can arrange for a visit from a particularly potent young man to make a baby the old-fashioned way.

Theatre review: The Mentalists

I may have written the odd scathing review in my time but as criticisms go you can't really get much more to-the-point than the girl in the middle of the Royal Circle's front row tonight, who suddenly vomited all over herself halfway through the first act of The Mentalists. A bit of an overreaction, as this misguided attempt at a star vehicle is a misfire, but not enough of one to get that het up about. I quite like Stephen Merchant, who seems funny and down-to-earth in interviews, and I suspect he's behind most of the best work in his collaborations with Ricky Gervais. But his brief, broad comic acting appearances have seemed very much like extensions of his personality, and haven't given me the impression that he'd have a lot of range as an actor. Still, Merchant is the star name in Abbey Wright's revival of Richard Bean's tragicomic play as Ted, who books into a cheap Finsbury Park hotel room.

Theatre review: Made in Dagenham

The film-to-musical adaptation has well and truly become a West End fixture, but when the end result is as fresh and downright eccentric as Made in Dagenham, it's clear there's a labour of love involved, not just a cynical recycling of a familiar property. The story of the 1968 strike by female workers at the Ford plant in Dagenham now has a book by Richard Bean, music by David Arnold and lyrics by Richard Thomas, and gets a typically inventive debut production from Rupert Goold. Gemma Arterton plays Rita, who works as a machinist sewing chair covers for Cortinas. As part of a larger deal with management, the workers' union has agreed that this job can be downgraded to "unskilled" and, reluctantly at first, Rita joins in the talks to get their pay grade back. But even if the women's skill is recognised, they will still earn significantly less than men on the same grade, so she aims higher: The women's demands have now changed to equal pay with the men.

Theatre review: Pitcairn

In his most recent play Great Britain a couple of months ago, Richard Bean gave the Queen a line about "looking forward to our visit to the Pitcairn islands." So Bean's critics can add product placement to his list of crimes as Pitcairn is in fact the title of his next project, a production from Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint with Shakespeare's Globe, where it lands as part of its tour. The last war play in the Globe's 2014 season comes with the depressing message that a civil war can break out even in a nation that consists of a couple of dozen people. These are the former mutineers of the Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian (Tom Morely,) who after stopping off in Tahiti to pick up wives and convince a couple of local men to join them as well, have sailed to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, where they hope to build a Utopian society - and hide from the Royal Navy who'd quite like to hang them all.

Theatre review: Toast

The second Richard Bean play I've seen this year, and the second to make reference to the Pitcairn islands - and we haven't even got to the one actually called Pitcairn. Instead this is a revival of his first play, which takes inspiration from Bean's job in a bread factory in his year out before university. Toast is set some time in the 1970s in the break room of a Hull bread factory; a time when the trade unions were at their most powerful, but although there's recently been a strike for higher pay, it was a complete failure. This may be because the union rep, Colin (Will Barton) is ineffectual, but it could just as well be because strike action would be a hard ask for people who barely ever seem to leave the ovens. Working anything up to 80-hour weeks, some, like Peter (Matt Sutton) have families to support, but for the likes of Cecil (Simon Greenall) and Nellie (Matthew Kelly) the job seems to be a genuine part of them.

Theatre review: Great Britain

Playwright Richard Bean has been off the radar a bit since the all-conquering One Man, Two Guvnors, but he's going to be cropping up regularly in London in the next few months. First up is a topical play - so topical that it had to wait for a high-profile court case to end before the National could even officially confirm it was being staged. That's because Great Britain is a fictionalised version of the recent phone-hacking scandal that's seen the press become its own biggest story. Paige Britain (Billie Piper) is the news editor of tabloid newspaper The Free Press, and expected to be its next editor. Her story-gathering methods have never been squeaky clean, but a seemingly minor story brings to her attention a crucial piece of information: Each mobile phone operator has a single default pin number across all its users. Since hardly anyone changes their pin, all you need to know is someone's phone number to be able to listen to their voicemail remotely.