Theatre review: Thark

Last year the two most famous deconstructions of farce, Noises Off and What The Butler Saw were revived in London, but now for the unreconstructed thing itself: Ben Travers' Thark was one of the most successful of the Aldwych farces that ruled the West End in the 1920s. Whether it could fill that size of venue these days is questionable, and instead it's found its way to the main stage of the Park Theatre, in a production directed by Eleanor Rhode and designed, all staircases and sharp angles, by Cherry Truluck. Sir Hector Benbow (Clive Francis, who's also done some re-writing of the script) has invited young Cherry Buck (Lucy May Barker) for dinner in his wife's absence. But an argument over the sale of their country house, Thark, brings Lady Benbow (Mary Keegan) back to London unexpectedly so Hector asks his nephew Ronny (James Dutton) to pretend Cherry is his guest - a story that won't impress his fiancée. Add to this the arrival of Thark's new owner Mrs Frush (Joanna Wake) and the stage is set for a lot of running around and people posing as each other.

Theatre review: Dances of Death

There must be an unwritten rule about Strindberg that says you can only have the same one of his plays over and over, or none at all. Usually it's Miss Julie, but it's less than six months since Donmar Trafalgar gave us The Dance of Death, and now here it is at the Gate. Except it turns out Strindberg wrote two parts to the play, and the second part is rarely performed. Howard Brenton's new version conflates the two parts into a single two-act play, hence the title change to Dances of Death. Set on a Swedish island that's used in its entirety as a military base, it focuses on the toxic 30-year marriage of elderly army captain Edgar (Michael Pennington) and his wife Alice (Linda Marlowe.) What seems at first to be affection disguised as a string of insults turns out to have a very real hatred underneath it - and yet the couple are too committed to causing each other misery ever to try and escape.