Theatre review: My Master Builder

Henrik Ibsen seems to be the current favourite classic playwright for modern writers to rewrite, rework and reimagine, in plays billed as inspired by his work rather than straightforward adaptations. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll get something that genuinely feels like it's reinventing the wheel, but right now I'd settle for something I can see the point of: Lila Raicek's My Master Builder isn't that. Henry (Ewan McGregor) is a superstar architect (or "starchitect,") who has just completed work on a new chapel adjacent to his weekend home in the Hamptons. On the tenth anniversary of his son's death, the building is to be officially unveiled as a memorial to the child, and his publisher wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood) is organising a launch party. As she plans the evening with her assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack) she reveals a somewhat twisted sense of mischief in some of the invitations and seating arrangements, but one guest has been invited for an even darker purpose.

Theatre review: Kerry Jackson

The Dorfman's final piece of new writing of 2022 takes a despairing look at the polarisation of opinion by politics and class in modern Britain, and the impossibility of reconciling the warring points of view, but chucks it into a blender with a pretty frantic comedy. What comes out isn't exactly gazpacho, despite April De Angelis setting Kerry Jackson in a tapas restaurant: Opening a new restaurant is a risky business at the best of times, but Kerry (Fay Ripley) has taken a punt on launching her business in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Walthamstow Village is up-and-coming so her opening weeks don't go too badly, but she's concerned that homeless Will (Michael Fox,) who sleeps rough across the road, is putting off her customers. When she aggressively confronts him she makes matters worse, and soon he's leaving dirty protests by her wheelie bins.

Theatre review: When the Crows Visit

If the last few years have seen a cultural shift towards highlighting the harassment and abuse women have been routinely suffering around the world, Indian playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar has some particularly brutal truths to speak to her own country, and horrors she sees as having been silently passed down the generations. She takes inspiration - very loosely - from Ibsen's tale of the sins of the father being visited on the son, Ghosts, for her own story of a son returning home with a terrible secret, When the Crows Visit. Widow Hema (Ayesha Dharker) lives in the home she inherited from a husband so violently abusive she's considered lucky to have survived him. The seven years since his death have been a kind of liberation for her but she still has a constant reminder in her mother-in-law Jaya (Soni Razdan) who still lives with her, along with her young carer Ragini (Aryana Ramkhalawon.)

Theatre review: Wife

We're going to be seeing a lot of Ibsen's A Doll's House in the next year or so as various theatres have programmed new interpretations on the classic story that gave its heroine an agency and independence that was scandalous at the time. But before that at the Kiln Samuel Adamson offers up several Noras in one, as Wife tells a story of queer history that sees several generations - from 1959 to the 2040s - take inspiration from her. It comes down to Daisy (Karen Fishwick,) who recently married Robert (Joshua James) to please her father, only to fall in love with actress Suzannah (Sirine Saba.) When she takes her husband to see Suzannah play Nora she knows she's got a similar big decision to make, but she ends up sticking with what society expects of her. We then jump to 1988, and though we don’t see Daisy, from what we hear of her the decision proved catastrophic: A lonely alcoholic, she's estranged from her only son Ivar (James.)

Theatre review: Disco Pigs

I almost skipped the 20th anniversary production of Disco Pigs because I felt like I’d seen a version at the Young Vic quite recently; as it turns out that production was actually six years ago and besides, casting a Harry Potter actor I hadn’t “collected” on stage before is always a good way of making me stump up for a ticket. Enda Walsh’s two-hander uses a mixture of strong Cork accents and dialect with a convoluted, poetic style of speech that channels Joyce, Beckett and A Clockwork Orange to tell a story of two teenagers, Darren aka Pig (Colin Campbell) and Sinead aka Runt (Evanna Lynch,) who were born a second apart in the same hospital. Ever since being placed on adjacent tables they’ve been closer than real siblings, to the point in fact of isolating themselves from their families, speaking in their own language and dealing with the outside world mainly with violence.

Theatre review: Communicating Doors

Ever since we saw the Old Vic's production of The Norman Conquests in 2008, Vanessa has been an Alan Ayckbourn fan, and as you can pretty much put money on there being at least one production of his plays a year, it's ended up reliably being my birthday present to her. But while she's continued to love the plays, for me there's been seriously diminishing returns. So maybe my expectations were low, but it turns out Communicating Doors is the Ayckbourn I've enjoyed the most since that first trip. Perhaps it's the fact that, while still recognisably Ayckbourn in many ways, the play has quite a different feel to it to the domestic comedies I've been used to in the last few years. It's a very English take on a time travel adventure as, in the year 2020, dominatrix Phoebe (Rachel Tucker) travels through a riot-torn London, past where Big Ben used to be, to meet a wealthy old client in a five-star hotel.

Theatre review: Multitudes

Much as it suits the narratives of particular papers and politicians to pretend otherwise, British Muslims aren't a homogenous group with a single mindset but are, as the title of John Hollingworth's play has it, Multitudes, all with their own experiences and priorities. Hollingworth attempts - with variable success - to put as many of these points of view, as well as some that oppose them, into a single Bradford family. The famously multicultural city becomes the unlikely venue for the Conservative Party Conference, at the same time as military action in Syria is being mooted. A moderate Muslim and longstanding local councillor with Parliamentary ambitions, Kash (Navin Chowdhry) is due to make an optimistic speech at the conference. He's a widower with a teenage daughter, and a white girlfriend, Natalie (Clare Calbraith,) who's got a surprise in store for him.

Theatre review: Bad Jews

It's not a subtle title, but then Bad Jews isn't a subtle play. Joshua Harmon's story of warring cousins is, though, rather a clever one. On the night after their grandfather's funeral Daphna (Jenna Augen) is sharing a studio apartment with her quiet cousin Jonah (Joe Coen,) and spends much of the time railing against Jonah's older brother Liam, who missed the funeral, and whom she's long had a feud with. When Liam (Ilan Goodman) finally does arrive, it's with his gentile girlfriend Melody (Gina Bramhill) in tow, a fact that only infuriates Daphna more. Daphna is very vocal about her religious beliefs, planning to become a rabbi and move to Israel, so she takes Liam's atheism and shiksa girlfriend as personal affronts. Sparks fly as soon as the cousins are reunited, and while religion is the opening salvo, when a treasured family heirloom comes into the discussion things soon get personal.

Theatre review: The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Canadian playwright Adam Bock had the idea of throwing together a group of roughly similar-looking actresses, who would normally be competing for the same roles and therefore rarely get to act together. He probably had specific New York-based actresses in mind as that's where he usually works, but a meeting with Indhu Rubasingham led to The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania getting its world premiere in London, at the Tricycle. Loosely modeled on the likes of the Mitfords and the Hiltons, the five Colby sisters are socialites who did, indeed, grow up in Pittsburgh, but sometime after their mother's death their father's fortunes greatly improved (perhaps by marriage, to the hated stepmother occasionally alluded to?) Now the sisters live in New York City, most of them married to artists and architects, and lead lives of vague celebrity: Famous for being famous, they're strangers to work but not to the pages of Vanity Fair.

Theatre review: Paper Dolls

I don't know if these reviews ever influence what people choose to go see, but sometimes surely the bare summary of a show is enough to decide for you: The true story of a group of Filipino drag queens with day-jobs as live-in carers for elderly Jewish men in Israel is either one you can't miss, or one you'd run a mile to avoid. For me it was the former as Indhu Rubasingham directs the premiere of Paper Dolls, Philip Himberg's play inspired by a documentary film by Tomer Heymann. Unable to express their sexuality in their native Philippines, five gay men move to Tel Aviv. Their work as carers means money to send to their families, and their evenings performing '80s classics brings out their glamorous side. But on top of their daily dramas is the threat of deportation: Their visas depend on them staying in work, with no time allowed to find a new one if they get fired or their charge dies.