Theatre review: The Changeling

Ricky Dukes is a fun director, but he does seem incredibly keen on filling small stages with huge furniture, then letting his casts loose to try and manoeuvre their way around it: In last year's Doctor Faustus it was a maze of big wooden desks that everyone was banging their shins against; for this year's return to The Little with The Changeling they're trying to squeeze around a boardroom table, with Colette O'Rourke's Beatrice-Joanna at one point getting stuck when her hooped wedding dress swallowed an office chair. I haven’t seen Succession (it’s not on any of my streaming services, I’m not being a hipster about it,) but I assume that like a lot of recent shows that’s the visual reference that Sorcha Corcoran’s design is making.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Lazarus / Southwark Playhouse)

I don't have a lot of firm rules for myself on how to write reviews, and those I do have mainly involve avoiding bad habits I dislike in other writers. So I try to always include some description, however cursory, of a play's basic story: Everyone's knowledge and experience is different, so why should I assume that a reader already knows the plot, even if the play's Hamlet? But it's not always easy to follow my own rule if the production itself seems to make the assumption that the audience is ahead of the game - if it's not really telling a story, how do I summarise it? I've been following the work of Lazarus Theatre Company on and off over the years, especially since they've become regulars at Southwark Playhouse. Ricky Dukes' productions of the classics tend to be ambitious, with all that that entails, but they always feel like a risk worth taking: Results can be mixed, but there's usually at the very least some interesting elements to take from his ideas. But he may have overreached himself this time.

Theatre review: Doctor Faustus

Perennially Christopher Marlowe's most popular play, Doctor Faustus gets another revival, this time from Lazarus, the small-scale classics company that returns to Southwark Playhouse after last year's gender-bending take on Salomé. Faustus (Jamie O’Neill) is an arrogant young academic who's decided he's exhausted all the knowledge available to him in books, and will cheat his way to learning the secrets of the universe: He employs a demon to be his servant, to answer any question he may have, and show him the wonders of the world. Mephistopheles' (David Angland) services, of course, come at the highest possible price: In return for 24 years of service, he gets Faustus to sell his soul to Lucifer (Candis Butler Jones.) Faustus manages to convince himself he doesn't believe in the afterlife anyway so it's a zero-risk gamble, until the deal is done and he has to face the consequences.

Theatre review: Salomé

Oscar Wilde is known for extremes: The frothy comedies on one hand, the disgrace and despair of his later years on the other. Somewhere in between was his desire to add a more dramatic string to his bow, and like Racine a couple of centuries earlier he wanted to take Greek Tragedy as his starting point. His personal life having other plans, the only one of these tragedies he actually got to write was Salomé, which applies a biblical story to that format, ending up with a twisted and gory dance through the extremes of sexual obsession. And that's before you get to the added twists individual productions might have in mind: Ricky Dukes' for Lazarus Theatre isn't even the first I've seen to queer up Wilde even further, by gender-flipping the title character. King Herod (Jamie O'Neill) has, in a plot point reminiscent of another famous tragedy, had his own brother killed and married his widow, Herodias (Pauline Babula.) Apart from the obvious, the tension in their marriage is also caused by Herod's undisguised interest in her son Salomé (Fred Thomas.)

Theatre review: Edward II

A few years ago Ricky Dukes directed a production of Dido, Queen of Carthage I enjoyed, and now he and Lazarus Theatre return to Christopher Marlowe for a heavily edited and adapted version of Edward II. Luke Ward-Wilkinson plays the titular king, who in the opening scene learns of his father’s death and his own accession to the throne, and responds by immediately recalling his banished lover Gaveston (Bradley Frith,) much to the displeasure of his nobles. Whether Gaveston is at court or in exile, he’s a constant distraction to the king, and with conflict at home and abroad his attention is needed for the safety of England. At least that’s their story: Beneath the rhetoric the rebellion led by Mortimer (Jamie O’Neill) looks more like an opportunistic grab at power from a weak and distracted king.

Theatre review: Lear (Lazarus/Greenwich Theatre)

Following their creative take on Dido, Queen of Carthage I decided to catch Lazarus' companion show in the final performance of their Greenwich rep season. This is Shakespeare's Lear - the character's title dropped because here Lear is a woman. Jennifer Shakesby is the monarch who divides her kingdom between her daughters, only to find that their gratitude isn't quite what she expected, and once you've given away all your power the respect suddenly disappears as well. Ricky Dukes' production uses a heavily edited version of the text - the Fool has been excised completely - but has changed few of the gender pronouns: Lear is referred to as "she" and "mother," but her title remains "King" and she is still addressed as "sir." Of course post-Battlestar Galactica that's a perfectly acceptable form of address.

Theatre review: Dido, Queen of Carthage

While I still live a stone's throw from Greenwich Theatre I might as well make use of it, and as I do like a bit of Marlowe Dido, Queen of Carthage was a good bet. It's playing in repertory with Lear in productions by director-designer Ricky Dukes, from Lazarus Theatre Company, with a pretty large ensemble cast.

A handful of Trojan survivors escape the fall of Troy, led by the demigod Aeneas (Joseph Tweddle,) but are shipwrecked off the coast of Libya. Aeneas' mother, the love-goddess Venus (Lucy Hagan-Walker,) comes up with a plan to save her son: She'll put a love spell on the queen of the area, Dido (Alice Brown.) Smitten with Aeneas, Dido will do anything he wants - like repair his ships. But once that's done and he prepares to sail for Italy, Carthage is still left with a powerful woman under a love spell, who's been spurned by the object of her affection.