Theatre review: Macbeth (ETT / Lyric Hammersmith)

Déjà vu at the Lyric Hammersmith, which hasn't seen such a burst of European Director's Theatre-style expressionism since the Sean Holmes years, but makes up for it with English Touring Theatre's take on Macbeth: Richard Twyman throws everything except the nudity and the food-fighting (I'd say the kitchen sink but there is one of those) at the story of Scotland emerging from war only for the king to be assassinated and his successor to throw the country into tyranny and chaos. In a production the projections tell us is divided into three parts, Home, Kingdom and Nation, we begin with a very domestic Macbeth in which Lady Macbeth (Lois Chimimba) opens the show in a luxurious but clinical modern apartment, listening to a voice note from her husband.

Theatre review: Creditors

Strindberg's Creditors is about Adolph and Tekla, a husband and wife with some cracks in their relationship that are exploited by a malevolent stranger, Gustav. The immediately obvious high concept in the new production by Rikki Henry - winner of this year's Genesis Award - is to turn it into the story of a gay marriage. Adolph (Tom Rhys Harries) is an acclaimed young artist, married to Tekla (Jolyon Coy,) a novelist a few years older than him, who's been married and divorced before. They're spending some time on a hotel on an island when Tekla needs to go away for a few days on business. In his absence Adolph meets another guest, Gustav (Gyuri Sarossy,) who for reasons that will become apparent is determined to sabotage their marriage. By the time we meet them at the start of the play, he's managed to expose Adolph's biggest insecurities about his relationship.

Theatre review: The Suit

In Sophiatown, a township of Johannesburg in the 1950s, a husband (William Nadylam) returns early from work to find his wife (Nonhlanhla Kheswa) in bed with another man. The man flees in his underwear, and as punishment, the husband makes the wife keep the suit he's left behind: It's to stay in their house forever as an honoured "guest," to sit with them at mealtimes and be taken for walks. Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne and Franck Krawczyk did a French-language stage version of Can Themba's short story several years ago, and now they've created a new version of The Suit in English. It's a piece of storytelling theatre that failed to engage me in the least, a dreary hodge-podge of styles that stretches a very bare story over 80 minutes in a rather mournful way.