Theatre review: Come From Away

Not actually a show about ejaculating from a distance, Come From Away is in fact a hit Broadway musical about the week following 9/11, and the huge impact the attacks had on a place a long way from New York or Washington: In the early days of Transatlantic flight the Canadian island of Newfoundland was a refuelling stop, and as a result a large airport was built there; once planes became able to make the journey without stopping it was left largely unused, except for emergency landings. There were suddenly a lot of those when the USA became a no-fly zone in September 2001, and 38 planes carrying nearly 7000 people were diverted to the town of Gander. Irene Sankoff and David Hein's musical follows the people of the town as they respond to the emergency by trying to make the situation as welcoming for the stranded, frightened passengers as possible when they end up staying nearly a week.

Theatre review: Mrs Henderson Presents

The latest screen-to-stage musical sees Terry Johnson (writing and directing) take inspiration from Stephen Frears' 2005 film Mrs Henderson Presents, that starred Judi Dench as a real-life, unlikely pioneer of onstage frontal nudity. With music by George Fenton & Simon Chamberlain and lyrics by Don Black, this stage version sees Tracie Bennett take on the role of Laura Henderson, the wealthy widow who, more or less on a whim, decides to spend her late husband's money on the Windmill Theatre. She gets struggling impresario Vivian Van Damm (Ian Bartholomew) to run it for her, but "revudeville" is a flop. Mrs Henderson isn't ready to give up just yet though, and she finds a loophole in the censorship laws that will allow her Windmill Girls to appear nude on stage, as long as they stand still, recreating famous artworks. Unsurprisingly, she soon finds an audience of men interested in the rechristened "renudeville."

Theatre review: Sunspots

Family drama mixes with romantic comedy in the latest play Downstairs at Hampstead, and the best show in either of the venue's theatres in some time. In David Lewis' Sunspots Catholic siblings, lapsed to varying degrees, are reunited after their father's death. Clare (Clare Burt) never moved more than a few blocks away from her parents but eldest brother Joe (Robert Hands) has lived in California for the last couple of decades. Having struggled with his sexuality well into his thirties, he finally came out to his mother, but now that Olive (Gwen Taylor) has mild dementia he finds he has to come out to her again on an almost daily basis. Joe keeps muttering about returning to America, but youngest brother Tom (Laurence Mitchell) doesn't have as many options: Having lost the latest in a long line of jobs, he's had to move back in with his mother, settling into the attic room where his amateur astronomer father kept his telescope.

Theatre review: Scenes from an Execution

For the second week in a row, I arrive at the National Theatre to see a show whose reputation precedes it, and not necessarily in a good way: During its preview period, Scenes from an Execution become notorious for the amount of people cutting their losses at the interval, and inspired newspaper articles about the rights and wrongs of leaving a show early. Writer Howard Barker is known for saying he doesn't think theatre should be an enjoyable experience, so I guess you could call it a success that so many people decided grabbing another drink/watching the Bake-Off/going home for a wank was a better use of their time than staying for Act II. But Barker's attitude about art having to provide something other than what its audience is necessarily looking for is also thematically at the heart of this play, the first of his ever to be staged by the National (their failure to do so until now has also, apparently, been a regular bone of contention with him.)

Theatre review: The Winter's Tale (Propeller)

The first time I saw The Winter's Tale, at the RSC some time in the '90s, I remember really enjoying it, but subsequent productions have put me off the play: It's famously varied in tone and style, lurching from a dark drama of jealousy into a raucous pastoral comedy, before veering off into a gently lyrical fairytale ending. All too often it seems to descend into something maudlin and flat, and it's one Shakespeare play I've most often been bored in. This year it's one of the two shows being toured by Ed Hall's all-male Propeller company, which for the second year is taking up residence for a fortnight at Hampstead. I was optimistic that a company with such a distinct identity and joyous performance style  could reawaken what I'd originally liked about the play. Andy, meanwhile, was new both to The Winter's Tale and to Propeller.