Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre)

This year's Twelfth Night productions have leaned extra heavily on the idea of the play as a melancholy one, and while the cliché about it being Shakespeare's farewell to straightforward comedy tends to be code for "we forgot to make it funny," the Open Air Theatre managed a version of that approach that really worked for me. Sad clowns are clearly the order of the day at the Orange Tree as well, where Tom Littler's production sets the action in the 1940s, presumably very soon after the end of the Second World War given the whole stage becomes a War memorial inscribed with names. Anett Black and Neil Irish's designs are in mournful monochrome apart from the yellow stockings, and at the start of the play Olivia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is in mourning for her father and brother, both recently deceased, and judging by the portraits in uniform in her cabinet, both killed in action.

Theatre review: She Stoops to Conquer

Tom Littler continues to find his own stamp on the Orange Tree's traditional money-spinning revivals with Restoration Comedy given a 1930s twist: One of the most famous examples of the genre, Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, gets set in a rural pub at Christmas, with Anett Black and Neil Irish's design adding tables and stuffed animal heads, to reflect a story about a posh county house that could easily be mistaken for an inn. It's a conceit that's set up early so that Charles Marlow (Freddie Fox) and George Hastings (Robert Mountford,) lost on their way to meet their prospective spouses, can be tricked into thinking they're taking shelter in a roadside tavern, when in fact they've reached their destination: The home of Mr Hardcastle (David Horovitch,) an old friend of Marlow's father, whose daughter Kate he's been sent to meet and court.

Theatre review: Cancelling Socrates

Howard Brenton made his name as a topical political playwright, and in recent years has become mostly known for his history plays. Cancelling Socrates, as suggested by a title that mixes a contentious, politicised modern term with a classical figure, is something of both, although in the end maybe not quite enough of either. It's the story of the trial of Socrates in 399 BCE Athens, when he was accused of blasphemy with a side order of corrupting youths. As played by Jonathan Hyde, Socrates isn't necessarily any more of an atheist than anyone else around him, and though he's got some very arch thoughts about the badly-behaved Olympian pantheon he does seem to pray to them and make all the right gestures. The trouble is his famous, eponymous Socratic method of philosophy, which relies on asking questions and seeing where the answers take him. Sooner or later he's going to end up asking questions with dangerous answers.