Theatre review: Twelfth Night or What You Will(Shakespeare's Globe)

Despite its wintery title the season Twelfth Night is most commonly associated with is Autumn, usually accompanied by some variation of the dreaded phrase "Shakespeare's melancholy farewell to comedy" in the blurb. Well there's certainly something autumnal about Robin Belfield's production at the Globe, but it's more pagan harvest festival than sad falling leaves. Under a gold wooden sun and featuring a wicker man, Jean Chan's design is all brashly colourful carnival outfits. It's a mood that's infected almost everyone in Illyria, including its Duke who's often seen opening the play lounging moodily on cushions. Instead Solomon Israel's Orsino is definitely up for the party, and is just a bit annoyed that the girl he fancies isn't joining in, or returning his interest - and all because she's still in mourning for all the men in her family dropping dead over the course of a couple of months, honestly some people, such drama queens.

Theatre review: Princess Essex

Like most years the Globe ends its summer season with a new play, usually one that looks at historical events filtered through very modern concerns. Anne Odeke's Princess Essex doesn't buck that trend: Filling in the gaps in a true story many of whose details remain unknown, the play is inspired by a woman calling herself Princess Dinubolu of Senegal, the first black woman to compete in an English beauty pageant. So the play at times takes unflinching looks at issues of racial discrimination, particularly standards of perceived beauty, colonialism and racial fetishisation; but it does so mostly in the context of a pretty broad and bright comedy, which Robin Belfield's production approaches with energy and tongue in cheek. Odeke plays Joanna, a mixed-race housekeeper who knows nothing about her parents or early life, except that she ended up in the entertainment capital of the world: Southend-on-Sea.