Theatre review: Giant

I know I say it all the time but here comes another play set in the past that feels alarmingly relevant to the present: No, not a beloved children's author turning out to be a bit fash, but Israeli attacks on Palestine and Lebanon that draw out arguments on both sides, and the question of how to criticise the actions of a state created for a specific religion, without criticising the religion itself. Not that this was a particular concern for Roald Dahl: Mark Rosenblatt's Giant is set in 1983, when the author was under fire for publishing a review of a book about Middle Eastern politics, in which his criticism of Israel's actions came couched in much broader Antisemitic sentiment. We meet Dahl (John Lithgow) in cranky mood, where it seems his biggest concerns are the noisy remodelling of his house, and his suspicion that illustrator Quentin Blake is getting a larger share of his royalties than he deems fair.

Theatre review: The Writer

“I’m not sure what that was but I liked it.” That seemed to be the general impression I got from people on Twitter who’d been to see Ella Hickson’s The Writer in previews, and it’s a fair response to a metatextual headfuck of a play that challenges audiences on at least two levels: First by confronting the ongoing discussion around the status of women in the world, and as creatives in theatre in particular, and then by playing with format – but then this structural experiment also folds back into the gender discussion, providing a further looping nature to the way the play works. It plays out in five distinct acts, starting with a confrontation: A young woman (Lara Rossi) goes back into the theatre after a show to collect the bag she’s forgotten, and bumps into the play’s director (Samuel West,) who asks her what she thought.

Theatre review: Measure for Measure (Young Vic)

My third, and presumably last Measure for Measure of the year, and after a typically caustic, physical and anti-naturalistic one from Cheek by Jowl's Russian arm and an unsuccessful attempt to ramp up the bawdy comedy at the Globe, the Young Vic's production pitches it somewhere in the middle. Joe Hill-Gibbins returns to the venue where he made his name, although instead of the jelly that featured heavily last time he was here, he brings along the video cameras from his Edward II at the National. Miriam Buether's set is a plain wooden box that, when the curtains go back, is piled high with blow-up plastic sex dolls. This, it seems, is what the people of Vienna have been reduced to in the eyes of the Duke (Zubin Varla.) The city's morality laws are actually incredibly strict, so he's let them slip during the 19 years of his rule. He now feels this was a mistake, but he'd feel hypocritical enforcing them now himself. So he pretends to leave the city, posing as a friar to see what happens when he leaves the puritanical Angelo in charge. What could possibly go wrong?