Theatre review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Back to @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it would like to tell you its theories about Scully's abduction, and a play full of a few conspiracies of its own: In what is apparently the first time anyone has ever adapted the work of spy novelist John le Carré for the stage, David Eldridge takes us to 1961's divided Germany for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Alec Leamas (Rory Keenan) runs the Berlin branch of intelligence agency The Circus, but his East Berlin opposite and hated nemesis Mundt (Gunnar Cauthery) is far too efficient at exposing and eliminating his spies. When his last and best agent is killed, Leamas retires from the agency, disillusioned and disheartened: He starts drinking more, finds it hard to hold down a job, and eventually spends some time in prison after assaulting a shopkeeper for refusing him credit.

Theatre review: Trouble in Mind

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I seem to be having a run of shows I could only fit in before they officially open to the press; this was the penultimate preview.

A play that made me spend a lot of the evening wondering if I'd misread how old it was, Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind was first staged off-Broadway in 1955; which makes it ahead of its time, to say the very least. Wiletta Mayer (Tanya Moodie) has made a successful career as an actress, admittedly mostly in all-black revues and a succession of bit-part "mammy" roles on screen. Now she's preparing to go back to Broadway for a ground-breaking new drama that will make a powerful statement about racism, and mobilise its comfortable white audience into empathy. It's just a shame that the play-within-a-play, written and directed by white men, is terrible, and full of as many offensive stereotypes as any number of overtly racist works. But as she tells newcomer John (Daniel Adeosun) when rehearsals begin, there's a certain repertoire of polite nods, smiles and giggles black actors have to offer up to white creatives if they're going to feel comfortable around them and continue giving them work.

Theatre review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long night's journey into tomorrow morning, more like.

Seriously, though, Richard Eyre's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night originated at the Bristol Old Vic a couple of years ago, so the producers should have been well aware it comes in at three-and-a-half hours, and a 7pm start might have been kinder to audiences on a worknight. In any case, it arrives at Wyndham's with its original cast as the elder Tyrones - Lesley Manville, who's currently nominated for an Oscar, and Jeremy Irons, whose name is an anagram of "Jeremy's Iron." New to the cast are Rory Keenan and Matthew Beard as the sons in a family whose lives have been largely shaped by the mother's addiction. Cast against type, Irons plays James Tyrone, a famous actor with two adult sons he doesn't particularly fancy, who tours America with his one big hit play most of the year, but spends the quiet months with his family in their Connecticut summer house.

Theatre review: Saint Joan

When other actors have had Hollywood commitments this year, Gemma Arterton's turned them into opportunities: When Gugu Mbatha-Raw couldn't make the transfer of Nell Gwynn she stepped in, and now that Cush Jumbo's one-season stint on The Good Wife has turned into a spin-off, she's left another juicy lead free for Arterton to grab with both hands, taking over as Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the Donmar. Following Henry V's military success, much of France is ruled by England, and though they fight back the odds always seem to be against the French army. That's until Joan's combination of guileless charm and forcefulness makes them take the gamble of letting a young girl who claims to hear the voices of saints, take command of the military. She quickly does everything she promised, getting the Dauphin (Fisayo Akinade) his overdue coronation, and control of much of his country. But with her job done, Joan is a liability.

Theatre review: Welcome Home, Captain Fox!

The Donmar's latest season opens in high spirits with Anthony Weigh's new version of Jean Anouilh's Le Voyageur Sans Bagage, relocated to New York State in 1959 as Welcome Home, Captain Fox! Among her various charitable projects, aspiring socialite Marcee DuPont-DuFort (Katherine Kingsley) discovers Gene (Rory Keenan,) a WWII veteran in a military mental hospital, who doesn't remember anything before he woke up in in a French battlefield 15 years earlier. The wealthy Hamptons matriarch Mrs Fox (Sian Thomas) had a son who went MIA around that time, and Marcee is convinced she's found a match - and one that could get her a few rungs up the social ladder. Mrs Fox and her eldest son George (Barnaby Kay) are skeptical at first, but as soon as they see Gene they're convinced he's the missing Jack. But being in what he's told is his childhood home doesn't prompt any memories to come back, and he's not sure if he wants them to.

Theatre review: Liolà

Pirandello's Sicilian tragicomedy Liolà is a bit of an oddity, especially coming from the author of Six Characters in Search of an Author: A music-soaked whirl through a small community, it comes in Richard Eyre's production with an all-Irish cast, perhaps to reflect the fact that the original is written in a local dialect. We may also be meant to infer a Catholic link, although the characters' Catholicism is here largely present so we can see them cheerfully ignore it. Simone Palumbo (James Hayes) is the wealthy landowner in a small village where pretty much everyone seems to be related. With nobody to leave his inheritance to he chose a much younger wife, but five years on Simone is 65 and Mita (Lisa Dwyer Hogg) still isn't pregnant. Enter Tuzza (Jessica Regan,) who's been knocked up by the local lothario, Liolà. She's willing to pretend the child is Simone's so it can inherit his money, and the old man's so desperate for an heir he might even start telling himself it's true.

Theatre review: Damned by Despair

"Ooh, Betty, they're going to hang me in the morning!"

With Our Class, Eurydice and his take on Ghosts, Bijan Sheibani was shaping up as one of my favourite directors, with a talent for bringing out the best in what looked like unpromising subjects; but in the last year or so his name has been attached to more than its share of stinkers, especially at the National Theatre. Meanwhile Sebastian Armesto is an actor I like, but who also seems to have been plonked by the National into some of its more unremarkable, at best, stuff. So a production on the National's biggest stage, directed by Sheibani and starring Armesto would seem, to a superstitious person, to be some kind of omen of disaster. But just because mystical signs seem to be predicting a horrible doom doesn't mean you have to act accordingly, does it? So along I went to Damned by Despair, this year's final Travelex production.

Theatre review: Philadelphia, Here I Come!

It's the 1950s and Gar (Paul Reid) is about to leave the little Irish town where he's lived all his life, and where he works in his widowed father's general store. An aunt who lives in Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground was where she spent most of her days has found him a job there and we meet him the night before he flies out, probably leaving home and family behind forever. He looks back over his life in Ballybeg, in particular hoping he can find the courage to try and finally connect with his emotionally distant father. In Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come! which Lyndsey Turner revives at the Donmar Warehouse, we see the contrast between the public face the young man puts on and how he really feels, as he interacts with "Gar in Private" (Rory Keenan,) a personification of his inner monologue who reminisces, frets and tries to build up his confidence to confront his demons while he still can.