Theatre review: The Delights of Dogs and the Problems of People

Although I don't listen to The Archers myself, it's hard to miss the discussion going on at the moment about its current domestic abuse storyline, that has apparently been building up for a couple of years before exploding into violence. So it's a comparison I can't help but make with The Delights of Dogs and the Problems of People, which Rosalind Blessed writes and stars in, and which has a nastiness barely concealed under its smiley surface. James (Duncan Wilkins) introduces himself to the audience as he cooks a surprise anniversary meal for his wife Robin (Blessed,) but it quickly becomes apparent this'll be less of a surprise and more of a shock, as the two have separated and this is Robin's new house, which he's broken into. The rest of the show bounces back and forth in time through their relationship, their best times always seeming to revolve around the various rescue dogs they've adopted over the years, their worst when they're left to deal with each other.

Theatre review: The Ballad of Robin Hood

After they provided a popular Christmas show at the previous venue, Tacit Theatre are once again telling tall tales at Southwark Playhouse, and they revisit their setting for The Canterbury Tales to tell them: The actual Tabard Tavern probably stood quite close to where the theatre is now, which makes it a strange fit for a story usually based in and around Nottingham. But The Ballad of Robin Hood isn't quite the usual story of the famous outlaw, and Greg Freeman's story finds a way to bring Robin to London. As the title suggests, the play goes back to the original ballads that first popularised the legend, with a particular interest in some of the darker stories that don't usually get told. Once again the Tabard has been set up as an actual pub with a bar selling mulled wine to the audience, the cast doing songs and dances as everyone comes in (and getting me to provide the drum beats, which is harder than it sounds when you have no innate sense of rhythm, and Rosalind Blessed's distracting you.) Eventually the landlady (Blessed) tells the story of when a Sheriff (Tom Daplyn) brought his prisoner to her bar and he turned out to be Robin Hood himself (Owen Findlay.)

Theatre review: Titus Andronicus (Hiraeth / Arcola)

Obscure Shakespeares are like buses, you wait ages for one and then two come at once. From my first trip to a Shakespeare play in 1989 it took me 24 years to add Titus Andronicus to my collection, but only three months after that the second production comes along. The best thing is, in dealing with a notoriously problematic play two different directors have used completely different approaches to its tonal difficulties. Titus Andronicus is effectively Elizabethan torture porn - with non-stop bloodshed and sexual violence, a self-inflicted amputation straight out of Saw, and a notorious LOLcannibalism! finale, its horror can tip over into unintentional comedy. One way to solve this is to embrace the play's extremes like Michael Fentiman did in Stratford this summer. But another approach is to couch the horror in something we still find genuinely disturbing, and that's Zoé Ford's take at the Arcola.