Theatre review: Richard II (Bridge Theatre)

Never mind his global fanbase post-Bridgerton and Wicked, those of us who frequent London theatre have wanted to see Jonathan Bailey's Dick for years. Bailey returns to Shakespeare and to director Nicholas Hytner for the Bridge's in-the-round Richard II, in which a capricious king who has never doubted his divine right to rule has tanked England's finances, raising money for wars that never happen, then spending it on himself while the country's military reputation becomes an embarrassment. The Lords might put up with this to avoid upending centuries of tradition, but Richard makes the mistake of making things personal: Intervening in a dispute between Henry Bullingbrook (Royce Pierreson) and Thomas Mowbray (Phoenix Di Sebastiani,) he banishes both - essentially for disrespecting him. He later adds injury to insult when Henry's father John of Gaunt (Nick Sampson) dies, and Richard commandeers his inheritance to finance one of his doomed expeditions.

Theatre review: Three Days in the Country

The summer of Patrick Marber Must Have Some Dirt On Rufus Norris concludes in the Lyttelton (although he hasn't had a show in The Artist Formerly Known As Shed yet, so maybe there's more to come?) This time Marber turns to Russian theatre and Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, which he re-writes, directs and compacts down to Three Days in the Country. Rakitin (John Simm) is visiting old friends at their country estate, but while he's been not-so-secretly in love with Natalya (Amanda Drew) for the best part of 20 years, her husband and his best friend Arkady (John Light) never seems to have cottoned on. Rakitin arrives for another bout of declarations of love she never quite reciprocates, but there's a new dynamic now: The couple recently hired a new tutor for their son, the handsome and brooding Belyaev (Royce Pierreson.) All the women in the house seem to have fallen for him, including Natalya herself. In fact she's quite convinced that she's in love with Belyaev to an extent that she never felt for Rakitin or her husband.