Theatre review: Lyonesse

Elaine Dailey (Kristin Scott Thomas) was a rising star of TV and film who'd just made a celebrated stage debut when she vanished the day after Press Night, disappearing for decades and becoming almost a figure of legend, with rumours abounding over whether she was alive or dead. Now a figure from her past has died, and she's ready to resurface and tell her story - and she hopes she can be centre stage again when it gets told. In Penelope Skinner's Lyonesse Lily James plays a Mrs Trellis of North London, an executive at a female-led film production company who are looking for a #MeToo project to develop. Her boss Sue (Niky Wardley, who's replaced Doon Mackichan at short notice after she had to leave the show for personal reasons,) has heard that Elaine's story might fit the bill, and sends Kate Trellis to her crumbling Cornish home to secure the rights.

Theatre review: The Seagull

Jamie Lloyd's latest West End season was meant to run at the Playhouse, where its first show, Cyrano de Bergerac, played in early 2020. The follow-up production of Chekhov's The Seagull was of course a casualty of Covid, and now that it's returned its original home has been taken over by the Kit Kat Club. So instead Lloyd has regrouped at the Pinter, home of his previous season, for a production that continues to go for the same stripped-back aesthetic, but with a very different result than Cyrano's rap battle fireworks. Lloyd uses Anya Reiss' 2012 version of the play, which means the setting is the Isle of Man in the present day, where frustrated young writer Konstantin (Daniel Monks) lives at his uncle Sorin's (Robert Glenister) house by a lake. If their lives are usually quiet and uneventful that's not what we see, because all four of the play's acts take place during visits from Sorin's sister, Konstantin's mother.

Theatre review: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Another example of American and British tastes often differing, Christopher Durang's uneven comedy-drama Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won a Best Play Tony in 2012, but didn't make it to the UK until this 2019 Theatre Royal Bath production, which was further delayed in transferring to London by... the usual*. As the title suggests, Durang throws together characters and situations from Chekhov in different configurations, with modern-day rural Pennsylvania standing in for turn-of-the-last-century remote Russia. Here three siblings in their fifties grew up, and two of them still live: Vanya (Michael Maloney) and his adopted sister Sonia (Rebecca Lacey) looked after their elderly parents, and following their deaths have stayed there, with no jobs and little to do with their time. They're supported by sister Masha (Janie Dee,) who sees herself as a classical actress but has made her fortune in a slasher movie franchise.

Theatre review: Disgraced

An explosive approach to race relations seems to be a popular way to impress the Pulitzer judges; this year's winner in the drama category was Ayad Akhtar's Disgraced, which sees a dinner party for two interracial couples go horribly wrong. Amir (Hari Dhillon) is a reasonably successful corporate lawyer, a Pakistani-American who changed his last name from Abdullah to Kapoor to put people off the scent that he was raised a Muslim. His white wife Emily (Kirsty Bushell) is an artist; in contrast to Amir who is vocal about having rejected his family's religion, Emily makes paintings that overtly acknowledge the influence of Islam on Western art. Their marriage seems pretty happy on the surface, but their disagreements over religion are a recurring issue - Emily's insistence that Islam is not inherently hate-filled coming up against her husband's argument that his upbringing says otherwise.