Theatre review: The Captive Queen

If David Lan leaving the Young Vic has been compared to the ravens leaving the Tower, then what do we call Barrie Rutter stepping down as Artistic Director of Northern Broadsides, the company he founded a quarter of a century ago? The 71-year-old clearly has no plans to retire completely, as he'll be part of Michelle Terry's upcoming first season at the Globe, and before that his final production for Northern Broadsides is also the final show in Terry's predecessor's winter season. John Dryden's tragicomedy Aureng-zebe is named after its painfully noble and loyal male lead, but Rutter's production renames it The Captive Queen, after the woman whose beauty and charm captivates a whole court. Rutter himself plays the ageing Emperor, false reports of whose death have kicked off a civil war between his four sons over who gets to succeed him.

Theatre review: Harrogate

The first time I ever went to the Royal Court Upstairs it was for a play called Scarborough, named after a resort town where the central couple had sex in a B&B room (I was impressed by its star Jack O'Connell, wonder what happened to him...) So there's some déjà vu in the fact that Al Smith's Harrogate gets its title from a similar dirty weekend, although this time we're not in the room itself but in a London kitchen a week or two after the fact. Nigel Lindsay and Sarah Ridgeway play characters identified only as Him and Her, but while Lindsay's character remains the same throughout, Ridgeway is actually playing three different people over the course of the evening. Yes, it's one of those plays that's hard to even give a synopsis of without giving everything away so consider everything after the text cut as potentially spoilery.

Theatre review: Forget Me Not

With the exception of The Royale, 2015 at the Bush has been an inauspicious year to say the least. There's been shows I instantly forgot and ones I really wished I could have forgotten, and their final show is Forget Me Not, which does feature something to remember. Unfortunately that something is a different, and much better show. 60-something Gerry (Russell Floyd) was born in England but taken to Australia aged 4 as part of a scheme to give orphans a better life. It was a disaster because, like Gerry, many of the children ended up on farms as, essentially, unpaid child labour, and were also abused. Following the death of his wife, Gerry's estranged daughter Sally (Sarah Ridgeway) has grudgingly reconnected with him, and together with her boyfriend Mark (Sargon Yelda) has tried to find any relatives he might still have in Liverpool. What they actually find is apparently a common story in cases of "Forgotten Australians" like his.

Theatre review: The Cherry Orchard

Katie Mitchell uses a new translation by Simon Stephens to present a streamlined version of Chekhov's final full-length play at the Young Vic. The Cherry Orchard's action takes place over a few months, a comparatively short period for Chekhov, made to feel even shorter in just under two hours without interval. Ranevskaya (Kate Duchêne) returns to the country estate she grew up on after a long absence. While her family's old money has been dwindling, their estate manager Lopakhin (Dominic Rowan,) the son of serfs, has been gradually amassing a fortune of his own, and has some ideas about how they can keep their land. Too absorbed in their own personal dramas, though, and unwilling to face the prospect of change, Ranevskaya and her family ignore his warnings until it's too late.

Theatre review: Unusual Unions

Yet another collection of short plays to include a contribution from the ubiquitous Tom Wells, this is a one-day event playing a total of two performances only, and commissioned by the Royal Court as one of a number of companion pieces to their main-house show The Mistress Contract. Inspired by that piece's unorthodox relationship, five writers have been asked to come up with something on the theme of Unusual Unions, and each one of them has contributed, in my opinion, something far superior to the main event. The way this promenade show works is actually very similar to I Do: The audience is colour-coded into "teams," who are led round the building to various areas, so the order anyone saw the plays in is fairly arbitrary and varies from group to group. So, as part of the green team Phill, Andy and I started by being taken to an unused Downstairs dressing room, for Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Anhedonia, directed by Simon Godwin. We meet a girl (Rona Morison) wearing a hijab, although not for the reasons we might expect. A violent incident has left her in a very dark place and interestingly, in contrast to the dramatic cliche, her encounter with the friendly foreman (Nathan Osgood) of a building site she's walked into doesn't leave her in a good place exactly, but it does make her that one step closer to coping. The subtle use of changing pronouns is a clever way of showing how the story develops in Lenkiewicz's powerful little piece.

Theatre review: Candide

Ending this year's RSC summer season is the culmination of Mark Ravenhill's two-year residency in Stratford-upon-Avon, his response to Voltaire's Candide. Not an adaptation - in fact the production seems to presuppose a certain amount of familiarity with the original, as evidenced by a letter sent out a few months ago suggesting audiences might want to read or re-read the book before coming. Perhaps cottoning on to the fact that people don't usually expect to do homework before seeing a show, Ravenhill has also provided a bite-sized retelling of the story on Twitter¹ while the RSC website gives a graphic novel summary. The story itself is of a man taught to be optimistic in the face of disaster, who has this philosophy tested when he's kicked out of the castle he grew up in, loses his beloved, gets caught up in numerous wars and spends a life surrounded by death, pain and unfairness.

Theatre review: A Mad World My Masters

The title feels very familiar to me but apparently A Mad World My Masters' performance history doesn't quite match its fame: Sean Foley's production for the RSC is a rare chance to see Thomas Middleton's Jacobean sex comedy, a play whose relentless series of single and double entendres makes the Carry On films look chaste and reserved. There's two distinct plots: Dick Follywit (Richard Goulding) stands to inherit the fortune of his uncle Sir Bounteous Peersucker (Ian Redford) upon his death. But he's not prepared to wait that long and, with his friends Oboe (Harry McEntire) and Sponger (Ben Deery,) he sets off on a number of ridiculous schemes to part the old fool from his money. Elsewhere, Mr Littledick (Steffan Rhodri) is insanely suspicious of his wife's fidelity - with good reason, as Mrs Littledick (Ellie Beaven) is in lust with Penitent Brothel (John Hopkins,) who's got plots of his own to get her into bed.