Theatre review: Mephisto [A Rhapsody]

Deconstructing itself as it goes along, Samuel Gallet's Mephisto [A Rhapsody] is based on a novel by Klaus Mann which was banned for decades – as argued successfully in court by his family, the real-life target of his satire was all-too-easily identifiable. That target was a German actor whose liberal principles went out the window when he realised the Nazis could be good for his career, and ended up performing Faust for Hitler. Gallet transposes the action to present-day France, and the actor making a deal with a metaphorical devil is Aymeric (Leo Bill,) a company member in a provincial rep. They tour Chekhov around a region with poor transport links to the rest of the country, which leaves it a financial and cultural backwater, and a centre for the rise of neo-fascism. Aymeric, along with colleagues Luca (Elizabeth Chan) and Nicole (Subika Anwar-Khan) urge the artistic director Eva (Tamzin Griffin) to ditch the classics in favour of more urgent work addressing the current political crisis.

Theatre review: Say It With Flowers

Hampstead Theatre's small studio space Downstairs isn't an obvious venue to try a promenade performance in, but designer Alex Eales gives it a go, creating three small spaces for Say It With Flowers, Katie Mitchell's attempt to stage some of the works of Gertrude Stein. I wasn't familiar with the American modernist writer, but evidently she experimented with prose, poetry and plays, and the snippets seen here show a stream-of-consciousness style that fixates on repetition, particularly in the opening scene which sees a family sit around the dinner table getting into the finer points of language, the shifting and multiple meanings of words, and their malleability. For the second scene the audience are led into a darkened clearing in a forest, where identity seems to be an issue, Sarah Malin's character seemingly unsure which of two people she is, then believing herself bitten by a snake but unable to find any useful advice to deal with it.