Theatre review: Till The Stars Come Down

Beth Steel's Till The Stars Come Down has been compared to Chekhov, and though it owes as much to Coronation Street it does centre on three sisters: In a Northern former coalmining town Hazel (Lucy Black) and Maggie (Aisling Loftus) are helping youngest sister Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) get ready for her wedding. While Hazel lives down the road with her husband John (Adrian Bower) and teenage daughters Leanne (Ruby Thompson) and Sarah (Cadence Williams, alternating with Lillie Babb and Elodie Blomfield,) and Maggie rather abruptly moved away for work some months earlier, Sylvia has stayed at home ever since their mother's death, keeping their father Tony (Alan Williams) company. So her wedding represents both moving on from the past, and a day where she can be the focus of attention rather than the supportive one, but she's got a bad feeling something's going to go wrong.

Theatre review: Mad House

A few years ago Bill Pullman gave a memorable performance at the Old Vic in All My Sons, and now he returns to the West End to play a more grotesque, but no less scene-stealing character. And he's clearly not a star name who wants all the limelight for himself: After sharing top billing with Sally Field last time, he now shares it with David Harbour at a time when he must have known the latest season of Stranger Things would give him most of the attention. This time Pullman plays Daniel, the patriarch of a dysfunctional family in a small Pennsylvania town, whose wife died of cancer a year earlier, and who's now slowly dying of multiple organ failure himself. He doesn't want to die in a hospice so, with the help of palliative care nurse Lillian (Akiya Henry,) his primary caregiver is eldest son Michael (Harbour.) He's the only one of Daniel's children willing to do it, and it may just be because he needs somewhere to live after spending a year in a mental institution.

Theatre review: The Antipodes

In what is becoming a regular occurrence Annie Baker's latest play gets its UK premiere in the Dorfman, where for The Antipodes her particular brand of hyperrealism tips that little bit further into surrealism. Baker herself co-directs with designer Chloe Lamford, whose deep thrust stage is a luxurious but personality-free conference room in which the characters will spend weeks or maybe months of their lives around the table - there's enough Perrier stacked up against the wall to get them though a siege. There is a real-life situation the scene evokes: The writers' room of an American TV show where stories are pitched and constructed. But exactly what kind of story Sandy (Conleth Hill) has gathered a team - some of whom have worked with him before, some of whom are new - to tell remains vague.

Theatre review: The Starry Messenger

Sam Yates’ production is the first time The Starry Messenger has been staged in London, but it’s not my first encounter with Kenneth Lonergan’s 2009 play: Seven years ago the Royal Court invited four of its playwrights to direct rehearsed readings of plays they found influential, and this was Nick Payne’s choice. At the time I found it enjoyable, if long, but while there’s still a lot to like, seeing it fully-staged does open a lot of questions about the play; plus it’s even longer. The lead role of Mark was written for Matthew Broderick, who makes his West End debut to reprise the role of a generally good-natured but dull astronomer who’s always dreamed of working on exploratory projects but has actually ended up making a living teaching at a community college, as well as the occasional evening class at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. The play is set in the last months of 1996, leading up to the planetarium being demolished to make way for a new science centre, and Mark is feeling as defunct as the building.

Theatre review: Absolute Hell

It takes a certain amount of confidence to call a play Absolute Hell, given the likelihood it’ll end up doing the reviewers’ job for them; of course Rodney Ackland’s 1945 play, not produced until 1952, was originally called The Pink Room, which is only going to result in people like me saying something vague and misinformed about vaginas, so maybe titles were just never his forte. Set shortly after VE Day and either side of the General Election that would put Labour in power, Absolute Hell takes place in the Vie En Rose Club, a private members’ bar run, nominally – her staff regularly grumble about doing all of the work for none of the credit – by Kate Fleetwood’s Christine. A seemingly gregarious hostess with a penchant for men in uniform who tends to get as drunk as any of her customers, she really cuts a painfully lonely figure who needs the club and its clientele to keep her from despair.

Theatre review: Loot

What Joe Orton did to farce in What The Butler Saw, he does to black comedy in Loot: Deconstruct the genre by taking it to its logical extreme, so we get jokes about rape and child prostitutes, and the naked corpse of an old woman being unceremoniously dragged around the stage. But despite being the first UK staging to restore Orton’s original text with all the censored stuff back in place, what Michael Fentiman’s 50th anniversary production ends up most memorable for is the sharpness of the dialogue. McLeavy’s (Ian Redford) wife died three days ago, and her body is laid out for the last time in their house. Last night his son Hal (Sam Frenchum) robbed a bank with his best friend/boyfriend Dennis (Calvin Demba,) and the loot is stored in a cupboard. Then Inspector Truscott (Christopher Fulford) arrives, demanding to search the house.

Theatre review: Hedda Gabler

Having played a part in Lazarus existing, Ivo van Hove has a chance to redeem himself with the classic reinterpretations he does best. He brings a production he originally staged at his own theatre to the National, as Ibsen's Hedda Gabler gets a new translation by (inevitably) Patrick Marber, and Ruth Wilson plays Hedda, married for six months and already deeply regretting it. The daughter of a celebrated and wealthy general, she grew up the centre of attention, including from numerous male suitors. After telling a series of seemingly innocuous lies, and in a sudden moment of paranoia about getting older, she agreed to marry the academic Tesman (Kyle Soller.) By the end of their extended honeymoon she's realised she'll never care about the esoteric subjects her husband fixates on, while he'll never be able to keep her in the style she's accustomed to unless he gets a professorship.

Theatre review: Giving

Usually to be found working somewhere like the Olivier, Bijan Sheibani directs in Hampstead's smaller Downstairs space, and brings with him a similarly impressive cast for Hannah Patterson's Giving, which looks at the ethics behind charity. Journalist Laura (Sinéad Matthews) is assigned to interview reclusive billionaire Mary (Sylvestra Le Touzel,) who's just announced the single biggest charitable donation in UK history. In trying to find the person behind the generosity, Laura soon discovers that Mary is taking advice from Michael (Simon Manyonda,) the representative of an American company that matches philanthropists with charities. After a boozy dinner Laura spends the night with Michael, but this indiscretion starts to look a lot more unprofessional as he and the company he works for become the real focus of the article.

Theatre review: The Wasp

Although they came from very different backgrounds, Carla and Heather were good friends at primary school. But as they got into their teens, Carla started to resent her friend's much more privileged home life. Joining up with a new group of girls, they made Heather the most frequent target of their bullying, which ended up taking a particularly vicious turn. A couple of decades on, their statuses in life aren't too different to how they were as children: Heather (Sinéad Matthews) is well-off, married but childless. After years without any contact she's found her old friend/enemy on Facebook. She invites Carla (MyAnna Buring, as opposed to YourAnna Buring) for coffee, to make her a proposition. Poor, frustrated and pregnant with her fifth child, Carla assumes Heather wants to hire her as a surrogate.

Theatre review: Pests

Vivienne Franzmann is a comparatively new playwright but one who's already demonstrated a great deal of range. After the playground politics of Mogadishu¹ and the family secrets of The Witness, she takes a turn for the violently lyrical in Pests. Rolly (Ellie Kendrick) and Pink (Sinéad Matthews) are smack-addicted sisters, but Rolly comes out of prison pregnant and clean. She moves in with her sister and attempts to work on the progress she's already made: She's made a friend who works rehabilitating women who've been in prison, and who should be able to set her up with a cleaning job. But if staying off drugs is hard, doing so while sharing a squat with someone who's still using is nigh-on-impossible, and Rolly can't see through Pink's attempts to sabotage her progress.

Theatre review: Blurred Lines

Nick Payne and Carrie Cracknell's devised piece for The Shed was meant to be the final production at the National Theatre's temporary venue, but its shelf life has now been extended into the spring. It would have made an explosive finale though, a theatrical exploration of the themes from Kat Banyard's feminist book The Equality Illusion. On a vast staircase that fills The Shed's stage, eight women discuss, act out, and sometimes sing about the ways women continue to face inequality today, from the workplace to the law, and a culture of sexual violence that's officially condemned but often glamourised in practice. The insidious misogyny of the music business is a recurring theme so it's no surprise that, with pointed topicality, the piece has been titled Blurred Lines.

Theatre review: Trout Stanley

A Canadian oddity settles into the Little at Southwark Playhouse. Claudia Dey's Trout Stanley takes us to the remote cabin shared by a pair of orphaned twins. Grace (Vinette Robinson) has taken on their late father's job at the town's rubbish dump, but despite the dowdy day job she's actually attractive, confident and glamorous with a sideline in modelling - she currently dominates the local shopping mall's skyline on a billboard for a gun shop. Her sister Sugar (Sinéad Matthews) is not only physically very different but a real contrast in personality, not having left the house in the last ten years. That was when they turned 20 and their parents died, and every year since on their birthday a woman exactly their age has been killed, and it's always Grace who finds the body. They hope their 30th will herald a new start, but already a local stripper and Scrabble champion has gone missing.

Theatre review: A Time to Reap

The Royal Court's having another of its international seasons, which this year takes us to Poland, and Anna Wakulik's A Time to Reap, which looks at the influence of the Catholic Church via a love triangle that keeps things in the family. Jan (Owen Teale) is a gynaecologist whose business suddenly thrives when Poland passes an anti-abortion law, and he makes a fortune performing them secretly after hours. One patient is 17-year-old Marysia (Sinéad Matthews,) a girl from the small rural town where he used to take his son on holiday. After terminating a pregnancy that was the result of Marysia's fling with a priest at Catholic camp, Jan takes her on as his assistant and, soon enough, lover. Eight years later, when Jan's son Piotr (Max Bennett) resurfaces, he invites Marysia to London with him, and soon she has need of his father's services again.

Theatre review: The Master and Margarita

I was a rare voice of dissent among the praise for Complicite's A Disappearing Number, so wasn't sure if I fancied the company's latest venture, The Master and Margarita. But with the excellent Sinéad Matthews in one of the title roles, and Big Favourite Round These Parts Henry Pettigrew in the ensemble, I decided to give it a chance. Mikhail Bulgakov's satirical novel about the Devil visiting Soviet-era Moscow is apparently famously impenetrable (I haven't read it myself) and so it is with Simon McBurney's stage adaptation. Its Möbius plot encompasses two writers, both inspired to write identical stories that are essentially the Gospel According to Pontius Pilate, only for both to have them rejected by the authorities for their suggestion that Jesus/Yeshua actually existed. There's also a demonic variety show, a ball attended by history's most notorious killers, and the titular doomed affair.