Theatre review: Clarkston

After an unplanned week away from the theatre thanks to my latest brush with Covid, I'm back at Trafalgar Theatre, whose corridors have been decorated with Americana - maps, dusty photos and pictures of bulk retail store Costco. Although could there be anything more American than a weird collective national boner for Lewis and Clark, the 19th century explorers who mapped the West, and the latter of whom provides Samuel D. Hunter's play with its title? Clarkston is an industrial town in Washington State named after William Clark, who camped out there for a while to write some of his much-loved racist diatribes about the indigenous people. Jake (Joe Locke) is a distant relative of the explorer's raised on his journals, and it's this connection that was, he claims, the reason he decided to take a break on his road trip across America and stay there for a while.

Theatre review: Apex Predator

Hampstead Theatre's prices are getting so high I increasingly need a bloody good reason to fork out for a ticket for the Main House, but the playwright behind one of my past Shows of the Year would fit that bill: In the case of Apex Predator that's John Donnelly, of 2014's The Pass. This time instead of gay men the central pair are straight(ish) women, and instead of starting out at the top of their game one of them at least seems to be spiralling out of control. Mia (Sophie Melville) has recently had her second child, and is suffering from sleepless nights thanks to the baby and an inconsiderate neighbour's loud music. Her husband Joe (Bryan Dick) can't provide much moral support as he works most nights in a special police operation - he's not allowed to discuss it but she suspects it's connected to a grisly recent series of murders.

Theatre review: Cowbois

Considering that attempting a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon amid rolling rail strikes is a bit of a coin-toss, I decided not to book for the RSC's Cowbois last year, fairly confident that we'd get a chance to see it transfer to London. Given the creative team I would have guessed the Globe, but instead the Royal Court gets Charlie Josephine's queer fantasy Western. Co-directed by Josephine and Sean Holmes, whose signature style of letting the actors use their own accents even in plays where you'd expect a very specific one means the Wild West is populated with voices from every corner of the UK and Ireland, the action takes place in a little town built on principles of acceptance and equality. Whether that's how it actually plays out when the men are around is a different story, but right now they're not: Most of the men left over a year ago to go prospecting for gold, and with no word from them and news of a cave-in, they're presumed dead.

Theatre review: The Merchant of Venice(Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

Measure for Measure, Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice doesn't sound like the most exciting season imaginable on paper, but the Swanamaker has been firing on all cylinders this winter, and in what could have been the least promising offering of all it turns out they've saved the best till last: Abigail Graham's is probably the best Merchant I've ever seen, and not just because she's cut the entirety of Act 5. In fact, as we've come to expect from the Globe, it's not a production that's precious with the text, cutting and reshuffling to serve its purpose. In this instance, it's to set the action in the high-risk, masculine, bullying culture of modern-day city traders, so we open with Aaron Vodovoz' geeky Launcelot Gobbo asking for a job with Bassanio (Michael Marcus.) He's made to play a drinking game as part of his application, which mainly involves a penalty every time he says the word "Jew" - and as he's talking about wanting to leave his current employer, the Jewish moneylender Shylock, he says it a lot. He ends up very drunk and humiliated, but gets the job.

Stage-to-screen review: Masks and Faces, or,Before and Behind the Curtain

The Finborough has held off on reopening for live performances until next month due to the added challenges faced by a venue of its size; but not having any intention of being forgotten until then, it's continuing with the online offerings. This time it's the unlikely pairing of Restoration Comedy with Zoom calls with, as part of the Kensington and Chelsea Festival, the rediscovery of Charles Reade and Tom Taylor's Masks and Faces, or, Before and Behind the Curtain. It's fair to say I approached this one cautiously: I've enjoyed Restoration Comedy before but usually it takes quite a lot of work from a production for me to like it. Most of the time we see people in the usual ridiculous outfits and wigs blandly exchanging lines that were very funny at the time but... not so much now. So in a format that just relies on the lines and the actors' faces, with no chance of physical interaction with each other, let alone the audience, I didn't expect much. So what a pleasant surprise for Matthew Iliffe's production to add Masks and Faces to the list of "where has this been hiding all these years?" Finborough rediscoveries.

Theatre review: Iphigenia in Splott

Following well-received runs at Sherman Cymru and the Edinburgh Festival, Gary Owen's monologue Iphigenia in Splott gets a run at the Keith outside the National Theatre. Effie (Sophie Melville) is a grotesque figure of an angry, drunken chav, assumed by everyone who sees her to be a slut and viewed with a mix of fear and contempt. She does spend most of her time either drunk or hungover, has a permanently curled lip, an attitude of sexual superiority and an aggressive way of dealing with anyone who dares to get in her way, but obviously Owen plans to reveal greater depths to her, and the way in which he sees her as a modern-day Iphigenia - Agamemnon's daughter sacrificed by the state at the beginning of the Trojan War. Melville and director Rachel O'Riordan have opted to open the show in a deliberately alienating style that sees the actress create a cartoonish Effie, whose rubber-faced drawling put me in mind of a Spitting Image puppet.