Theatre review: The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea isn't the easiest watch in the Terence Rattigan canon but it's considered among his great works; that, and Tamsin Greig in the lead role, were reasons enough to revisit a play steeped in despair and redemption in its first return to London since the late Helen McCrory led it at the National a decade ago. The play opens with a suicide attempt: Hester (Greig) is found on the floor of her room in a dilapidated boarding house, unconscious but still alive next to the hissing gas fire. In an early example of how the play juggles the banal with the profound, her life was saved when the gas ran out because she forgot to top up the meter. Landlady Mrs Elton (Selina Cadell) and neighbours Mr & Mrs Welch (Preston Nyman and Lisa Ambalavanar) will get her help, but their meddling will also bring everyone from Hester's complicated life right back to her.

Theatre review: Backstroke

Future Dames Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig play mother and daughter in Anna Mackmin's Backstroke at the Donald and Margot Warehouse. Beth (Imrie) has had a stroke, and is in hospital unable to move or communicate. When her daughter Bo (Greig) arrives, she bombards the medical staff with demands to know how long her mother has left to live, and for them to take out her drip and stop feeding her. What initially seems like a callous hope that she can get rid of her mother as soon as possible turns out to be genuinely heartfelt concern: Beth spent her entire life insisting that if she ended up in this situation she should be nil by mouth, and there should be no attempts to prolong her life; if anything she asks to be put out of her misery. But as with so much in her life she never actually put her wishes down on paper, and now Bo fears she'll get the prolonged death she always dreaded.

Theatre review: Peggy For You

As we go into 2022 Hampstead Theatre finally gets to finish its 2020 season reviving notable works that premiered there over its first six decades. After the bleakness of the last offering we get something lighter in Peggy For You, Alan Plater's affectionate - but not uncritical - tribute to legendary agent Peggy Ramsay. She was the top name for representing playwrights, but despite her fearsome reputation she would have seen any success her clients achieved as largely incidental; and over the course of the day we meet three clients at very different stages of their careers. But first we meet Peggy (Tamsin Greig) crashing on the sofa of her office, having spent the night bailing out one of her most illustrious clients after he ran amok at the French Embassy. Arriving far too early for his appointment is Simon (Josh Finan,) a young writer who sent her a script.

Stage-to-screen review: Romeo & Juliet(National Theatre / Sky Arts)

Another very literal interpretation of the phrase "stage to screen" saw the Lyttelton Theatre's stage and wings turned temporarily into a film studio late last year. Among the many Romeo & Juliets cancelled or postponed in 2020 (what's the collective noun? Soutra Gilmour's design here certainly makes a case for "a vial" of Romeo & Juliets,) was Simon Godwin's at the National. Instead of getting put on the back burner or cancelled entirely the NT came up with a third option, teaming up with Sky Arts in the UK and PBS in the US to come up with a TV movie special. What this loses in nearly half the running time it gains in star power - Pirate Jessie Buckley as Juliet, Josh O'Connor as Romeo and Fisayo Akinade as Mercutio had already been announced before the lockdown scuppered the stage production, but I don't know that we'd have necessarily got Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence, Tamsin Greig as Lady Capulet, Deborah Findlay as the Nurse and certainly not Adrian Lester in essentially a cameo role as the Prince, in a full live run.

TV review: Talking Heads -Nights in the Garden of Spain / The Hand of God

I do like a random connection in my shows and the new 2020 remake of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads has featured Martin Freeman, plus Sarah Lancashire, his intended co-star in James Graham's 2017 comedy Labour of Love, and now Tamsin Greig, who actually appeared as his sparring partner in that play when Lancashire had to pull out. Greig appears in the latest of my double bills, a pair from the second, 1998 series, and although still laced with sadness these are two of the most straightforwardly funny monologues from the collection. The comedy is very dark in Nights in the Garden of Spain, which Marianne Elliott directs, as Greig's quietly unhappy Rosemary uncovers the dark underside of her bland suburban neighbourhood. And all it takes is helping her neighbour deal with the sudden death of her husband - because she's just shot him.

Theatre review: Pinter Three - Landscape / Apart From That / Girls / That’s All / God’s District / Monologue / That’s Your Trouble / Special Offer / Trouble in the Works / Night / A Kind of Alaska

If there’s a running theme to Pinter Three, the hendecuple* bill that continues Jamie Lloyd’s collection of the playwright’s short writings to mark ten years since his death, it’s a kind of bittersweet romance. It’s something that becomes most apparent in Night, the penultimate piece in which Meera Syal and Tom Edden play a long-married couple whose love seems to remain genuine and strong, but whose memories of their relationship differ entirely: They each remember their first date completely differently, and may in fact be recalling encounters with different people - but does it even matter? The evening is bookended by the longest plays, and Night’s miscommunication somewhat mirrors the opener, Landscape, in which Beth (Tamsin Greig) and Duff (Keith Allen) have a conversation consisting of two entirely different threads – he recounting his day, she remembering stories from the early days of their relationship.

Theatre review: Labour of Love

A later-than-planned trip to the second of three James Graham premieres this year: When Sarah Lancashire had to pull out of Labour of Love due to illness, a number of performances were cancelled, including the one I'd originally booked for. The rescheduled trip proves well worth the wait though, and Lancashire's late replacement Future Dame Tamsin Greig is nobody's idea of second best. She plays Jean Whittaker, constituency agent for a Nottinghamshire seat so safe that it's never not gone to Labour in its history ("a tub of cottage cheese could win it.") That could change in the 2017 election though as, with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour making unexpected gains, this looks like being the one place to buck the trend: They're on their second recount and, after 27 years in the job, David Lyons (Martin Freeman) looks set to lose his seat to the Conservatives.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (National Theatre)

For most plays, having seen another production within four years would seem very recent, but the most popular Shakespeares come along a lot more often than that, and avoiding Twelfth Night for three full calendar years feels like an achievement - and one I was keen to make, because however fresh a director's twist on the story, there's only so much you can do to overcome familiarity. Realistically it would take a lot longer to forget a play I know this well, but under the circumstances this is pretty good going, and at least I break my run with a production I was looking forward to: The big selling point of Simon Godwin's production for the National is that Tamsin Greig plays a gender-flipped Malvolio. Now called Malvolia, she's housekeeper to the wealthy Olivia (Phoebe Fox,) the last in her family and as a result in a declared state of permanent mourning, any romance officially ruled out.

Theatre review: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures

Tony Kushner's 2009 play - set two years before that - The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures gets its UK premiere at Hampstead, who've appended the alternate title iHo (you can't really tweet the whole thing, I guess.) But the full title is probably worth sticking to as the wordiness and sheer unnecessary length give a better indicator of what the play itself is like, as opposed to iHo, because it isn't actually about what would happen if Apple made prostitutes. Instead it's something of a family saga, though playing out over just a few days, set mainly in a Brooklyn brownstone that's in need of fairly regular repair but has still skyrocketed in value as the property boom gets going. Tom Piper's design puts the bare white shell of the four-story building on a revolve.

Theatre review: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

When I first saw Pedro Almodóvar’s film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown I remember being struck by how overtly theatrical it looked, and how well it would work if put on the stage. But Almodóvar is reluctant to license stage adaptations of his work, and as the film finally comes to the theatre it's in the form of an off-Broadway musical with book by Jeffrey Lane and songs by David Yazbek. Pepa (Tamsin Greig) is an actress most of whose work is in TV commercials, and in dubbing foreign film into Spanish, usually opposite her boyfriend Iván (Jérôme Pradon.) One morning she wakes up to find Iván has dumped her via answerphone message, and suddenly there's a lot she didn't know about him, like the estranged wife Lucia (Haydn Gwynne) who's been in a mental hospital for the last 19 years, and doesn't come across as massively sane even now she's been released.

Theatre review: Longing

As well as his better-known work for the theatre, Anton Chekhov was also a prolific writer of short stories, and it's two of these that William Boyd uses to fashion a new Chekhov play, Longing. Successful lawyer Kolia (Iain Glen) has been invited back to a small town where he spent much of his childhood, by two old friends, Tania (Natasha Little) and Varia (Tamsin Greig.) But the women don't just want to catch up - Tania's alcoholic husband Sergei (Alan Cox) has frittered away her fortune on doomed business deals, and mortgaged the estate to the hilt. Everything is due to be repossessed within days, and Tania hopes that Kolia can help come up with a solution. But he has distractions of his own as Tania's teenage sister Natasha (Eve Ponsonby) has fallen for the much older man.

Theatre review: The Trojan Women

After a successful first season of "Revolt," Christopher Haydon at the Gate looks at "Aftermath," and first in the new season is Euripides' classic of those left behind when the fighting ends, The Trojan Women. Poet and playwright Caroline Bird has come up with a loose translation of the play that brings the language and action bang up to date. The war has just ended, and the Trojan men have been killed. The women are waiting in a hospital to find out which Greek general will claim each of them as his slave or concubine. Their babies are being taken from them - allegedly to be raised as Greeks, but it looks likely the reality is grimmer. Lucy Ellinson's Chorus is heavily pregnant, not far from giving birth. The only other occupant of the maternity ward is Troy's former Queen, Hecuba (Dearbhla Molloy,) put in the relatively quiet ward as the one remaining mark of respect afforded to her.

Re-review: Jumpy

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The second press night for Jumpy is next week.

Almost all of the original Royal Court cast of Jumpy from last year have returned for this, the second transfer to take up residence at the Duke of York's Theatre. Still, Nina Raine's production may take a couple of days to settle into its new home, and seemed to me to be starting a bit sluggishly tonight. I'm sure it'll have found its feet again by the end of the week and in any case once it hit its stride April De Angelis' occasionally dark comedy of a mother and daughter sparks into the entertaining show I remembered enjoying so much the first time. Hilary (Tamsin Greig) is 50 and feeling as if she's about to lose everything. Her job's in danger, her marriage to Mark (Ewan Stewart) is stagnant and, in the play's central relationship, her teenage daughter Tilly (Bel Powley) seems to hate her guts.