Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream(Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

I doubt too many people would be surprised to know that A Midsummer Night's Dream ranks as the most frequently-produced play in the Open Air Theatre's history, although in my personal experience (this is now my third) they've not yet managed a production that's lived up to the perfect summer setting. Atri Banerjee's won't buck that trend, though at least in a year that's not served the play particularly well it's streets ahead of the Globe's current infantile attempt. The big idea behind Banerjee's version is to build up the role of music in the play, with the fairies becoming a folk band, playing songs Maimuna Memon has composed out of the lyrics Shakespeare has provided, as well as out of a lot of the poetry usually spoken. It's an idea that provides a lot of charm, lifting the scenes that the band underscores, but it does come at the expense of the comedy.

Theatre review: Juniper Blood

Mike Bartlett's latest play sees him return to a Chekhovian setting and theme of a rural location consumed by possible ecological disaster, although without quite the formal use of Chekhov's structure of Albion: Juniper Blood features a much smaller cast and three acts rather than four, but it does still feel in many ways a successor to his earlier work. It starts almost as a comedy of disparate groups of farmers and urbanites forming an awkward blended family: Lip (Sam Troughton) is the monosyllabic heir to a farm that's been in his family for generations; quite how he ended up in a relationship with the well-off, earnest Ruth (Hattie Morahan) isn't entirely clear, but shortly before his father's death he agreed to take over the business, with his partner buying into it and investing in repairs and changes to turn it into a more sustainable, organic concern.

Theatre review: Fangirls

Turns out July is the month of imported shows about 14-year-old girls kidnapping celebrities, as the Lyric Hammersmith hosts the UK premiere of Australian musical Fangirls. Yve Blake's (book, music and lyrics) show centres on fans of a fictional boyband star whose similarity to any real persons living or dead is, I'm sure, purely coincidental: Harry (Thomas Grant) auditioned for a British talent show that turned him down for being too young to compete solo, but instead put him in a manufactured boyband that went on to conquer the world (my lowkey favourite gag in the show was the band being called Heartbreak Nation, which is such an accurately half-hearted combination of two random words for a manufactured X Factor boyband.) Edna (Jasmine Elcock) is a Sydney teenager who spends hours on her computer reading and writing Harry fanfic.

Theatre review: "Daddy" A Melodrama

It's hard enough trying to keep up with everything going on in London theatre without adding Broadway to the mix, but even so I can't help but know that Slave Play was causing a stir in New York before Covid. So far I haven't heard any suggestion of it making the transatlantic trip but Jeremy O. Harris' earlier play "Daddy" A Melodrama has, after a lockdown delay of its own, now landed at the Almeida complete with its original creative team. Franklin (Terique Jarrett) is a young, gay black artist who moved to California a couple of years ago to pursue his career. His collections of doll versions of himself are slowly building a following, and while he's not quite got to the stage of making big money from his creations yet, he's got an enthusiastic supporter in gallerist Alessia (Jenny Rainsford,) who's about to host his first high-profile exhibition. A few weeks before it opens, he meets wealthy, white, fifty-something Andre (Claes Bang.)