Theatre review: The Good Person of Szechwan

The Lyric Hammersmith's programming is currently giving me flashbacks to my drama degree, and particularly playwrights who, if you'd believed my course, are produced way more regularly than they actually are. After Dario Fo and Franca Rame it's the turn of Bertolt Brecht, and his political morality tale The Good Person of Szechwan. Three gods come to Earth on a mission to find a good person: If there isn't at least one left in the world, they won't be able to avert an apocalyptic flood that will wipe out the unworthy mankind. They've landed in a very poor district, where people are too busy trying to keep themselves and their families alive to worry about anyone else, but prostitute Shen Te (Ami Tredrea) has a reputation for generosity, and is chosen as the experiment's subject. The gods give her $1000 to set her up for the future, and she uses it to buy a tobacconist's shop.

Theatre review: Faustus: That Damned Woman

The last time Christopher Marlowe's version of the Doctor Faustus story was seen in London, the Swanamaker cast a female lead to take the journey through knowledge to damnation, but the text remained the same one written by and for a man. For Headlong's production, which opens its tour at the Lyric Hammersmith, a new playwright takes a crack at the old story, retelling it to ask what would make a woman sell her soul in Chris Bush's Faustus: That Damned Woman. Revenge turns out to be the answer, at least as the initial spur, when in 1666 London Johanna Faustus (Jodie McNee) is obsessed with finding out the truth about her mother, who was hanged as a witch. The charge was that she signed her name in Lucifer's book of souls, and Faustus is determined to find out if this was true, even if she has to summon the devil himself to ask him. Lucifer (Barnaby Power) agrees to let her read his book, but only if she signs her own name first and damns herself.

Theatre review: Macbeth (RSC / RST & Barbican)

Christopher Eccleston has spent so much time recently vocally trying to disassociate himself from Doctor Who that it's hard to remember he's ever done anything else. His latest role sees him return to the stage, for the first time at the RSC, to play the title role in Macbeth. As so often happens with Shakespeare plays (especially those on the syllabus) multiple productions have arrived at the same time, and this one coincides with the critically-panned version at the National. Well, Polly Findlay's production is infinitely more watchable than Rufus Norris', but in some ways is just as problematic. Right from the opening, Findlay and designer Fly Davis show they're not short of interesting ideas, as the audience enters to find King Duncan (David Acton) asleep in his bed, a trio of little girls looking on. These are the witches whose prophecies will turn the tide of the story when Macbeth and Banquo (Raphael Sowole) encounter them soon after a battle.

Theatre review: Treasure Island (National Theatre)

The National Theatre goes back to the classics for this year's big family show, with a new version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Orphaned Jim Hawkins (Patsy Ferran) and her Grandma (Gillian Hanna) run an inn whose only regular customer is Bill Bones (Aidan Kelly,) an ex-pirate raving about his fear of a one-legged man. When Bones is killed with all his bills still unpaid, they take their payment from his chest, where they also find a treasure map. The excitable Squire Trelawney (Nick Fletcher) finds out about Treasure Island and is soon leading Jim and Dr Livesey (Helena Lymbery) to Bristol to find a ship and crew to take them there. Jim remains wary of the one-legged man Bones warned her of, but after all many men lose a leg at sea, the mythical pirate captain couldn't possibly be her new friend, the ship's cook Long John Silver (Arthur Darvill.)