Theatre review: Run The Beast Down

I suppose if you stage as many shows as the Finborough does, themes will start to emerge in the programming, whether intentionally or not - I'm guessing "the theatre that stages plays with menacingly symbolic foxes" isn't a tagline they'll be putting on the posters, but after Foxfinder and We Know Where You Live there's a sense of déjà vu when the animals turn up again in Run The Beast Down. Director-turned-writer Titas Halder offers up a long monologue for Charlie (Ben Aldridge,) an obnoxious city trader and hipster who, in the opening scene, loses his job and his girlfriend in quick succession. In seven chapters told out of chronological order, he tells us about how things started to fall apart both at work and in his relationship; and once he's stuck at home with nothing to do, his breakdown takes the form of an obsession with the foxes screaming outside at night.

Theatre review: A Boy and His Soul

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: A Boy and His Soul has its press night on Monday.

Kicking off Indhu Rubasingham's second year in charge of the Tricycle (and the first with the promised reserved seating) is a US import, Colman Domingo performing his own monologue, A Boy and His Soul. Clearing out his parents' old West Philadelphia house before they sell it, JJ (Domingo) finds their old vinyl collection of 1970s soul music, and is transported back to his childhood. He paints a picture of his family soundtracked by Diana Ross, Teddy Pendergrass and Earth, Wind And Fire, and revisits the adult messages both in the music and the life around him, that seemed innocent to his child's eyes. Following himself to university and beyond, the music continues to provide a way for his family to interpret the world, and ends up defining the way they react to him coming out as gay. Ultimately as his mother and stepfather get old and ill, the soul records become what connects JJ to his memories of them.

Theatre review: The Dance of Death

My final show of 2012, and an alternative take on the idea of festive entertainment - very alternative, as we're off to an isolated Swedish island to spend some time with Strindberg. Titas Halder directs the latest Donmar Trafalgar show, The Dance of Death, for which Richard Kent's design turns Trafalgar Studio 2 into a particularly grim, filthy little shack in a military garrison. It used to be the prison, so the fact that it's been allocated to Edgar (Kevin R. McNally,) an ageing Captain, as living quarters, may offer some hint as to what the rest of the officers think of him. Certainly he doesn't have much good to say about them as they party next door - Edgar and his younger wife Alice (Indira Varma) are the only ones not invited. Almost 25 years into a marriage that doesn't appear to have had a single happy day, Edgar and Alice bicker and hiss at each other, looking forward to the release from each other that their eventual deaths will bring.