Theatre review: An Ideal Husband

The National Theatre's recent Importance of Being Earnest found a new angle by introducing a formidable Caribbean take on Lady Bracknell, and now Nicholai La Barrie extends that idea by giving us another Oscar Wilde play where the entire cast of characters has been reimagined as first or second generation Caribbean British. In An Ideal Husband class, power and money are constantly intertwined in a relationship that proves precarious as Lord Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo,) a politician whose career benefited from his personal wealth, gets blackmailed about the source of that wealth: The unscrupulous Mrs Cheveley (Aurora Perrineau) has obtained a letter proving that, at the start of his career, he benefited from his parliamentary knowledge to do a bit of insider trading. She has an investment project of her own on the go, and if Chiltern publicly endorses what is very obviously a scam, she'll keep his secret.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)

A couple of years ago Holly Race Roughan directed a Henry V in the Swanamaker that impressively reinvented the bombastic history play as a chilling tragedy, so I was willing to give her return to the venue a chance, despite it being advertised as the hoariest of all Shakespearean clichés - and the one every director who's ever tackled the play seems convinced they're the first ever to spot: The dark underside of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Co-directed by Naeem Hayat, this is the story of an Athens ruled by Michael Marcus' drunken bully Theseus, who's forcing the defeated Amazon queen to marry him; at the start, he and Hippolyta (Hedydd Dylan) are still trying to kill each other as they plan their wedding. When a young woman, Hermia (Tiwa Lade) petitions Theseus to be allowed to marry the man she loves, she's instead given an ultimatum to accept her father's choice, or be executed.

Theatre review: Great Expectations

After last week’s debacle I was hoping the other show alternating in the National Youth Theatre’s rep at Southwark Playhouse would actually give the young people it’s meant to be showcasing something to work with; and while on paper I’m not a great fan of Charles Dickens, Great Expectations proves a much more successful evening. In stark contrast to Frankenstein tying itself in knots, Neil Bartlett streamlines Dickens’ story of social climbing and a poor young boy given a glimpse of a world (and a girl) he’s not willing to say goodbye to. Its children may not be quite as blatantly abused as in other Dickens books but in Great Expectations they’re very much a commodity to be handed around at adults’ whims – Pip (Joseph Payne) begins the story as an orphan in the care of his sister, and the most exciting event of his life was discovering the escaped convict Magwitch (Jemima Mayala) in the marshes and helping him.