Theatre review: The Rivals

Tom Littler's theme for Christmas shows at the Orange Tree seems to be Jazz Age relocations for classic comedies, and this year he goes back to Restoration Comedy to move Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals from 1775 to 1927. Lydia Languish (Zoe Brough) is a fan of torrid romantic novels and wouldn't consider a romance of her own that wasn't suitably anguished, so her aristocratic suitor Captain Jack Absolute (Kit Young) is wooing her in disguise as a lowly sergeant: He knows she would never be interested in him if he had her family's approval. In fact Jack's father Sir Anthony (Robert Bathurst) has been busy arranging a marriage between his son and Lydia, so when the latter finds out she determines to reject Jack Absolute in favour of the fictional Beverley, and Jack finds himself his own biggest rival.

Theatre review: Churchill in Moscow

Howard Brenton's history plays have an eclectic scope that's previously seen him tackle everything from Ancient Greek philosophers to the Partition of India. He's also dealt with the life of Harold Macmillan, but for his latest play he goes for the British Prime Minister who must have been interpreted on stage and screen more than any other, as Roger Allam plays the title role in Churchill in Moscow (he plays Churchill, not Moscow.) Set in 1942, things look particularly dark for the Allies as the Nazis are making inroads into Russia and approaching Stalingrad. Meanwhile British forces have been depleted to the point that they'd be wiped out instantly if they attempted to invade Europe via the Channel - US troops will eventually supplement them, but they're not really feeling it just yet. Winston Churchill is on a secret diplomatic mission to Moscow to inform Joseph Stalin (Peter Forbes) of the bad news that D-day won't come until at least the next year.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre)

This year's Twelfth Night productions have leaned extra heavily on the idea of the play as a melancholy one, and while the cliché about it being Shakespeare's farewell to straightforward comedy tends to be code for "we forgot to make it funny," the Open Air Theatre managed a version of that approach that really worked for me. Sad clowns are clearly the order of the day at the Orange Tree as well, where Tom Littler's production sets the action in the 1940s, presumably very soon after the end of the Second World War given the whole stage becomes a War memorial inscribed with names. Anett Black and Neil Irish's designs are in mournful monochrome apart from the yellow stockings, and at the start of the play Olivia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is in mourning for her father and brother, both recently deceased, and judging by the portraits in uniform in her cabinet, both killed in action.

Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -A Song at Twilight

The third and final play in Noël Coward's Suite in Three Keys is a full-length one, so it plays on its own in Tom Littler's revival of these late dramas. A Song at Twilight is, at least in Littler's production, the part of the trilogy that most acknowledges the fact that the Sixties are starting to swing. Well, ageing Hollywood starlet Carlotta (Tara Fitzgerald) acknowledges it, anyway, sporting the most preposterous and gravity-defying of Chris Smyth's wigs for these shows, enjoying the sound of pop songs playing outside the window, and firmly believing that an overhaul of social opinion on sexuality is overdue. But the man she's visiting (in Louie Whitemore's Swiss hotel suite that the story shares with the earlier double bill) is the sort to slam the windows shut against the noise, and certainly one who'd rather keep certain things behind closed doors.

Theatre review: Suite in Three Keys -Shadows of the Evening andCome into the Garden, Maud

The Orange Tree marks the 50th anniversary of Noël Coward's death by staging very nearly his last works for the stage, the trilogy Suite in Three Keys. The plays are performed as originally intended, in a double bill alternating with the third, longer play, all set in the mid-1960s in the same luxury suite of a Lausanne hotel. And there's a distinctly unpromising start as we open with the damp squib of a drama Shadows of the Evening, apparently such a critical flop it got ditched entirely when the original production transferred to Broadway. George (Stephen Boxer) has lived with his lover Linda (Tara Fitzgerald) for several years after leaving his wife: Anne (Emma Fielding) has stayed on relatively good terms with them for the sake of her children, except for the fact that she's refused to grant him a divorce in all that time. Now Linda, at one time Anne's friend, has asked her to come urgently from London to Switzerland.

Theatre review: She Stoops to Conquer

Tom Littler continues to find his own stamp on the Orange Tree's traditional money-spinning revivals with Restoration Comedy given a 1930s twist: One of the most famous examples of the genre, Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, gets set in a rural pub at Christmas, with Anett Black and Neil Irish's design adding tables and stuffed animal heads, to reflect a story about a posh county house that could easily be mistaken for an inn. It's a conceit that's set up early so that Charles Marlow (Freddie Fox) and George Hastings (Robert Mountford,) lost on their way to meet their prospective spouses, can be tricked into thinking they're taking shelter in a roadside tavern, when in fact they've reached their destination: The home of Mr Hardcastle (David Horovitch,) an old friend of Marlow's father, whose daughter Kate he's been sent to meet and court.

Theatre review: The Circle

A play full of references to the ravages of ageing could be taken as a bit of an on-the-nose way for a new Artistic Director to introduce himself to the Orange Tree's regular audience, but Tom Littler's debut production seems to have gone down well enough this afternoon. During Paul Miller's tenure the theatre helped subsidise its risky new writing scheduling with regular crowd-pleasing revivals, with a particular focus on Shaw and Rattigan. For his opening salvo Littler goes for Somerset Maugham, and the 1921 romantic comedy-drama The Circle. Arnold (Pete Ashmore) never really knew his mother, who left his father Clive (Clive Francis) and ran away with his best friend. But Arnold's wife Elizabeth (Olivia Vinall) has learnt that Lady Kitty (Jane Asher) and Lord Hughie Porteus (Nicholas Le Prevost) have returned to England after thirty years in France.

Theatre review: Cancelling Socrates

Howard Brenton made his name as a topical political playwright, and in recent years has become mostly known for his history plays. Cancelling Socrates, as suggested by a title that mixes a contentious, politicised modern term with a classical figure, is something of both, although in the end maybe not quite enough of either. It's the story of the trial of Socrates in 399 BCE Athens, when he was accused of blasphemy with a side order of corrupting youths. As played by Jonathan Hyde, Socrates isn't necessarily any more of an atheist than anyone else around him, and though he's got some very arch thoughts about the badly-behaved Olympian pantheon he does seem to pray to them and make all the right gestures. The trouble is his famous, eponymous Socratic method of philosophy, which relies on asking questions and seeing where the answers take him. Sooner or later he's going to end up asking questions with dangerous answers.

Theatre review: Merit

Alexandra Wood’s Merit takes place in Spain, where the recession has hit jobs particularly hard, and opens with Sofia (Ellie Turner) a few weeks into a new, well-paid job with a high-powered banker. Her mother, '80s blouse-wearer Patricia (Karen Ascoe,) confronts Sofia with her suspicions about how her daughter got a PA job that, by her own admission, other people were better-qualified for. Did she offer her new boss Antonio something extra in return for a job so well paid it's now not only supporting her, but also helping pay her parents' mortgage? Although offended, Sofia doesn't actually deny the accusation, instead moving away from home to sleep on a friend's couch. Over the next few months Patricia tries to reconnect with her daughter, turning up outside her work, informing her of the ways the recession is affecting them - her father first losing his job, then attempting suicide - and asking to meet Antonio, because if he really did give Sofia her job on merit, presumably he'll give one to her equally-qualified mother.

Theatre review: First Episode

The ongoing Terence Rattigan revival collides with the trend for classic rediscoveries as Tom Littler revives Rattigan's professional playwrighting debut, First Episode. A modest West End hit in 1934, he shares the writing credit with his university friend Philip Heimann, although current opinion seems to be that this is a courtesy gesture, as the play is partly based on their friendship, and Heimann contributed to the plotting; the final draft is thought to be almost entirely Rattigan's though. Another inspiration is an unlikely but true story of an Oxford University amateur dramatics production that somehow convinced John Gielgud to direct Romeo and Juliet, and bring along Peggy Ashcroft to be the leading lady. Ashcroft here becomes Margot (Caroline Langrishe,) a film and theatre star persuaded to play Cleopatra opposite undergraduate Tony (Gavin Fowler) as her Antony. Finding her approachable in rehearsals, Tony invites Margot to a party at the flat he shares with three other students.

Theatre review: Martine

You'd expect a play called Martine to be a biography of Ms McCutcheon, but I'm afraid we'll have to wait a little while longer for an onstage reenactment of that time she vomited in Mick Hucknall's hair. Instead Jean-Jacques Bernard’s play takes place in rural France in 1920, as Julien (Barnaby Sax) returns from the war to stay with his only living relative, his grandmother (Susan Penhaligon) in a small village. On the way he meets and falls for local simpleton Martine (Hannah Murray.) This is her moment, this is her perfect moment with him, and a fortnight of flirtation follows, but the arrival of Jeanne (Leila Crerar,) to whom he had once been promised, makes him long for the company of someone better-educated. Soon Julien and Jeanne are married, and Martine is left to either watch from next door and pine, or accept Alfred's (Chris Porter) unwanted proposal.

Theatre review: Dances of Death

There must be an unwritten rule about Strindberg that says you can only have the same one of his plays over and over, or none at all. Usually it's Miss Julie, but it's less than six months since Donmar Trafalgar gave us The Dance of Death, and now here it is at the Gate. Except it turns out Strindberg wrote two parts to the play, and the second part is rarely performed. Howard Brenton's new version conflates the two parts into a single two-act play, hence the title change to Dances of Death. Set on a Swedish island that's used in its entirety as a military base, it focuses on the toxic 30-year marriage of elderly army captain Edgar (Michael Pennington) and his wife Alice (Linda Marlowe.) What seems at first to be affection disguised as a string of insults turns out to have a very real hatred underneath it - and yet the couple are too committed to causing each other misery ever to try and escape.

Theatre review: The Living Room

A rather different meditation on religion tonight than the one I watched last night. Tom Littler revives Graham Greene's first play at Jermyn Street, and like some of Greene's novels it wrestles with the Catholicism he converted to. In The Living Room 20-year-old Rose (Tuppence Middleton,) whose father died when she was a baby, has just lost her mother as well. She is to be placed in the care of her great uncle and two great aunts, in a large London house that appears to have been badly affected during the Blitz. Her uncle James (Christopher Timothy) is a Catholic priest, confined to a wheelchair 20 years previously, so the secret Rose is barely able to keep will be a problem in this household: She's recently started having an affair with Michael (Christopher Villiers,) the much older, married executor of her mother's will.

Theatre review: Shiverman

New York-based playwright James Sheldon's Shiverman takes place on a fictional Pacific island, but takes its themes from real cases and customs of small islands near Papua New Guinea. Possibly-American (Paul Mooney's accent does wander a bit too much to be certain) anthropologist Roy has been studying the indigenous tribes for three years, assisted by local boy Tatalau'e (Benjamin Cawley) who's been dazzled by dreams of studying in California. When a Chinese strip-mining company looks set to raze the valley to the ground, Roy calls in Dominique (Lisa Kay,) his girlfriend and colleague, to help his appeal to UNESCO to protect the local culture, under the laws of "intangible cultural heritage." But under these regulations, a culture's human rights can only be protected if they don't violate already-established rights, and Dominique discovers what Roy's been hiding from her: Before being allowed to marry, all local girls must be raped by the tribe of "holy men."

Theatre review: Bloody Poetry

Howard Brenton wrote Bloody Poetry in 1984 as a reaction to Thatcher's government and what he saw as the "shredding" of England's radical tradition. So his play, revived here by Tom Littler at Jermyn Street Theatre, goes back to the Romantic Poets to remind us of the revolutionary, partner-swapping atheists behind one of the country's most influential literary movements. The focus of the story is on Percy Bysshe Shellley (Joe Bannister) and his "menagerie." As the play begins it's 1816 and he's accompanied to Lake Geneva by Mary (Rhiannon Summers,) already being referred to as his wife, even though his first wife Harriet is still alive; and Mary's stepsister Claire (Joanna Christie - I totally didn't twig she was the girl from Equus, I think I was distracted by how much she looks and sounds like Sarah Hadland.) Though this isn't just a love triangle, complicated as it is by Lord Byron who knocks Claire up, as well as occasionally trying his luck to see if Bysshe might consider giving boys a go. Bysshe is like a sulky, emo adolescent, in contrast to David Sturzaker's bombastic rock star Byron - when we first meet them, the other three are very much like stalkery fans, going to the hotel they know Byron likes in the hope he'll turn up and befriend them.