Theatre review: The Lady From The Sea

The Lady From The Sea is Ellida (Nikki Amuka-Bird,) second wife to Dr Wangel (Finbar Lynch.) After an initially happy marriage, Ellida has become distant in recent years, and her husband suspects she has unresolved feelings for a lover from her past. In a turn of events that reflects Ibsen's ahead-of-his-time fascination with psychology, the doctor decides on a radical cure, inviting her former suitor Arnholm (Tom McKay) to visit. Wangel's hunch is correct but he's miscalculated: Arnholm isn't the man Ellida still has feelings for. Instead her unfinished business is with a sailor, her first love at the age of sixteen, who vowed they'd be bound forever before running away to escape a murder charge. She believes he's somehow found out that she's married someone else, and her depression comes from feeling she's betrayed him.

Theatre review: Julius Caesar (Shakespeare's Globe)

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The critics don't seem to have been invited to this yet.

Rounding off (albeit in the wrong order) the trio of Roman plays in this summer's Globe season is Dominic Dromgoole's production of Julius Caesar. After defeating the tyrant Pompey, Julius Caesar (George Irving) returns to Rome a hero. Despite refusing three times to take the throne himself, Cassius (Anthony Howell) manages to convince a number of senators that Caesar is dangerously ambitious, and a plot to assassinate him is formed. A crucial part of Cassius' plan is to recruit Brutus (Tom McKay) to the conspiracy, as he is known as an honourable man and friend of Caesar's. If he's seen to be part of the plot it'll lend it legitimacy, rather than it appearing like a coup for power by the senators. But Brutus underestimates Caesar's faithful protégé Mark Antony (Luke Thompson,) and his powers of persuasion over the people.