Theatre review: The Misanthrope

So far Indhu Rubasingham's first year running the National has provided a run of hit shows for other directors, but the ones she's chosen for herself have met with a more muted response. I personally enjoyed a lot of what Bacchae was doing but a similarly loose reinvention of a classic in the Lyttelton hit bum notes for me. Martin Crimp adapts Molière's The Misanthrope as a vehicle for Sandra Oh and the kind of exhausted stubbornness common to many of her screen characters: Oh's Alice is a highly respected and successful literary novelist, but her pronouncements outside of her books don't make her many friends. She's outspoken about inequality, feminism and race, and has recently been attacked in the press for refusing to renege on comments supporting a particular cause (it's unnamed but strongly implied to be Palestine.)

Theatre review: As You Like It (@sohoplace)

Back to @sohoplace Theatre, the venue with a name so current it has a pretty solid strategy in place for the Y2K bug, and it gets its first Shakespeare production in Josie Rourke's autumnal As You Like It. Opening with a song from Martha Plimpton's Jaques, it sets the tone for a production that largely reflects that character's melancholy worldview. Rosalind (Leah Harvey) and her cousin Celia (Rose Ayling-Ellis) leave the court they grew up in after a coup by Celia's father, and go to the forest of Arden in search of Rosalind's father, the banished rightful Duke. But before they leave Rosalind's just had time to meet and fall in love at first sight with Orlando (Alfred Enoch,) a dispossessed noble who's also just been banished. By the time they meet up again in the forest Rosalind has disguised herself as a man, and instead of coming clean comes up with a convoluted plan to test his love, because while this may be my favourite Shakespeare comedy honestly he's just throwing plots at the stage to see what sticks.

Theatre review: The Way of the World

A delayed trip to the Donald and Margot Warehouse, where James Macdonald's production of The Way of the World has been sadly overshadowed by the reason the performance I was originally due to see was cancelled: Actor Alex Beckett's unexpected death. Performances of William Congreve's Restoration comedy have now resumed with Robin Pearce replacing Beckett as Waitwell, and the rest of the run being dedicated to the late actor's memory. Unfortunately it proves a pretty poor memorial, as Macdonald has produced an interminable, impenetrable and woefully unfunny evening whose cast try hard to inject some energy into it but only succeed in small doses. I don't think I've seen Congreve's play before but I suspect it has to take a lot of the blame itself; the lengthy first scene in which Mirabel (Geoffrey Streatfeild) and Fainall (Tom Mison) exchange exposition about numerous similarly-named characters we haven't met yet sets a lugubrious tone the rest of the play struggles to get out of, and left me none the wiser about who anyone was by the time they turned up.

Radio review: Hamlet (Radio 4)

For a while now I've wanted to see Jamie Parker play Hamlet, but the theatre that seems the most likely venue to let him, Shakespeare's Globe, is still very much committed to its "Tiny Hamlet" from a few years ago. They're about to send it on a global tour, so I can't see them planning another production any time soon. So this may be the best alternative we get - as part of a Radio 4 season on the best-loved fictional characters, they ran a serialisation of Shakespeare's longest tragedy every afternoon last week in an audio production directed by Marc Beeby. Hamlet is the story of the young prince who discovers his uncle murdered his father, stealing his wife and crown and swears revenge; but is racked by existential questions that delay him carrying it out. Anastasia Hille played Gertrude, Paul Hilton Claudius in a production that despite the lack of visuals could be safely described as being period-set, thanks to the occasional sound effects of horses and carts clattering past the castle.

Re-review: Posh

I saw Laura Wade's Posh when it was first performed at the Royal Court in 2010, and despite not being entirely sold on it at the time, booked again for its belated West End transfer: Two years ago the story of an Oxford "dining" club for the incredibly rich and privileged was seen in the context of the election, and the people who were likely to soon be running the country; I was interested to see how the play bears up in the hindsight of two years with those people in charge. Despite the long gap in transferring, six of the original 10 members of the Riot Club have come along to the Duke of York's (including Joshua McGuire, interestingly opting to reprise this instead of his Globe Hamlet from last year; maybe a summer in the West End was more appealing than another regional tour.) They're joined by Max Bennett as Harry, Pip Carter as Hugo, Edward Killingback (Yeah!) Them Motherfuckers Don't Know How To Act (Yeah!) as Miles and Harry Lister Smith as Ed. The club have had to take a few terms off after Toby (Jolyon Coy) got careless and their exploits made the papers. Now they're determined to pick up where they left off with their once-a-term tradition: A private dinner in a village gastro-pub, topped off by trashing the place, and throwing cash at the landlord to keep quiet about it.