Theatre review: The Seagull

Jamie Lloyd's latest West End season was meant to run at the Playhouse, where its first show, Cyrano de Bergerac, played in early 2020. The follow-up production of Chekhov's The Seagull was of course a casualty of Covid, and now that it's returned its original home has been taken over by the Kit Kat Club. So instead Lloyd has regrouped at the Pinter, home of his previous season, for a production that continues to go for the same stripped-back aesthetic, but with a very different result than Cyrano's rap battle fireworks. Lloyd uses Anya Reiss' 2012 version of the play, which means the setting is the Isle of Man in the present day, where frustrated young writer Konstantin (Daniel Monks) lives at his uncle Sorin's (Robert Glenister) house by a lake. If their lives are usually quiet and uneventful that's not what we see, because all four of the play's acts take place during visits from Sorin's sister, Konstantin's mother.

Theatre review: The Pitchfork Disney

Last year Jamie Lloyd's ongoing West End projects kept getting bigger, and arguably lost the plot in the process - I made his Doctor Faustus my Stinker of 2016. Perhaps Lloyd himself feels the scale of things had got a bit out of his control because his first few projects of 2017 see him taking a step back towards something a bit more intimate - although not necessarily low-key, as he opens a mini-season of Philip Ridley plays at Shoreditch Town Hall with the playwright's 1991 debut, The Pitchfork Disney. Presley (George Blagden) and Haley Stray (Hayley Squires) are 28-year-old twins and the only survivors of the apocalypse - at least that's the story they tell themselves to justify their childlike lives cloistered in an East London flat. In fact ever since their parents died a decade ago - probably murdered, possibly by Presley - they've retreated into a co-dependent world of dark fairytales, drugged into sleep much of the time and hardly going out except to stock up on the chocolate that seems to be all they eat.

Theatre review: Creditors

Strindberg's Creditors is about Adolph and Tekla, a husband and wife with some cracks in their relationship that are exploited by a malevolent stranger, Gustav. The immediately obvious high concept in the new production by Rikki Henry - winner of this year's Genesis Award - is to turn it into the story of a gay marriage. Adolph (Tom Rhys Harries) is an acclaimed young artist, married to Tekla (Jolyon Coy,) a novelist a few years older than him, who's been married and divorced before. They're spending some time on a hotel on an island when Tekla needs to go away for a few days on business. In his absence Adolph meets another guest, Gustav (Gyuri Sarossy,) who for reasons that will become apparent is determined to sabotage their marriage. By the time we meet them at the start of the play, he's managed to expose Adolph's biggest insecurities about his relationship.

Theatre review: Hotel

Polly Stenham, the poet laureate of incontinence, has written a loose trilogy of plays Upstairs at the Royal Court, which have seen her prove accomplished at taking on the dysfunction of the upper middle classes; although by the third there were calls for her to broaden her horizons. She does so, not altogether successfully, with her fourth play Hotel, which also sees her move to the Artist Formerly Known As Shed outside the NT. Vivienne (Hermione Gulliford) is a Cabinet Minister - or at least she was until a couple of days ago. Her husband Robert (Tom Beard) was caught trying to pick up women online, and when the ensuing scandal made them a laughing stock, Vivienne resigned. Now, to escape the press, she's taken Robert and their children Ralph (Tom Rhys Harries) and Frankie (Shannon Tarbet) to the most remote holiday destination they could find, a small tropical island off the coast of Africa. It's the off-season, so theirs seems to be the only occupied suite in the hotel.

Theatre review: Mojo

When Jez Butterworth's debut play was staged in 1995 his style was often described as Pinteresque, and Pinter himself appeared in the film version; so it's apt enough that it's returned to London with a run at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Original director Ian Rickson revives 1950s gangster comedy-thriller Mojo with a cast to satisfy any number of fanbases, from Harry Potter to James Bond, Merlin to Downton Abbey. Ezra's Atlantic is a small-time Soho nightclub, mostly a front for other activities that are never specified, but seem to involve a getaway driver. But the club itself has suddenly become a hot property thanks to the discovery of singer Silver Johnny (Tom Rhys Harries,) a pretty teenager who appeals both to screaming teenage girls and, by the sound of it, the odd middle-aged gangster as well. But a meeting between Ezra and the boss of a rival gang ends with Ezra dead, Johnny kidnapped and the gang dealing with a power vacuum at the top.

Theatre review: Torch Song Trilogy

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This one officially opens to critics next week.

Having had one of their biggest-ever hits with La Cage Aux Folles, it's perhaps not that surprising that the Menier Chocolate Factory have turned to Harvey Fierstein's work again; although as despite the title Torch Song Trilogy isn't a musical, it may not reach quite as big an audience. Fierstein's three short plays from the late 1970s, later rewritten into a single show, follow drag queen Arnold (David Bedella) over the course of six years, and through his ever-shifting relationship with the bisexual Ed (Joe McFadden.) In the opening act, The International Stud, it's just the two of them on stage, getting together then parting when Ed falls for a woman. In Fugue in a Nursery, Ed is now married to Laurel (Laura Pyper,) and Arnold visits for the weekend, accompanied by his new boyfriend Alan (Tom Rhys Harries.) The final section, Widows and Children First, sees Albert dealing with family: His mother (Sara Kestelman) is about to visit, unaware that the real reason she's been invited is to meet David, (Perry Millward,) the gay teenager Arnold is in the process of adopting.