Theatre review: Into the Woods

When Stephen Sondheim died in 2021 I thought we'd see theatres falling over each other to revive some of his greatest hits, but fair play they've largely taken their time, staging about as much of his work as usual (including his not-quite-finished final work.) Of course maybe all the falling over each other was going on behind the scenes as people fought over the rights. If the Bridge's production of Sondheim's (music and lyrics) and James Lapine's (book) Into the Woods is anything to go by, what they were waiting for was the chance to really go big, both in terms of spectacle and of recognisable performers to take on what is an almighty ensemble piece. The Baker (Jamie Parker, who I think we can all agree is the first History Boy ever to take on the role) and his wife (Katie Brayben) can't have children, which it turns out is down to a curse placed on his family.

Theatre review: A Moon for the Misbegotten

We're not even into the final year of Rupert Goold's programming yet but the Almeida stage already looks like the movers are in: Tom Scutt's design for A Moon for the Misbegotten piles up planks, pillars, old props and broken doorframes to create the multilevel set for Eugene O'Neill's final play, a spin-off from Long Day's Journey Into Night. The alcoholic older son from that play, James Tyrone Jr (Michael Shannon) left a failing Broadway career for life as a landlord in rural Connecticut, where he rents out a worthless piece of farmland to Phil Hogan (David Threlfall.) The old farmer's manipulative ways and use of them as free labour has seen all his children leave him except for sole daughter Josie (Ruth Wilson,) and he's also made an enemy of his wealthy neighbour (Akie Kotabe.) Now a rumour has reached him that the millionaire has a plan to get rid of him once and for all: Offer James well over the odds to buy the land from him, so he can turf out the tenants.

Theatre review: Cabaret

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This is another one with a long preview period, and the official reviews aren't out yet.

Rebecca Frecknall had a career-defining hit with Summer and Smoke, which she's capitalised on creatively with her ongoing associate role at the Almeida; now she makes a bold play to capitalise on it commercially as well, staking her claim as a name we could be seeing in the West End for some time: A reimagined production of Kander & Ebb's dark but enduring musical Cabaret, with not only a big-name cast but also a reconfigured Playhouse Theatre that tries to give the feeling of entering the eponymous Kit Kat Club in 1920s Berlin. With staggered entry times, the audience enters the theatre's basement and is guided around the dingy corridors, passing showgirls doing their makeup until eventually ending up at front of house to find their seats*. Once inside Tom Scutt's traverse design has replaced the Stalls seats with tables surrounding a raised revolve.

Re-review: Constellations(Omari Douglas/Russell Tovey cast)

For anyone who needs catching up: Nick Payne's Constellations, one of my favourite plays of the last decade, is back in the West End this summer in Michael Longhurst's original production, with a casting twist that sees four new pairs of actors take on the two-hander in repertory. Tempted as I was to book all four I decided to limit myself to two versions, and even if I hadn't alluded to it in my review of the Capaldi/Zwanamaker version, regular readers of this blog will both have been able to easily guess at the second. Even if it hadn't been for the presence of OG Big Favourite Round These Parts Russell Tovey, part of the idea behind this new casting gimmick was for as many theatregoers as possible to see themselves in Roland and Marianne: So they became a young Black couple, then a much older couple than is usually cast, and now the third cast is here to make them an interracial gay couple*.

Re-review: Constellations(Peter Capaldi/Zoë Wanamaker cast)

I'm calling this a re-review because it's still the same Michael Longhurst production that Nick Payne's Constellations premiered with in 2012, and which I've seen three times before. But don't worry if you're unfamiliar with the play, you don't need to go back and read three previous reviews to understand this one (though if you really want to you can find them on the Nick Payne label on the blog,) I'll still introduce the original high concept. Along with a whole new high concept for this West End revival in particular: The two-hander has four rotating casts, starting with Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah, followed by Zoë Wanamaker and Peter Capaldi, then Omari Douglas and Russell Tovey, and finally Anna Maxwell Martin and Chris O'Dowd, each hoping to bring a unique angle to the story. And yes, I was very tempted to book for all four, but after a year of no theatre, a summer of the same play four times might have been too much of a shock to the system, so I decided to pick two that seemed the furthest from the casts I've seen before.

Stage-to-screen review: Nine Lessons and Carols - stories for a long winter

My "stage to screen" reviews were meant to be a very occasional feature in among the live theatre trips, but of course in 2020 they've ended up dominating. For my last one of the year it's one more of the shows I'd actually booked to see live but the government's Department of Tossing a Coin to See if Theatres Can Stay Open This Week put an end to that; having dipped their toe into digital content a couple of months ago when The Duchess of Malfi was briefly made available, I wasn't surprised when the Almeida offered a recording of their seasonal show to ticket-holders as an alternative. I say seasonal, but while the short preparation time led most theatres to dust off some version of A Christmas Carol, director Rebecca Frecknall, writer Chris Bush, songwriter Maimuna Memon (who also performs) and the cast were sent off to devise a more melancholy reflection on the season and the year leading up to it with Nine Lessons and Carols - stories for a long winter.

Theatre review: Fairview

Jackie Sibblies Drury’s dark comedy about cultural appropriation Fairview begins as That American Play Where An Extended Family Gets Together After A Long Time, Preferably At Thanksgiving But That’s Optional, and let’s face it that was probably enough to win it the Pulitzer on its own. The play ends up divided into three distinct sections plus a powerful postscript, but to begin with Nadia Latif’s widescreen production is practically a sitcom as an African-American family prepares a meal: Beverly (Nicola Hughes) is stressing about getting everything just right for her mother’s birthday dinner; her husband Dayton (Rhashan Stone) is much more relaxed – a bit too relaxed as far as she’s concerned, but he has helped organise more of the cooking than she realised, and he helps her calm down a bit by dancing to their favourite songs. When her sister Jasmine (Naana Agyei-Ampadu) arrives she’s sassy and combative and manages to get the guest of honour to lock herself in the bathroom, but she does have a soft spot for Beverly and Dayton’s tomboyish daughter Keisha (Donna Banya.)

Theatre review: A Very Expensive Poison

It's seven years since Lucy Prebble has written for the stage, a self-imposed exile because - as the playwright herself admitted when that play got adapted for radio - she was so happy with The Effect that she genuinely didn't believe she'd ever match it. Well, she's finally braved the weight of her own high expectations to debut A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic, and instead of taking similar ground to her last play it instead goes back to ripping its story from the headlines like her earlier hit ENRON. It also uses something like that play's genre-hopping, metatheatrical style, although director John Crowley can't quite bring the flair of a Rupert Goold to it. Based on Luke Harding's book of the same name, A Very Expensive Poison follows the murder of Russian whistle-blower Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium 210, a radioactive substance so rare it could be traced back to the precise nuclear plant where it was produced; and despite this the trouble Litvinenko's widow Marina had getting anyone in power to point the finger at the most obvious suspect.

Theatre review: Berberian Sound Studio

Before Josie Rourke takes on her own final production at the Donald and Margot Warehouse she's bringing back a well-known theatre name in an unfamiliar role: Tom Scutt makes his directorial debut with Berberian Sound Studio, an unexpected first venture for someone whose day job is designing visuals. Because although Scutt and Anna Yates have indeed designed a detailed 1970s Italian sound studio that gives the play a strong visual identity, Joel Horwood's play is, as the title suggests, really all about its soundscape. Based on a 2012 horror film by Peter Strickland - apparently a cult favourite although I'd never heard of it before this adaptation was announced - it sees sheltered sound designer Gilderoy (Tom Brooke,) who's only ever worked on nature documentaries from the isolation of his shed in Surrey, accept a job offer from an Italian director who's a big fan on his work.

Theatre review: Little Shop of Horrors

Last seen in London in 2007, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's Little Shop of Horrors is the Open Air Theatre's main musical offering of this summer, and if it hadn't already been a must-see for me the fact that Maria Aberg is directing definitely would have tipped the scale. And although everything that's fun about the show remains, there's certain directorial touches - and one casting choice in particular - that really make the production feel like it's been looked at with fresh eyes. The 1982 musical is based on a 1960 Roger Corman B-movie, a fact nodded at by Tom Scutt's design making the stage a drive-in cinema; but as the story's set on Skid Row and everything's run down, this drive-in is long-since closed and derelict, everything is grey and lifeless, and the scenery is wheeled on and off stage in shopping trolleys.

Theatre review: Julie

As Vanessa Kirby’s Julie first walks onto the stage rubbing cocaine into her gums I couldn’t help thinking: You can recast Princess Margaret, but you can’t shake her off that easily. Polly Stenham has updated Strindberg’s Miss Julie to the present day, and the spoilt daughter of a millionaire who hasn’t come home to celebrate her 33rd birthday with her. A lot of people she barely knows have turned up though, and on Tom Scutt’s split-level set a party rages in the background while the quieter drama plays out in the kitchen downstage, where her father’s chauffeur Jean (Eric Kofi Abrefa) and housekeeper Kristina (Thalissa Teixeira) are tidying up. Julie herself keeps wandering listlessly in to get away from her own birthday party, and to avoid the hangers-on upstairs. Jean and Kristina have recently got engaged, but Julie’s been ditched by her own fiancé, and is looking for someone to fill the void. The emotional void, not her vagina. Although also her vagina.

Theatre review: Summer and Smoke

I’ve only seen one show directed by Rebecca Frecknall before, a production of the obscure Tennessee Williams play Summer and Smoke at Southwark Playhouse in 2012. Well either Frecknall herself or Rupert Goold must have thought she had unfinished business with it, as she now makes her Almeida debut with… a production of the obscure Tennessee Williams play Summer and Smoke. In a small Mississippi town early in the 20th century, Alma Winemiller (Future Dame Patsy Ferran) is the local minister’s daughter, timid, bookish and prone to panic attacks, with a slightly affected accent – which she puts down to her father having spent time in England, but most of the town sees as further evidence that she’s pretentious. She’s been quietly besotted with her neighbour, the doctor’s son John Buchanan (Matthew Needham) since high school and, after some time away studying medicine, John has returned for the summer.

Theatre review: Belleville

Paris Syndrome is a temporary mental illness that affects visitors to the French capital, possibly caused by a place so romanticised in popular culture turning out to be just as real and down-to-earth as anywhere else. It primarily affects Japanese tourists because the “city of love” image is particularly strongly endorsed in Japan so the disappointment is greater, but presumably Americans are also susceptible to this: It would explain why it becomes the obvious setting for Amy Herzog’s Belleville, a play that takes place entirely in an American couple’s apartment. Zack (James Norton) and Abby (Imogen Poots) got married pretty young, most likely too young as Abby wanted her terminally ill mother to make it to her wedding. Since her mother’s death she’s suffered from anxiety and depression, but is now attempting to come off her medication.

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: Woyzeck

When the Old Vic announced that Jack Thorne would be writing an adaptation of Woyzeck and John Boyega would star I did wonder if the combination of a Harry Potter writer and a Star Wars actor would draw an audience unprepared for a play people have famously struggled to get to the bottom of for over a century. As it turns out I really hope there aren't too many kids being taken along as they'll have come away from the evening with a whole new vocabulary. Georg Büchner's play was unfinished when the playwright died in 1837, so all versions have always taken a bit of leeway in filling in the gaps. Thorne's version moves the action to 1980s West Berlin, where Boyega plays Frank Woyzeck, part of the British army presence patrolling the Berlin Wall. It's a job both stressful and dull, and those stationed there are thought of as inferior to those in the thick of it in Northern Ireland.

Theatre review: Jesus Christ Superstar

We're going way back through the mists of time for this one, back to a time when Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) actually came up with more than two tunes per show, and Jesus Christ Superstar is all the better for it. Originally a concept album, it means that although it's staged fairly frequently, it's usually as a concert, so Timothy Sheader's full staging in Regent's Park is something of a rarity. Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice created a musical passion play with a sympathetic slant on the reviled figure of Judas (Tyrone Huntley.) Jesus Hector Christ (Declan Bennett) has been building a following for the last three years, and although Judas still believes in his teachings, he has three main concerns: That Jesus Horatio Christ doesn't quite practice what he preaches, especially in the case of Anoushka Lucas' (strong-voiced but not all that impactful) Mary Magdalene; that they're not helping the poor directly any more; and the refusal to deny rumours of being the actual son of God.

Theatre review: The Deep Blue Sea

Quite a major case of déjà vu for me tonight, as although Carrie Cracknell's production for the National is the first time I've seen Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, it was only two weeks ago that I saw Kenny Morgan, based on the true events that inspired it. And as it turns out, Mike Poulton's play had followed Rattigan's template very closely. The Deep Blue Sea opens with Hester Collyer (Helen McCrory) lying unconscious in front of her gas fire, having attempted suicide. Her neighbour Philip (Hubert Burton) smells the gas, and with the help of landlady Mrs Elton (Marion Bailey) gets into the flat and revives her. This scandal causes another one to be revealed: The man she lives with, and who everyone assumed was Hester's husband, is in fact her lover, and she's actually still married to someone else.

Theatre review: Elegy

Bucking 2016's trend for interminable plays is Nick Payne, whose Elegy tells its story in 75 minutes - and that's with one scene being played out twice in its entirety. The setting is sometime in the near future, and Lorna (Zoë Wanamaker) has an unnamed illness that's causing her brain to rapidly degenerate; but medical science has found a cure. An implant can replace the damaged part of her brain and reverse the progress of her illness, but one thing it can't replicate are her memories: The surgery will remove everything she remembers of the last 25 years, a significant period as it includes the whole time she's known her wife Carrie (Barbara Flynn.) As the disease will very soon leave Lorna unable to make her own decisions, it's left to Carrie to use her power of attorney to see that her wishes are respected.

Theatre review: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

I don't know how dangerous she is, but this Lesley Aisons certainly seems like a bit of a cow.

Based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses is still best known for its hit film adaptation*, but enough time has passed to bring it back to the stage, as Josie Rourke does at the Donmar. In 18th century France, the nobility's reputations depend on them maintaining a strict morality - or at least appearing to, while getting up to whatever they like behind closed doors. Men can get away with more than women, so the Vicomte de Valmont (Dominic West,) despite something of a caddish reputation, is still welcome in polite society because of his charm and the frisson of scandal. Not only are the rumours about his sexual conquests true, he has an unsuspected accomplice in the outwardly respectable widow, the Marquise de Merteuil (Janet McTeer.) The two were once lovers, but have left that behind to focus on corrupting others: They dare and egg each other on to find the most virtuous young nobles in Paris society, seduce then discard them.

Theatre review: A Number

Caryl Churchill's A Number seems to be a popular choice for real-life father/son acting teams to take on; a few years ago I saw Timothy and Samuel West play opposite each other at the Menier, and for the latest revival at the Young Vic John and Lex Shrapnel are the father/son team-up. Although it provides strong roles, especially for the son, it still feels to me a bit of an eccentric choice to show off the family dynamic, as it portrays an especially twisted relationship. (And if you're planning on seeing it I recommend not reading the rest of my review until afterwards, as discovering the nature of the relationship is one of the play's strengths.) As the play begins Salter (John) is confronted by his son Bernard (Lex,) who's just discovered the truth about himself: He is actually Bernard 2, a clone of the first son Salter lost in a car crash. In fact as it turns out he's only one of a number of clones, the scientists having made more than requested, so they could follow their lives and discover more about nature vs nurture. But there's a lesson in that much closer to home.