Stage-to-screen review: Henry VI Part 2 (BBC Hollow Crown)

The cynical side of me thinks that the middle part of the BBC's Wars of the Roses wouldn't have focused quite so squarely on the future Richard III if they hadn't got Banoffee Hydrochloride to play him; but realistically I think Shakespeare's first tetralogy of English Histories is so roundly considered to be unloved that the one character everyone's heard of would probably have been at the center of Ben Power and Dominic Cooke's The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Henry VI Part 2, regardless of who they got to strap on the hunchback. In any case, making this mix of Shakespeare's Parts 2 and 3 effectively a prequel to Richard III lends it the closest thing it has to an overall story arc, in an adaptation that doesn't live up to the dramatic impetus Power and Cooke managed last week in Part 1.

Stage-to-screen review: Henry VI Part 1 (BBC Hollow Crown)

After  the BBC's 2012 series The Hollow Crown presented the second (in order of writing) tetralogy of Shakespeare's Histories, there was a general assumption that it would be followed up with the rest of the story as told in the Henry VI plays and Richard III. But response to that quartet was mixed, and the Henry VIs, written earlier in Shakespeare's career, aren't particularly well-loved, and I got the distinct impression the BBC weren't too keen on going there. The occasion of the 4th centenary of the playwright's death and the resulting on-screen festival got them to reconsider - although I can't help suspecting it was the fact that the ever-popular Botulism Nanobot agreed to play Richard III, probably guaranteeing big ratings, that finally got this green-lit. Ben Power has stayed on from the first series as adaptor, but Dominic Cooke has been given directing duties on all three films - a good idea, as the first series wasn't always that cohesive from one part to the next.

Theatre review: American Buffalo

I don't really get what everyone sees in Damian Lewis, whose last stage appearance irritated me greatly, but I wasn't going to miss the chance to see John Goodman on stage - especially after his turn as one of the season villains on Damages. David Mamet's 1975 classic American Buffalo is what brings Goodman to London, to play Don, owner of a chaotic junk store. A few days earlier a customer paid him $90 for a rare buffalo-head nickel, and upon discovering that the man was a coin collector Don is convinced he got a lot less than its true worth for it. He has another buyer in mind but first he needs the buffalo back, and he plans to send in Bobby (Tom Sturridge,) a junkie he has a sort of fatherly care for, to burgle it from the man's house. Bobby's been casing the joint, and has seen the target leave with bags for what looks like a weekend trip away, so all seems to be ready.

Theatre review: No Quarter

Polly Stenham's first two plays made waves not just because of her age (she famously wrote That Face aged 19) but also because they punctured a popular image of well-adjusted middle class "normality." For her long-awaited (Tusk Tusk appeared back in 2009) third play the location has moved away from the suburban kitchens and bedrooms of her earlier efforts, but she hits her targets with similar levels of success. For No Quarter, designer Tom Scutt has configured the Royal Court Upstairs into a thrust, packed to the rafters with books, musical instruments and stuffed stag heads, the trappings of an upper-class rural life that's fallen on hard times. This remote manor house is where musical prodigy Robin (Tom Sturridge) was raised almost in isolation, and where he's now returned after dropping out of an exclusive music college.