Theatre review: Hamnet

After lockdown, the RSC decided to keep the Swan theatre closed for refurbishment, so this is my first trip back there for over three years. As it turns out, "refurbishment" here means more standing room, fewer and less comfortable seats, and somehow the sightlines seem to have got worse as well. Paying for all this probably needed a decent-sized hit, so Erica Whyman directs an adaptation of a recent bestselling novel - and one that keeps the action largely locally in Stratford-upon-Avon, and with its most famous son. Lolita Chakrabarti adapts Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, focusing on the women around William Shakespeare and especially his wife Anne Hathaway - here known as Agnes, with a silent G. I haven't read the book but the title, and the trigger warnings about themes of death and grief, gave me a good idea what part of their lives the story would focus on.

Theatre review: Deathwatch

The Print Room has now opened what is presumably going to be its main house in the former Coronet cinema: It's what would have been the balcony, with a new floor put in, and the original stalls converted into a bar (the design of which has really embraced the "serial killer's lair" theme of a building with dolls nailed to the bathroom doors.) The fact that the theatre's surroundings are the dilapidated red walls of an old cinema, meanwhile, is a theme that Lee Newby's design has run with, turning the pit into a circus-like stage, with a cage in the middle of the sawdust. It's people, not tigers we'll be watching perform as Geraldine Alexander directs Deathwatch, Jean Genet's play inspired by his own time in prison. The cell is shared by three men and, as the play opens, Lefranc (Danny Lee Wynter) is trying to throttle his cellmate Maurice (Joseph Quinn.)

Theatre review: One Arm

Tennessee Williams' prolific career means that however many Streetcars get produced, there's always a wealth of lesser-known works to draw from as well. His occasional attempts to get something more controversial past the censors can mean some genuine firsts are out there, like One Arm. Written as a screenplay but too explicit to get produced in the 1970s, it's been combined by Moisés Kaufman with the short story on the same subject to create this stage version. It's told in flashback from the prison cell of Ollie Olsen (Tom Varey,) who's on Death Row. No pardon seems likely but ever since his face appeared in the papers, letters of support have been flooding in from across the USA. A former Navy boxing champion, Ollie found work hard to come by after losing his right arm in a car crash. But his good looks weren't affected in any other way, meaning he was still much in demand for other reasons.