Theatre review: Princess Essex

Like most years the Globe ends its summer season with a new play, usually one that looks at historical events filtered through very modern concerns. Anne Odeke's Princess Essex doesn't buck that trend: Filling in the gaps in a true story many of whose details remain unknown, the play is inspired by a woman calling herself Princess Dinubolu of Senegal, the first black woman to compete in an English beauty pageant. So the play at times takes unflinching looks at issues of racial discrimination, particularly standards of perceived beauty, colonialism and racial fetishisation; but it does so mostly in the context of a pretty broad and bright comedy, which Robin Belfield's production approaches with energy and tongue in cheek. Odeke plays Joanna, a mixed-race housekeeper who knows nothing about her parents or early life, except that she ended up in the entertainment capital of the world: Southend-on-Sea.

Theatre review: The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare's Globe)

There's only really two things wrong with The Taming of the Shrew: One of them is half the plot, and the other is the other half. In Padua, the beautiful Bianca (Sophie Mercell) has many suitors, including the wealthy locals Gremio (Nigel Barrett) and Hortensio (Lizzie Hopley,) and recently-arrived Lucentio (Yasmin Taheri.) They compete for Bianca's hand in a needlessly convoluted scheme involving assuming fake identities, swapping around real identities, and a steadfast refusal to say a single funny line. The other storyline gives the play its title, as Bianca is not allowed to get married until her older sister Katherina (Thalissa Teixeira) does, and as she's considered a difficult woman, it seems she never will. So Hortensio recruits his mercenary friend Petruchio (Andrew Leung) to marry Katherina (it's not like she has any say in the matter) and once that's done he proceeds to bend her to his will through a sustained campaign of gaslighting and literal torture as defined by the UN.