Eigengrau **** TNT

Penelope Skinner’s enigmatically titled 90 minute new play (it’s apparently the colour that the eye sees in total darkness) adds the graphic and the gory to what is otherwise a supremely funny contemporary tale of boy meets girl and messes her around. Mind you, the women aren’t exactly paragons in Polly Findlay’s exceptionally well acted production.

Feminist lobbyist Cassie gets more than she bargained for when Rose (the new flatmate she found on Gumtree) turns out to be not only short of funds but also on brains. Rose (all bouncy blonde curls and wonky values in Sinead Matthews’ ditsy portrayal) has, however, managed to attract smooth marketing type Mark, who swiftly ditches her and starts pursuing Cassie – though nowhere near as obsessively as the dumped Rose then chases after him.

Geoffrey Streatfeild is spot-on as the caddish Mark, who may or may not have really fallen for Alison O’Donnell’s serious Cassie. And one can’t help but warm to John Cummins’ aptly named loser Tim Muffin (Mark’s slobbish, overweight old college friend who’s taken up rent-free residence since his gran died) as he sweeps up the mess with a spring in his step and hope in his heart when Rose turns up at the fast food outlet where he works.

It’s very cynical, very well written, and spiked with some excruciatingly embarrassing moments made all the more effective by the traverse staging which splits the audience, face to face, in two.

Bush Theatre, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 8QD (020 8743 5050) till 10th April (£15- Saturday matinees £13)

Chronicles of Long Kesh **** TNT

It’s almost a decade since the Maze prison at Long Kesh finally closed its doors, but in the 70’s and early 80’s it regularly hit the headlines.

Martin Lynch’s swift new play (a hit at last year’s Edinburgh festival) evolved partly out of interviews with Republicans, Loyalists and prison officers who had served their time in the Northern Ireland jail.

Mixed in with Motown music sung a cappella, it gives some idea of the human experience of being locked up – for one’s beliefs, one’s actions or even by mistake.

Rigorously choreographed and with enough energy to burst through prison walls, it focuses more on the inmates as individuals than on the political and religious background which divided them or (in some cases) the acts of violence which brought them there.

Narrated by prison warden Freddie (a mouse of a man who takes the job to support his family and encounters his own demons along the way) it covers the years from the beginning of internment, passing swiftly over some incidents (including a short-lived riot over a shortfall of sausage rolls) whilst painting a vivid picture of the escalation from blanket-wearing to dirty protest and the build up to the fatal hunger strikes.

Rich in comedy, intensely physical, and with little more than wooden crates for props, the production (directed by Lisa May and Lynch) grips from start to finish thanks to superb performances all round – particularly from Marty Maguire as hearty Republican Oscar belting out Smokey Robinson numbers, Marc O’Shea (vicious as a sadistic prison officer, likeable as dopey inmate Toot) and Chris Corrigan as depressive, thoughtful Eamonn, worrying, like his fellow prisoners, whether his wife will still be there for him at the end of his stretch.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR Kilburn Tube ( 020 7328 1000) till 10th April (£10 - £20.00)

Love Never Dies *** TNT

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous money-spinning Phantom resurfaces as Mr Y, the reclusive impresario behind a Coney Island fairground and, to the chagrin of Madame Giry and her daughter (who’ve remained loyal in the intervening decade), he’s still obsessed with his muse Christine.

The first act moves slowly, though the eclectic designs (shadowy leaping carousel horses, a transparent unicorn) are a treat, and it isn’t till after the interval that his trademark soaring melodies come into their own.

Despite a quartet of contributors, the book is feeble, and the lyrics little better. Ramin Karimloo’s strong-voiced Phantom lacks charisma but Sierra Boggess’s Christine (now the mother of 10 year old Gustave) hits and holds the emotional high notes in a sequel which pleases whilst rarely matching the heart-stopping poignancy of its precursor.

Adelphi, Strand, WC2E 7NA (0844 412 4651) loveneverdies.com. Currently booking to 23rd Oct (£25 -£67.50)

The Fever Chart ** TNT

Subtitled “Three Visions of the Middle East,” Naomi Wallace’s trio of symbolic, thematically linked playlets probes the personal fallout of the years of conflict between Israelis and Arabs and the effect on the day to day lives of ordinary individuals.

A grieving Palestinian mother revisits what’s left of Rafah zoo on the borders of the Gaza strip in A State of Innocence. Most of the animals have gone - Israeli tanks crushed the turtles – but an Israeli soldier is caring for those that remain. A strange, ancient Russian-Jewish architect appears and it gradually emerges that a tragedy connects the three of them.

In Between this Breath and You, an Israeli nurse (Lisa Caruccio Came) working in a West Jerusalem clinic is confronted by a bereaved Palestinian father determined to expose the unexpected the link between them

Finally (and most effectively) the monologue The Retreating World goes back to Iraq in 2000 where book-loving Iraqi Ali (Daniel Rabin) delivers a lecture about the pigeons he reluctantly had to sell in order to survive the effect of UN sanctions.

American born and currently England based, Wallace stresses the influence these countries have had on her protagonists. Pilot theatre company keeps the staging simple, with the suggestion of flying birds on crumbling walls, and a quiet passion emanates from the performances of all three actors. But, bogged down with self-conscious quotations, the often poetic language doesn’t always flow and, despite their common ground, the plays sit slightly uneasily together.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios till 3rd April £22.50 (Mondays £17.50)

Private Lives **** TNT

Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall plays a wealthy femme fatale from another era in Richard Eyre’s classy revival of Noel Coward’s 1930 comedy about a divorced duo who, five years after their separation, unexpectedly find themselves honeymooning in adjoining Deauville hotel suites.

Matthew Macfadyen’s suave Elyot has just married Lisa Dillon’s younger but (initially at least) far less feisty lookalike version of his volatile first wife, Amanda, who, in turn, is freshly hitched to Simon Paisley Day’s equally unsuitable Victor, a tweedy model of stuffy rectitude.

Cattrall won’t disappoint her fans – she’s kittenish, glamorous, funny and gives as good as she gets when the fights get physical in this sharp, witty portrayal of a passionately turbulent couple who can’t live with or without each other.

Vaudeville, Strand, WC2R 0NH (0844 412 4663) to 1st May (£25 - £49.50)

The Gods Weep ** TNT

Dennis Kelly’s new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company starts promisingly enough with a modern day boardroom shakeup mirroring King Lear’s division of his kingdom in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Colm, the chairman, has decided to relinquish his role as CEO of the multinational company he ruthlessly built up, and hands over the reins to Catherine and Richard, whilst seizing back Belize, the one area previously handled by his ineffectual son Jimmy. The resulting power struggle and underhand machinations are, at first, intriguing as Jonathan Slinger’s Richard reveals his true snake in the grass nature and Jimmy comes close to cracking up over an ill-judged affair with a married businesswoman.

But suddenly the boardroom table sinks to the ground, fatigues take the place of suits and the protagonists are jettisoned into a real war zone, with blood and guts and a rising body count. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there, with a final section involving Colm’s post apocalyptic attempts to survive with the help of Cordelia-like Barbara, the daughter of a business rival he deliberately destroyed many years before.

Throw in a tedious astrologer, a problem with insurance, an apparently dead cat and a skewered squirrel and the result is an ambitious but trying piece of writing which just doesn’t cohere. The battle scenes go nowhere, and there’s only so much mileage to be had from Colm and Barbara’s attempts to catch the local wildlife as they camp under a makeshift tent of leaf-covered plastic.

Jeremy Irons (perhaps viewing it as a dry run for Lear itself?) convincingly charts Colm’s decline from guilt-ridden corporate top dog to repentant old man in pyjamas, but neither his performance nor substantial cuts (from almost five hours to closer to three) is enough to rescue this unwieldy drama.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) until 3rd April (£15-£25) Under 25 - £5

Serenading Louie This is London

Materially, the two thirty something couples in Lanford Wilson’s 1970’s domestic drama seem to have it all. But behind closed suburban doors, there’s deep-rooted discontent which no amount of success can obliterate.
Wilson depicts two middleclass marriages in a state of breakdown, the happy past a nostalgic memory, the future an emotional desert of disaffection.
Hotshot Chicago lawyer Alex (a restless Jason Butler Harner) is contemplating a move into politics, but can hardly bear the presence of his needy, emotionally fragile spouse Gabrielle (Charlotte Emmerson). Carl, (a former quarterback and his best mate from college) has made a small fortune in property development but chooses to turn a blind eye to his own wife Mary’s ongoing affair with his accountant.
The two couples time-share the same brown-hued living room, disappearing through doors leading to bathrooms, bedrooms or the outside world of work or clandestine meetings. Every so often they address the audience directly. Neither dramatic conceit increases one’s sympathy for these unhappy characters.
The writing is sometimes astute, often indulgent. But the performances in Simon Curtis’s focussed production hold the attention with Geraldine Somerville’s soignée Mary distractedly composed in her relationship with Jason O’Mara Carl, the husband of whom, looking back, she wistfully observes ‘I don’t actually think that I loved him then. But I love him then now.’

until 27 March.

Sweet Nothings *** TNT

Like his better known La Ronde, Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s retitled fin-de-siècle Liebelei paints a picture of free sexuality and casual encounters but doesn’t shirk from showing the damage they can do.

On a slowly revolving raised set, student Theo entertains his latest conquest - Natalie Dormer’s overtly sensual Mizi, who knows the score and drunkenly grabs the moment. The more romantic Christine is infatuated with their host, his wealthy best friend Fritz, despite his preoccupation with a married woman.

It’s a cruel depiction of a hedonistic “love ‘em and leave ‘em” mentality which can only work if all parties (including husbands!) concur and of rebellion against the restraint of the previous generation (personified by Hayley Carmichael’s disapproving neighbour), given a stylish if over-contrived production by Swiss director Luc Bondy.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ tube Southwark / Waterloo ( 0207 922 2922) till 10th April (£22.50) under 26’s £10

A Day at the Racists **** TNT

As a General Election looms, this tiny little theatre comes up trumps yet again with a large cast and a big subject in Anders Lustgarten’s extremely well acted and topical new play.

An arresting opening scene firmly establishes the frustrations of former Labour Party organiser Pete Case in today’s multicultural Britain as he battles the authorities (in vain) to get his single parent son onto a housing list apparently filled with large families of needy immigrants. Not only that, but his current employer and old mate Clint (who’s black) loses a substantial painting and decorating job to a Polish contractor.

Feeling betrayed by New Labour, he’s tempted by what would previously have been a totally unacceptable alternative – a new look British National Party in the shape of Thusitha Jayasundera’s persuasive, persistent Gina. Half Pakistani and determined to stand for parliament and do the best for the community, she couldn’t be further from the stereotypical yob spoiling for a fight (here represented by Gwilym Lloyd’s thuggish hardliner who can barely be kept in line by Nick Holder’s disconcertingly controlled party leader).

Lustgarten does a good job of showing just why, despite its dubious credentials, working class white voters might be attracted to the BNP, and although Pete’s changes of heart don’t completely ring true, director Ryan McBryde’s fluid production demands attention, with particularly strong performances from Julian Littman’s angry, disillusioned Pete and Sam Swainsbury as his thwarted son Mark who still hopes for better things, but by more acceptable means.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. Earl’s Court Tube ( 0844 847 1652) to 27th March (£11 - £15)

Satyagraha **** TNT

Don’t be put off by the fact that the libretto of this stunning production is in Sanskrit. Philip Glass’s spine-tingling 1980 opera, loosely following the life of Gandhi, is mesmerising both aurally and visually in this revived co-production with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Forget about a linear narrative (there isn’t one) and just give yourself up to the sheer meditative pleasure of the haunting repetitions and the imaginative staging.

Under the inventive direction of Improbable theatre company’s Phelim McDermott and designer Julian Crouch, everything moves at a slow, hypnotic pace, perfectly attuned to Glass’s minimalist music and in keeping with Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent protest.

Intermittently, English surtitles (the text is culled from the Bhagavad-Gita) are projected onto the simple curved corrugated set, before fading gently away. A battle is waged between giant warriors which seem to appear from nowhere, constructed of papier-mâché and everyday objects. Parallel streams of sticky tape are somehow fashioned into an outsize creature by a performer suspended overhead. Gandhi himself metamorphoses from a lawyer in a suit to the more familiar robed figure over the course of the three acts which visit, in turn, spiritual guardians (Tolstoy, the Indian poet Tagore and Martin Luther King) whom Glass links to the Satyagraha principles he embraced.

The disciplined chorus and Elena Xanthoudakis’s intense Miss Schlesen impress, but Alan Oke (returning to the central role he played when the production premiered here three years ago) is, once again, unforgettable – a dignified presence with a pure, powerful voice which soars with an ethereal beauty of total conviction.

English National Opera at the London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4ES 08719110200 In rep till 26th March(£16 -£50)

Ghosts *** TNT

Iain Glen directs and also stars in Frank McGuinness’s version of Ibsen’s once-scandalous 1881 drama of hypocrisy, syphilis and closely guarded secrets.

He plays the self-righteous Pastor Manders, to whom Lesley Sharp’s widowed Mrs Alving once turned, in vain, for help in the early years of a disastrous marriage to the incorrigible philanderer who left her financially rich but emotionally desolate. The return of her diseased artist son Oswald (sent away in childhood to shield him from his father’s dissolute influence) and his interest in her servant girl finally prise skeletons from cupboards.

Surprisingly topical in parts, this tragedy no longer shocks – but, in Glen’s sometimes astute but more often heavy-handed production, it also fails to move.

Duchess, Catherine St, WC2B 5LA Charing Cross (0844 412 4659) nimaxtheatres.com). Until May 15. £20-£46

The Dead School **** TNT

There are only five people in the cast of Pat McCabe’s cracking adaptation of his 1995 novel, but with superb precision they populate the stage with countless characters.

Told in flashback, his comically tragic story of a pair of Dublin-based teachers, a generation apart, follows their lives from birth to (in one case) the grave. Both had troubled childhoods – one father is murdered, the other commits suicide when his wife is flagrantly unfaithful. But whilst Raphael (the older of the two) adopts a strict, authoritarian attitude, younger Malachy revels in the flare-trousered freedom of hash and premarital sex.

The paths of these representatives of old and new Ireland coalesce when Malachy (Nick Lee) takes up a teaching post at the same school where, in his heyday, Raphael’s old values triumphed - before sadness, disappointment and his unforgiving nature drove him to madness and conducting an imaginary class in his filthy, dilapidated living room.

Sean Campion, rising from the dead in a crumpled, chalk-impregnated suit, is outstanding as Raphael (a man who cannot move with the times and is destroyed by his own unyielding bitterness).

And the rest of the well-drilled cast (Carrie Crowley, Peter Daly and Gemma Reeves) are marvels of quick change versatility, popping up all over the place (as naughty pupils, wives, statues and the ominous Little Beggarman in a pig-face mask) in Padraic McIntyre’s super-slick production of this surreal kaleidoscope of a play.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR Kilburn Tube (020 7328 1000) till 13th March (£10 - £20.00)

Disconnect **** TNT

Debt collecting agencies and, more especially, overseas call centres are the bane of modern life. But for once they provide excellent entertainment in Anupama Chandrasekhar’s fast and very funny new play set in India but with pretensions of being US based.

With their carefully cultivated tones, the smart twentysomethings manning the night shift are a different breed from their new supervisor, long serving Avinash (Paul Bhattacharjee) whose Indian accent and poor results have seen him “relocated” from New York to fourth floor Illinois. He’s a dinosaur in a target-orientated company which feeds off the financial predicament of Americans whose aspirations have resulted in a maxed out credit card and a debt they can’t repay.

There’s a slight story of misguided infatuation – like his colleagues, top performer Ross has his own American Dream, falling for a debt laden librarian in Buffalo and breaking even more rules than usual to help her out.

But most of the pleasure of Indhu Rubasingham’s swift production comes from the often overlapping interaction of the operatives (newcomer Giri/Gary, Ayesha Dharker’s kind Vidya/Vicki, and, making a memorable professional debut, Nikesh Patel as Roshan/Ross) as they cajole and coerce the “marks” on the other end of the line, using their all-American aliases to convince them that they’re just a few miles away rather than stuck in a windowless Chennai office.

Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (020 7565 5000) to 20th March (£10 - £15)

Madness in Valencia *** TNT

This transfer from the White Bear in Kennington certainly lives up to its name. It begins with a rush and the pace barely slackens until the closing moments.

At first, the frenetic speed of Simon Evans’ production is exhilarating in David Johnston’s colloquial version of ultra prolific Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega’s 1590 tale of a young man and a young woman separately on the run - from the authorities, from parents - who feign madness and seek sanctuary in the Valencia asylum.

Kathryn Beaumont’s feisty Erifila has eloped with her father’s servant – only to discover that what he’s really after is her jewels when he leaves her stranded in the streets in her corset. Lovesick Floriano (William Belchambers, giving the best performance of the evening) has accidentally knifed a prince and, fearing for his life, been persuaded that the only safe place to be is under lock and key. A convoluted plot of sudden infatuation and faked insanity ensues – with the head warden’s niece and the servant girl both besotted with the new inmate who in turn has fallen for Erifila.

The relentless pace leaves no room for light and shade and the self-consciously clownish antics of keeper Pisano soon wear thin. The production isn’t without its merits, but ultimately, just trying to keep up with this over-lively comic romp proves exhausting.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Charing Cross tube (0844 871 7632) www.ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios till 6th March £22.50. (Mondays £17.50)

Really Old, Like Forty Five This is London

There are some very worrying statistics quoted in the programme for Tamsin Oglesby’s dark, new and somewhat haphazardly structured comedy which tackles the consequences of an increasingly ageing population.
Hopefully, the powers that be won’t resort to the measures Ogilvy envisages 40 years in the future, when available parents are in such short supply that the elderly regularly adopt teenagers. This is exactly what Judy Parfitt’s Lyn decides to do, but there’s a family crisis brewing as her once astute academic brain succumbs to the ravages of Alzheimer’s and an increasing frequency of senior moments.
Meanwhile her younger sister Alice (Marcia Warren – delightfully optimistic and with a naïve trust in what science has to offer) finds that her body is showing signs of deterioration and, in a
desperate attempt to hold off the inevitable, their actor brother Robbie (Gawn Grainger) dresses like someone a fraction of his age and dates a succession of unseen girls young enough to be his granddaughters.
Help is at hand, however, at the Ark, an experimental institute presided over by policy official Monroe (a terrifyingly heartless and manic Paul Ritter) and his team. But the books have to be balanced and a profit needs to be made – and it doesn’t take much to persuade them to manipulate research results and market what was intended to be a cure for dementia as a handy drug to aid euthanasia instead.
Anna Mackmin’s well-acted, split-level production (designed by Lez Brotherston) doesn’t quite succeed in marrying up Oglesby’s somewhat wayward strands, aspects of which owe a debt to Ayckbourn. But there’s more than enough humour and heartfelt truth here to sustain the evening, thanks in no small measure to a knockout performance by Michela Meazza, putting her dance background to excellent use as Mimi the robot nurse who has not only been programmed to offer an empathetic stroke on the arm but also purrs like a contented cat.