Driving Miss Daisy

TNT

Despite its unsatisfactory episodic structure, this imported Broadway revival of Alfred Uhry’s 1987 hit, set in Atlanta, proves well worth seeing thanks to Vanessa Redgrave’s superb performance.

Over the decades, and against the background of the Civil Rights Movement, a touching friendship grows between her feisty, steely-willed Jewish septuagenarian and James Earl Jones’ Hoke, the dignified black chauffeur whose services she’s reluctantly persuaded to accept when she prangs her car once too often.

Director David Esbjornson can’t disguise the fact that it’s never been much of a play, but as a showcase for these veteran actors’ talents, this vehicle definitely has wheels.

Wyndhams, Charing Cross Road WC2H 0DA Tube: Leicester Square daisywestend.com Until 17th December (£10-£58.50)

Cool Hand Luke

TNT

Take away the famous boiled egg-eating scene and the interpolated gospel songs and there’s not much else going for Emma Reeves’ flashback adaptation of the novel by Donn Pearce which spawned the 1967 film starring Paul Newman.

Marc Warren puts in a decent performance as the defiant, decorated Second World War veteran condemned to serve time on a Florida chain gang for decapitating parking meters – and manfully disposes of those eggs with a combination of comic aplomb and sleight of hand.

But neither his serial attempts to escape – nor the clash of wills with Richard Brake’s sadistically menacing guard who’s determined to “git his mind right” – really justify this bitty and ultimately unnecessary stage version.

Aldwych, Aldwych WC2B 4DF (0844 847 2429) Tube: Covent Garden/ Charing Cross aldwychtheatrelondon.info Until November 19 (£15-£45.00)

Bang Bang Bang

TNT

Told mainly in flashback, Stella Feehily’s well-researched new play for Out of Joint begins with a blood-chillingly powerful scene.

Their compound in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been breached by gun-toting soldiers and seasoned human rights defender Sadhbh is desperately trying to calm her French assistant, Mathilde, as she screams, petrified, that she would rather be killed than raped.

It’s a far cry from the life in London that Sadhbh (originally from Dublin, pushing 30 and dedicated – probably too dedicated – to her work) shares with her long-term partner Stephen (a former NGO turned consultant for Shell) and even from the “R & R” weekends in Goma overloaded with too much booze and casual sex where Julie Dray’s idealistic, inexperienced Mathilde picks up a young photographer keen to get his first scoop.

Orla Fitzgerald is totally convincing as Sadhbh, sacrificing (or perhaps running away from) her personal life to return again and again to collect testimony against the warlord whom she faces up to over tea and implied threats. And although the focus is primarily on the fate of the white women, the Congolese victims of rape and abuse are also given a credible voice in Max Stafford Clarke’s well-acted production.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS Tube: Sloane Square royalcourttheatre.com Until November 5 (£20, Mondays £10)

Mixed Marraige

TNT

Passions run high in the protestant Rainey household when the elder son wants to marry a local Catholic girl in Irish-born playwright St John Ervine’s taut, first drama of conflicting loyalties, written in 1911 and set in Belfast 4 years earlier.

With the dock workers on strike for a fair deal and the dissent fuelled by political agitators, respected head of the family John (Daragh O’Malley) is persuaded to help unite both sides of the religious divide in a common cause against the factory owners.

The timing couldn’t be worse. As tensions mount and personal and public interests collide, the Rainey men refuse to back down and it’s left to Fiona Victory’s staunch materfamilias to try and maintain the peace between father and son in this powerful 80 minute domestic tragedy of destructive intransigence.

Finborough Theatre, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court ticketweb.co.uk Until October 29 (£11-£15)

The Veil

TNT

Multi award-winning playwright and director Conor McPherson misses the mark with his latest tale of ghostly manifestations, set in Ireland in 1822, in which the aristocratic widowed owner of a country pile has arranged an unwelcome marriage for her daughter in order to salvage the estate.

The characters struggle to engage as they down one decanted drink after another, the underdeveloped plot is a multi-stranded muddle which attempts to incorporate social history, and (an unexpected bang or two apart) the supernatural elements fail to frighten – with a defrocked reverend’s attempt to release a “trapped soul” no more unsettling – or revealing – than a cat straining to retch up a furball.

Thank heavens for a dotty, cane-wielding granny who injects some much needed humour into the disappointingly unconvincing proceedings.

Lyttelton at the National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX Tube: Waterloo nationaltheatre.org.uk Until 11th December (£12-£45)

Terrible Advice

TNT

It’s taken since 1977 for actor Saul Rubinek to turn his germ of an idea into a play and the result – an adroit mix of the laugh-out-loud funny and the touchingly poignant – shows the maturity which comes with middle-age.

Unfortunately it’s a trait which has bypassed Scott Bakula’s womanising Jake. That doesn’t stop Andy Nyman’s tubby, neurotic teacher Stinky from following his old college buddy’s self-interested advice and ditching the girlfriend who can’t have kids.

And (even knowing her comfortable bank balance constitutes a large part of her allure) Caroline Quentin’s self-sufficient widowed Hedda is more than happy to share her home and her bed with the emotionally adolescent Jake in Frank Oz’s sitcom style production.

Menier Chocolate Factory, 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU (Tube: London Bridge) menierchocolatefactory.com Until 12th November (£29.50 & Meal Deals available £37.00)

The Killing of Sister George

TNT

Frank Marcus’s dark comedy was probably rather shocking when it first opened in 1964 – not because there’s a real murder involved but because of its portrayal of the off-air lesbian relationship between middle-aged actress June Buckridge and doll-loving Alice, known, tellingly, as Childie.

For the last 6 years, June has been the voice of Sister George, the popular district nurse in a successful rural radio soap. Now her ratings are starting to slip and (with justification) she’s petrified not only of being written out of the series but of losing Alice, too.

Already a domineering bully in her home life, the stress doesn’t soften June’s sadistic attitude to her pretty, young live-in partner – forcing her to eat her discarded cigar butts is just one of her ways of exerting control.

Meera Syal (so effective in her recent solo West End forays) is too brazenly butch, failing to reveal why Alice took up with her even before she was famous – or to make us care when she slips into self-pitying, slovenly drunkenness.

Parading around the flat in her underwear, Elizabeth Cadwallader’s Alice knows her own power and (as Belinda Lang’s ironically named BBC executive Mrs Mercy Croft arrives with the increasingly bad news) isn’t afraid to spot the main chance. But Iqbal Khan’s production never really finds the correct tone in what proves to be a rather heavy-footed revival.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB Tube: Leicester Square (lovetheatre.com) Until 29th October
£20-£37.50

One For the Road / Victoria Station

O

TNT

These two short works by Harold Pinter - one lasting a mere 10 minutes – are neatly dovetailed in Jeff James’ efficient production played out on a stark white set.

In Victoria Station (written in 1982), a minicab controller has a frustratingly off-kilter nighttime dialogue with the distracted and somewhat confused "number 274" in an attempt to get him to pick up a passenger. Kevin Doyle does a nice line in bemusement as the stationary driver, but this short two-hander could be funnier.

In the second, darker and longer One for the Road (1984) the fluorescent lights suddenly blaze in an uncomfortable glare and the power play roles are reversed. Doyle is now Nicolas, a smiling, psychologically coercive interrogator in an unspecified totalitarian state who questions, in turn, Keith Dunphy’s battered Victor, his sexually abused wife and his (as yet untouched) 7 year old son.

It’s a chilling piece, the four brief scenes pulsating with the threat of unseen torture and gratuitous cruelty.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ tube Southwark/Waterloo (youngvic.org) Until October 15. £15.

Rock of Ages

TNT

Even with understudies in two of the lead roles and the merest apology of a story stringing the 80’s rock anthems together, the audience was having a
whale of a time at this crowd-pleasing jukebox musical which – no matter what the critical verdict - is probably destined for a lengthy run.

If you can forget subtlety, ignore the lazy construction and forgive the often feeble jokes, you’ll enjoy wannabe rock star (Oliver Tompsett) wooing wannabe actress Sherrie with Waiting for a Girl Like You and the energetic cast belting out Final Countdown as they battle to save Sunset Strip from the clutches of a German property developer.

Shaftesbury Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8DP (020 7379 5399) Tube Holborn/Tottenham Court Road, www.shaftesburytheatre.com / www.rockofagesmusical.co.uk. Booking until October 2012 (£20-£65)

The Playboy of the Western World

TNT

Greeted by riots when it premiered in Dublin in 1907, J.M. Synge’s classic comical account of misplaced hero-worship won’t cause much of a stir nowadays as the female population of a rural Irish community falls under the spell of a nondescript lad seeking refuge in the local shebeen and claiming to have killed his father.
Robert Sheehan’s fantasising patricidal braggart grows in confidence as he pursues Ruth Negga’s purposeful barmaid, but it’s Kevin Trainor (as her cowardly would-be husband) and the excellent Niamh Cusack’s scheming widow who seem most at ease with the flowery, heavily accented dialogue.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB (0844 871 7628) Tube: Waterloo, www.oldvictheatre.com. Until November 26. £10 - £49.50

Broken Glass

TNT

The discomfiture of Antony Sher’s angst-ridden, impotent Phillip is painful to watch as he struggles to make sense of his wife’s hysterical paralysis in Arthur Miller’s 1994 meld of the psychological, personal and political, set in Brooklyn in 1938 as the Kristallnacht attacks in Berlin make headline news.

The chemistry between Tara FitzGerald’s Sylvia and her expansive, assimilated doctor (Stanley Townsend) is as palpable as her repressed husband’s ambivalence about his Jewishness in Iqbal Khan’s fine, powerfully acted revival, punctuated by atmosphere-heightening cello music played live on stage.

Vaudeville, Strand WC2R 0NH (0844 412 4663) Tube: Charing Cross brokenglasstheplay.com Until December 10 (£22.50 - £47.50)

No Naughty Bits

TNT

Even if you’re not a Monty Python fan, Steve Thompson’s fictional, fact-based reconstruction of the 1975 court case brought by Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin against US network ABC has moments to savour as they battle to reinstate unacceptable edits.

Matthew Marsh provides a masterclass in low-key comedy as the sympathetic, sardonic judge presiding over their fight against censorship and commercial breaks, whilst Edward Hall’s colourful production (aided by Francis O’Connor’s tribute design) recalls the surreal silliness of the Pythons’ schoolboy humour.

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) Tube: Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com Until October 15 (£22-£29)

When Did You Last See My Mother?

TNT

Christopher Hampton made theatrical history in 1966 when, as a 20 year old Oxford undergraduate, he became the youngest playwright in modern times to have a show staged in the West End. Written for a student competition when he was just 18, it bears the hallmarks of a young man’s attempt to make sense of his sexuality and of his place in society. It also reveals a very clever mind and a precocious wit.

Ian is out of work, lonely and sharing a London bedsit with former schoolfriend, Jimmy, until they take up their university places. Jimmy (Sam Swainsbury) has an easy confidence, comes from a wealthy background and (though he had his share of homo-erotic encounters at their single sex public school) is now busy notching up female conquests.

In contrast, self-pity oozes from every pore of Ian’s body and he’s predominantly interested in men - and in Jimmy. With his messy hair, barbed repartee and massive chip on his shoulder, Ian's a decidedly unsympathetic character – all of which makes it hard to believe that Jimmy’s soignée mother (an emotional Abigail Cruttenden) would turn to him for sexual solace.

That said, Blanche McIntyre’s long overdue and always watchable revival captures the ambivalence of an era in change and (as manipulative, angry young man of the 60’s Ian) Harry Melling proves there’s far more to his talent than the minor role of Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until October 8 (£22.50)