Sleeping Beauty

 TNT

To celebrate the Silver Jubilee of his dance company New Adventures, Matthew Bourne has finally transformed the last of Tchaikovsky’s three full length ballet works.  First there was Nutcracker! in 1992, followed by his ground-breaking all-male Swan Lake three years later.
His new Sleeping Beauty is an inventively gothic affair – beginning in 1890 (the year of the original choreographed by Petipa) and ending in the present day. His long-term collaborator Lez Brotherston provides stunning designs, creating an opulent, gilt, late-Victorian nursery, a verdant Edwardian garden, a misty sleepwalkers’ forest, and a steamy crimson and black nightclub behind locked gates where vengeful Caradoc, son of the dark fairy Carabosse, prepares to sacrifice the somnolent Princess Aurora after her hundred years’ sleep.
Bourne’s Aurora is a defiantly mischievous being, making her deliciously cute entrance as an infant- size puppet, crawling on all fours, climbing the curtains and taxing the patience of the royal parents who so wished for a child that they called on Carabosse’s services to obtain her. No wonder, then, that when she comes of age, she falls for gamekeeper Leo rather than one of her more eligible suitors. And, ever the storyteller, Bourne introduces a bloodsucking vampire to ensure Leo is still there to save her a century after she pricks her finger on a rose.
The music is pared and pre-recorded which may bug purists, but, with its nods to different dance styles and cheeky inventions, Bourne’s ballet proves a treat, with Hannah Vassallo’s Princess limp as a ragdoll in response to Caradoc’s unwanted kiss, spirited as the visiting night-time fairies who entertained her as a toddler when she dances with her beloved Leo.

Sadler’s Wells, Rosebery Avenue EC1R 4TN
Tube:- Angel
Until 26th January
£12- £60sadlerswells.com

In the Republic of Happiness

 TNT

If you’re looking for seasonal fun, this definitely isn’t the show for you - even though it opens with a family tucking into the traditional Christmas turkey. Split into three segments, and exceptionally well-acted by all concerned, Martin Crimp’s new play doesn’t find much to recommend either getting together with one’s nearest and dearest or the self-obsessed nature of life today.

“Destruction of the Family” begins conventionally enough (we could almost be in Ayckbourn territory) but breaks into a very unseasonal song delivered by the two teenage daughters - one pregnant, the other (in-yer-face Ellie Kendrick) envious of the special treatment - and presents - her sibling’s condition affords her.

Meanwhile Dad (Stuart McQuarrie) has removed all the lightbulbs to save electricity, Granny (Anna Calder-Marshall’s retired doctor) happily discusses going out to buy porn for Peter Wight’s Grandad, and Emma Fielding’s tight-lipped Mum tries to keep things under control - only to be further thwarted by the arrival of her almost certainly deviant brother, Uncle Bob, delivering messages of vitriol on behalf of his own wife Madeleine.

“The Five Essential Freedoms of the Individual” involves a swift switch to a brightly lit cross between a therapy session and a confessional television programme in which the unassigned lines of dialogue launch a scattergun attack on modern preoccupations - from “moving on” to, ironically, the concept of being different and writing one’s own life script.

Finally, it’s just Paul Ready’s now needy Uncle Bob, an empty vista visible through the window of their almost empty room, unhappily singing their “100% happy song” with frequent prompts from Michelle Terry’s cool, glammed up Madeleine.

Guaranteed to alienate some with its unconventional approach, Dominic Cooke’s production proves intriguing, amusing and irritating by turns. It doesn’t exactly add up to a coherent whole, but individual moments, first rate performances and Roald Van Oosten’s music help overcome most of the frustrations elicited by Crimp’s absurdist satire

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube: Sloane Square
Until 19th January
£10 - £28royalcourttheatre.com

The Dance of Death

 TNT

There’s absolutely nothing festive about the second production in the Donmar’s season showcasing the work of its Resident Assistant Directors. But with a sparklingly bitchy new version by Conor McPherson, Ibsen’s 1900 account of a marriage made in hell proves exceptionally entertaining.

Kevin R McNally and Indira Varma are on top form as the mismatched couple – ailing military captain Edgar who’s too fond of drink and his considerably younger wife. Alice, a former actress – who are approaching their silver wedding anniversary. Isolated by both the garrison’s island location and their scorn for those around them, their venomous verbal sparring has become their main means of entertainment. The unexpected arrival of her cousin, Kurt (the man who introduced them and now the newly appointed Quarantine Master) adds a new dimension to the poisonous mix and, Alice, sensing the possibility of escape, steps up the vitriol.

Titas Halder’s production zings along, yet beneath the mutual hatred, there’s the occasional telling glimpse of sympathies shared and the suggestion that – just like George and Martha in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – a deep-seated dependence on their cruelly destructive animosity imprisons them as surely as the former jail which (in Richard Kent’s intentionally unwelcoming design) serves as their marital home.

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
Tube: Charing Cross
Closes 5th January (£22)
donmarwarehouse.com

The Bodyguard

 TNT

American Heather Headley hits all the right notes in Alexander Dinelaris’s new stage version of Lawrence Kasdan’s 1992 film, which starred Kevin Costner and (as mega recording star Rachel Marron threatened by a dangerous stalker) the late Whitney Houston.

There’s not much tension generated in Thea Sharrock’s efficient if bitty production (blame the dialogue and scrappy plotting), and any poignancy in the thwarted love story is killed off by a final feel-good rendition of 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' guaranteed to send you home happy.

But despite these shortcomings, the overall result proves surprisingly watchable – thanks in no small measure to the compensatory high production values, the Whitney back catalogue, and the warm stage presence (when diva Rachel thaws) of Headley.

There’s enough chemistry between her and Lloyd Owen’s gruff, solid bodyguard Frank Farmer to fuel their affair, and one feels for her sister Nicki (Debbie Kurup) losing out yet again to her stellar sibling.

And, even though it rings as true as the recent ludicrous developments in Homeland, in a nicely ironic touch the initial rendering of 'I Will Always Love You' takes place in a karaoke bar – a pretty dire move from the security point of view, but one which whets the appetite for Headley’s subsequent full throttle delivery in this attractively wrapped musical.

Adelphi, Strand, WC2R 0NS
Tube| Charing Cross
Currently booking till 27 April
£20-£67.50thebodyguardmusical.com

The Arabian Nights

 TNT

 

One story slips neatly into another, then another, in American Mary Zimmerman’s 20 year old version of a resourceful young girl’s clever ruse to save herself from death.

King Shahryar of Baghdad has married then murdered a succession of new spouses every day since his first faithless spouse deceived him. Now there are no more eligible young virgins left except Scheherezade and her sister – and the only way she can stay alive is to tell him a new story every night, ending on a cliff-hanger each time so that he feels compelled to stay her sentence and find out what happens next.

Lu Kemp’s physically fluent production relies on swift costume changes and the adept doubling of the multinational cast to tell the stories. The tales include, among others, a man whose flatulent excesses earn him an unwanted entry on the calendar, a fiancée who sacrifices her own happiness to help her betrothed obtain the woman of his dreams, and a wise young girl who wittily proves she knows more than all the scholarly elders.

Lights twinkle overhead, Take it Easy Hospital provides original musical and, although there’s an underlying political resonance, this selective adaptation of One Thousand and one Nights sets out primarily to entertain and, with charm, humour and a bit of darkness, succeeds in doing just.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 12th January
£14.00 - £20.00tricycle.co.uk

Old Money

 TNT

Sarah Wooley’s new play, set in 2008, ticks lots of boxes but isn’t quite a full package. Although it begins with a funeral (and there’s another before the evening’s out), there’s some very funny dialogue in this account of recently widowed Joyce, finally set free from the constraints of a marriage reluctantly entered into forty five years previously.

Whilst her controlling mother (Helen Ryan’s opinionated Pearl) now expects her to make weekly visit to her dead husband’s grave, and her 42 year-old daughter Fiona takes it for granted that she’ll want to up her childcare commitment, Joyce has ideas of her own. First there’s the purchase of a defiantly red coat from Bond Street, then visits to the opera, but it isn’t long before she’s having tea at the Ritz with a young stripper as she throws off the family obligations threatening to hem her in all over again.

Although not all Joyce’s encounters ring true, much of what Wooley touches on will hit various nerves across the generations as Tracy-Ann Oberman’s materialistic, cash-strapped Fiona (married to a lazy out-of-work musician and expecting their unplanned third child) becomes increasingly less sympathetic with her frequent requests for financial help from the bank of mum.

And with Maureen Lipman giving a fine central performance as respectable, reliable, suburban Joyce, disconcertingly rejuvenated and turning into a latter day Merry Widow, Terry Johnson’s enjoyable production proves both entertaining and mildly provocative.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU
Tube | Swiss Cottage
Until 12th January
£22-£29
hampsteadtheatre.com

Boy Meets Boy

 TNT

The most unusual thing about this frothy off-Broadway musical love story is that although Bill Solly and Donald Ward wrote it in 1975, it treats the subject of gay marriage as a completely acceptable matter of course.

It’s 1936, the King is about to abdicate and cynical, debauched reporter Casey O’Brien is desperate for a scoop so that he can pay his bill at the swanky Savoy Hotel.

His sights are set on tracking down English aristocrat Guy Rose who’s just left wealthy American Clarence Cutler standing at the altar, little realising that the dowdy youth flaked out under his bed post-party is in fact the man in question. A quick makeover, a trip to Paris, some strategically placed fans at the Follies, a shared interest in the Scouts and, despite the machinations of Ben Kavanagh’s bitchy jilted Clarence, it all comes out happily at the end.

The tunes are amiable if forgettable, but Gene David Kirk’s production (the UK premiere) is fun while it lasts, with Craig Fletcher’s Guy neatly carrying off the transformations between desirable socialite and geek in order to convert commitment-phobe Casey to the joys of marital bliss, and choreographer Lee Proud miraculously packing five dancing couples onto the postage stamp stage in this light-hearted romance with a subversive twist.


Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST, £20
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Until 20th Decemberjermynstreettheatre.co.uk

Goodnight Mister Tom

 TNT

Michelle Magorian’s 1981 children’s book makes an enjoyably successful transition to the stage in David Wood’s swift, compassionate adaptation which doesn’t shy away from the more upsetting elements of this ultimately uplifting war time tale.

Evacuated to rural Dorset at the outbreak of the Second World War, city boy William Beech finds himself billeted with reclusive widower Tom Oakley and his far more forthcoming collie Sammy (a life-size puppet endearingly manipulated by Elisa de Grey).

It isn’t long before the curmudgeonly old man’s heart begins to melt as he discovers the illiterate young boy’s unhappy background (along with a bible and the mandatory gasmask, all his mother has packed for him is a belt to whack him with). And reticent William blossoms, too, as he overcomes the local kids’ prejudice against the city interloper and makes friends with William Price’s scene stealing Zack, a precociously confident fellow evacuee with a very different upbringing.

It’s all rather charmingly done, with a succession of swift scenes which never linger too long on the darker aspects of the story. And Oliver Ford Davies (with his long white hair and thoughtful manner) is perfectly cast as Tom, the four decades of loneliness since the death of his wife in childbirth melting away as his caring instincts are reawakened by the initially unwanted presence of Ewan Harris’s William (one of three young actors sharing the role) in this more serious seasonal alternative to the traditional panto.

 Phoenix, Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0JP
Tube: Leicester Square /Tottenham Court Road
Until 26 January, £15 - £46.50goodnightmistertom.co.uk

Merrily We Roll Along

  TNT

 

It’s hard to believe that Stephen Sondheim’s heart-breaking and witty musical flopped on Broadway, folding after just 16 performances and a load of previews in 1981.

Since then, it’s been tweaked and polished and, with its clever lyrics and songs that linger in the memory, this wry look at how life turns out is an almost unqualified success.

Based on Kaufman and Hart’s 1934 play, it zooms in, more or less backwards from 1976, on key moments in the fraught friendship between big shot Hollywood composer and producer Franklin Shepard, Charley (his one-time lyricist) and Mary (novelist turned waspish critic), tracing the relationship all the way back to their first chance meeting in 1957.

Chasing the mega bucks has brought Franklin success and a glamorous entourage, but what he’s lost in the process is tellingly revealed as the threesome’s youthful optimism is replaced by mid-life cynicism, disillusionment and abandoned values.

Maria Friedman, making her directorial debut, is herself a long term interpreter of Sondheim’s work and ensures that her fine cast are alert to all the bittersweet sadness, the hope and the humour of the score.

Mark Umbers’ Franklin is persuasively attractive as he’s lured away from his wife and ideals by glamorous actress Gussie, whilst Damian Humbley’s uncompromising, angry Charley remains true to his principles and his sweetheart.

And Jenna Russell’s Mary, her long-lasting love for Franklin obvious to everyone but the man himself, drowns her lonely disappointment in bitterness and too much booze as the years go by.

Menier Chocolate Factory , 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU
Tube | London Bridge
Until 9 March
£29.50 – 37.50 (Meal Deals £37.50 - £43.00)menierchocolatefactory.com

The Changeling

 TNT

 

It’s trifle and chocolate in the bedroom and death by punchbowl and banana in Joe Hill-Gibbins’ unrestrained modern dress revival of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s 1622 tragedy.

Seen earlier this year in the Young Vic’s smaller space and now substantially recast, it’s a messy play in several respects with the two parallel plots unsatisfactorily integrated, a problem which Hill-Gibbins minimises by blurring the differences between the sane and the supposedly mad.

In the main thread, Beatrice-Joanna, daughter of the Governor of Alicante, is already betrothed to another when she falls for Harry Hadden-Paton’s upright Naval Captain Alsemero. For a well brought up religious young girl, she chooses a rather drastic way to avoid an unwanted marriage – persuading her father’s detested manservant De Flores to get rid of her fiancé in exchange, she believes, for a substantial fee, little realising the real price the besotted valet will demand in return.

In the rather feeble sub-plot, jealous madhouse doctor Alibius and his nubile wife become comic strip caricatures - he’s a dead ringer for Alan Bennett, she’s a provocative brunette with Jessica Rabbit curves, locked up to keep her away from other men.

Watched through a mesh, with characters popping out of cupboards, the proceedings get progressively out of control, with Sinead Matthews’ Joanna caught up in a tragedy of her own making and Zubin Varla’s menacing De Flores, his skin raw and red with erupting pustules, deflowering her in the midst of the increasingly manic wedding celebrations.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Until 22nd December
£10.00 - £30.00youngvic.org

Straight

  TNT

 

I hadn’t heard of Lynn Shelton’s 2009 movie “Humpday,” so can’t tell where most of the credit for the spot-on killer dialogue lies, but if the original is anywhere near as funny as DC Moore’s stage version it’s definitely worth viewing.

Straight takes the exploration of male bonding to a new comic level when the cosily contented (if financially straitened) lifestyle of happily married Lewis and Morgan is disturbed by the unconventional arrival (you’ll never forget it!) of his best buddy from university. Off the radar for seven years whilst he’s been travelling the world, rootless Waldorf makes their plans for parenthood and a functioning air extractor seem suddenly unsatisfyingly limiting to Lewis, and neither man is ready to back down from a late night drunken dare involving sex, a camcorder and lots of lube.

Admittedly I didn’t completely buy into the pact which gets them booked into a wallet-bustingly expensive country hotel. That apart, though, Richard Wilson’s production is flawless and it’s a long time since I’ve laughed so much at the theatre.

But I was also touched by the potential for hurt as Jessica Ransom’s Morgan pushes at the boundaries of understanding to keep her marriage safe, and (finally stripped to their underpants) Henry Pettigrew’s hesitant Lewis and Philip McGinley’s bearded, free-spirited Waldorf awkwardly negotiate overlapping territories of art, pornography and male friendship to perfection.

Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ
Tube | Shepherds Bush
Until 22nd December
£15 - £19.50bushtheatre.co.uk

A Clockwork Orange

 TNT

Nothing can quite compete with the powerful image of Malcolm McDowell’s black–fringed eyes held forcibly open as he undergoes aversion therapy in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film version of Anthony Burgess’s futuristic 1962 novella.

But Alexandra Spencer-Jones visceral all-male production for Action to the Words (using Burgess’s own later stage adaptation) exudes a sweaty atavistic menace as teenage Alex and his gang of Droogs indulge their adolescent sprees of senseless, testosterone-fuelled violence.

Bottles are smashed into weapons of sexual assault, chains are wielded, fists and boots terrorise old and young, male and female – until Alex, convicted and imprisoned, becomes a guinea-pig for a new treatment designed to knock the aggressive instinct out of him once and for all - and save the state some money in the process.

Shafts of orange pierce the monochrome design (a carrot-coloured pen peeks from a lab coat, a victim sports a tangerine cardigan) and the well-muscled cast of nine execute their acts of violence with balletic, sometimes homo-erotic precision, speaking in their own unique “Nadsat” slang as they gather in the local milk bar or terrorise an old lady.

Led by Martin McCreadie’s swaggering, charismatic, Beethoven-loving Alex, they deliver a short, powerful sensory attack which questions whether forcing someone to be good – whatever the rationale - is in itself an unacceptable violation.

Soho Theatre, Dean Street, W1D 3NE
Tube Tottenham Court Road
Until 5th Jan
£15.00- £22.50sohotheatre.com

The Promise

 

 TNT

 

 

The final year of the Donmar’s three seasons showcasing the work of its Resident Assistant Directors gets off to a fine start with Alex Sims’ production of Soviet playwright Aleksei Arbuzov’s triangular drama. Written in 1965, it follows the fortunes of three teenagers initially thrown together in a derelict apartment by the hunger, cold and desperation of the siege of Leningrad which claimed the lives of almost a third of its inhabitants between 1941 and 1944.

We first see them in 1942 (alone in the world and without family) when they form an intense bond which goes way beyond ordinary friendship but is constantly destabilised by the initially unspoken competition between the two 17 year old boys for the affections of 16 year old doctor’s daughter Lika.

Yet even in a city of corpses, as they scrape every last morsel of food, their idealistic dreams for the future remain intact.

Over time (we catch up with them again in 1946 and 1959) aspirations give way to reality in a changed country – the picture of Stalin finally taken down from the wall where it remained whilst almost everything else combustible was scavenged for firewood, the young men’s rivalry still strong.

Penelope Skinner’s well-judged version can’t hide the more awkward structural aspects of the Russian original, but Mike Britton’s detailed sets and decent performances - Joanna Vanderham (recently seen groomed to perfection in the TV series The Paradise, here grubbily bundled against the bitter cold as Lika), Max Bennett’s would-be hero Marat, and Gwilym Lee as aspiring poet Leonidik) - ensure that, though showing its age, this remains a moving and engrossing account of lives still under the shadow of the past.

Trafalgar Studios (2)
Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
Tube | Charing Cross
till 8th December
(£22)donmarwarehouse.com

Uncle Vanya

  TNT

 

If you’ve never seen Chekhov’s potentially heart-breaking account of lives going nowhere, then Lindsay Posner’s straightforward production makes a serviceable introduction. But slowed by interminable scene changes and a lack of directorial inspiration, it isn’t destined to be one of the more memorable versions of this often performed play.

It’s a pity as there are a couple of really strong performances fighting against this mundane interpretation of Christopher Hampton’s perfectly acceptable translation. There’s Samuel West as the vodka-swilling Doctor, a passionate environmentalist who falls under the spell of the Professor’s captivating and much younger wife, Yelena, a purposeless beauty whom Anna Friel invests with humanity and frustrated regret. And the always watchable Ken Stott’s rumpled, hopeless Vanya adds bleak comedy to the tragedy of his wasted life and hopeless infatuation.

But overall this is a production constructed by numbers, its poignancy diminished further by a shrill Sonya whose unrequited love for Astrov fails to move.

Vaudeville, Strand WC2R 0NH
Tube | Charing Cross
Until 16 February
£25 - £53.50

Constellations

 

 TNT

 

University Cosmologist Marianne meets Tower Hamlets-based beekeeper Roland – and they get together – or do they? And when do they? And what happens when they do?

Nick Payne’s poignant tease of a play (the third successful transfer in a row from the Royal Court, but this time from the intimate space upstairs) poses a host of questions and provides several answers – and much humour as well as heartache - in a brief 70 minutes. Touching on string theory, quantum mechanics, parallel universes and matters of life and death, this is, in essence, a romantic love story in which the protagonists bump and collide like random molecules, or the helium-filled balloons which hover overhead in Tom Scutt’s celestial design.
As brief scenes are played and replayed with subtle differences and various outcomes, Michael Longhurst’s expertly orchestrated production demands pitch perfect performances. And he gets them – from Sally Hawkins (needy, nervy and articulate) and Rafe Spall (gentle, blokeish, down to earth) as they negotiate the multiverse of this unmissable two-hander.

Duke of York’s, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4BG
Tube | Charing Cross / Leicester Square
Until 5th January
£25.00- £37.50 (plus a few £10 day seats)

The Effect

This is London

Playwright Lucy Prebble isn’t afraid of tackling complex topics and making them both accessible and entertaining. In her smash hit Enron she took on the intricacies of the financial manoeuvres which destroyed the eponymous energy giant. Now, with equal success, she’s turned her attention to even more labyrinthine subjects – love and the human brain.

The Cottesloe has been transformed by designer Miriam Buether into the reassuringly soft-seated lime and red premises of a pharmaceutical company where psychology student Connie and laidback Irish Tristan (he’s done this before, the fee is to finance his travelling) have enrolled as healthy guinea-pigs in a new anti-depressant trial conducted by precise, unsmiling clinical psychiatrist Lorna.

Locked away in the clinic for weeks, and despite the ban on sex and smoking, it’s hardly surprising that a relationship – sparked into life during a flirtatious exchange over urine samples – grows between Connie and Jonjo O’Neill’s raffish Tristan. But are the changes registering on their brain scans the neurological results of the drug, the natural euphoria of new love – or is the attraction itself merely a pharmacologically induced emotion?

Prebble has obviously done her homework, but she displays her knowledge unobtrusively, integrating information with romantic entanglements past and present, and bringing Lorna into conflict with her boss (Tom Goodman-Hill) over their differing ideas of the reality of both life and experimentation.

Rupert Goold directs with his customary flair, eliciting completely convincing performances from the four-strong cast, with Billie Piper vulnerably sincere as Connie and Anastasia Hille’s Lorna hiding her own damage behind a screen of rigorous professionalism in this tender and intelligent co-production between the National and Headlong which provides – how could it? – no easy answers.

 

Cottesloe

People

 TNT

At 78, playwright and author Alan Bennett has become almost as much of an institution as the stately homes of England, the subject of his latest play. Like his smash hit The History Boys, it bemoans the passing of old values, though without quite the same freshness and verve.

But his sense of mischief is still very much intact - the funniest scenes involve the shooting of a porn film, the director (Peter Egan) making full use of the four poster beds which the crumbling South Yorkshire pile of Lady Dorothy Stacpoole has to offer.

But there’s no money to maintain the place – hasn’t been for ages – and former 60s catwalk model Dorothy (Frances de la Tour) and her equally aged companion (Linda Bassett’s deliciously twinkly Iris) haven’t had hot water for a bath for decades.

Something has got to be done and her sister (Selina Cadell’s lesbian archdeacon) is determined to hand the building over to the National Trust – something which both Dorothy and Bennett himself find completely distasteful. In their view the heritage industry has come to mean little more than hoards of strangers traipsing through ancestral homes to inspect the historic residue of ancient chamber pots. The alternatives – flogging off the contents of the attic or selling the whole place to an elitist company with plans to relocate it to more desirable Dorset – aren’t held in much favour either.

Nicholas Hytner’s direction ensures a neatly executed transformation from dusty decay to pristine, tourist friendly sheen, Nicholas Le Prevost enthuses as the man from the National Trust, and Miles Jupp’s auctioneer convinces the old ladies that their future may hinge on the value of the cat’s bowl in Bennett’s often funny but loosely shaped satire.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX
Tube | Waterloo
Currently in rep until at least 2nd April
£12 - £47nationaltheatre.org.uk

Daddy Long Legs

 TNT

Managing to stay just the right side of saccharine, this likeable small-scale 2009 musical arrives in London with the original American cast of two still intact. Based on Jean Webster’s century old epistolary novel of the same name, it exudes period charm, lightly spiced by heroine Jerusha Abbott’s independence of spirit.
A long-term resident at a grim orphanage, her literary talents are spotted by one of the trustees who arranges, anonymously, to pay for her further education - on condition that she writes him a monthly letter (addressed to “Mr John Smith) to which she is to expect no reply.

Of course it doesn’t take long before he becomes increasingly intrigued by his intelligent young protégée and when it transpires that she’s studying with his niece, he swiftly engineers the first of several meetings. Naturally, the course of true love never runs smooth or there’d be no musical.

So wealthy, diffident Jervis (who is in fact tall, dark, handsome and reasonably young - not the doddery octogenarian benefactor of Jerusha’s imagination) finds all sorts of excuses not to reveal his true identity – or declare his feelings - as he gets increasingly jealous of any other potential suitor for her affections.
Lovingly directed and written by John Caird, it never aspires to great dramatic heights. But Paul Gordon’s songs are neat, witty and, with Robert Adelman Hancock’s Jervis adding pleasing harmonies, beautifully delivered by the rather enchanting Megan McGinnis in a shamelessly romantic but rewarding evening.

St James, 21 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA
Tube | Victoria
Until 8th December
£30.00 - £45.00stjamestheatre.co.uk

Berenice

This is London

Josie Rourke’s decision to stage novelist Alan Hollinghurst’s blank verse rendition of Racine’s classically themed 1670 tragedy in the round seems, initially, promising as sand sifts down inexorably from above to the sandpit below. But this is a very static play – long speeches, little action – and the reconfiguration extorts too high a price. For much of the time one can see either the expressions of the person speaking or the reactions of the character addressed, but rarely both at once.

Sheathed in a seductive red gown, Anne-Marie Duff’s Berenice, Queen of Palestine, is radiant in love, joyous that the death of his father has finally left Titus, the new Emperor of Rome, free to marry her. And her anguish is palpable, too, when Stephen Campbell Moore’s Titus acknowledges that the people will never tolerate such a union with a foreign queen.

 

Cue much agonising and soul-searching as the demands of duty conflict with the desires of the heart and Antiochus (Dominic Rowan, unconvincing as a potential suitor in a stiffly formal costume) confesses his own long-standing infatuation with his friend’s royal mistress.

No blood is shed, passions are subjugated to responsibility and, ultimately, despite Duff’s convincing performance, this rather uninvolving production fails to stir the emotions.

Donmar to 24th November

This House

(This is London)

       

The Cottesloe has been transformed into a mini version of the House of Commons for James Graham’s lively and immensely enjoyable new play about the behind the scenes machinations in the world of Westminster.

Seated on opposing green leather benches, the audience is whisked back to 1974 as, to the chagrin of chief whip Humphrey Atkins (Julian Wadham) and his privately educated cronies, the Conservatives topple. Forced to exchange the plush government office for the opposition’s far shabbier accommodation, they’re doubly motivated to pull out all the stops to overturn the Labour party’s tenuous victory in a hung parliament and get back into power.

Graham depicts a cut-throat world where personal life is sacrificed to the demands of the job, MPs are summoned from hospital beds and turfed out of toilets to make up the voting numbers and ancient traditions exist side by side with modern tactics. Well researched, wittily written, and smoothly directed by Jeremy Herrin, it briefly introduces a host of unnamed MPs (most identified only by their constituencies) but keeps the focus predominantly on the efforts of the whips to secure those vital votes.

 

Philip Glenister’s Walter Harrison (a Yorkshireman with more than a few tricks up his strategic sleeve) and a sleek Charles Edwards as his Tory counterpart Bernard Weatherill particularly impress and, with the current run sold out before press night, a welldeserved transfer to the large space of the Olivier has already been scheduled for February next year.

Cottesloe Until 1st December

NSFW

 TNT

As Lucy Kirkwood reminds us right at the end of her short, witty two-pronged attack on the magazine industry, women may have got the vote but they still have a tough fight ahead of them.

NSFW (ie “not safe for work” which refers to internet content one would rather not be caught watching) takes us first into the bloke-ish offices of Doghouse, a tits-and-teeth orientated weekly mag for young men. Here, bright graduate Charlotte (grateful to be in paid employment at last) has been sleeping with older editor Aidan and, ashamed of her real role, telling her women’s group that she’s an estate agent, and Sam’s unintentionally inappropriate choice for their “Local Lovely, 2012” is about to blow up in their faces.

Then it’s a quick switch to the sleek offices of upmarket woman’s magazine Electra where immaculate Miranda (Janie Dee) is intent on erasing every female imperfection before the next issue goes to print.

Simon Godwin’s swift production is very funny indeed, with Henry Lloyd-Hughes upper-class Rupert suffering all sorts of indignities to keep his media job, Sacha Dhawan’s decent Sam trying against the odds not to compromise his moral standards, and Julian Barratt’s deviously persuasive Aidan encouraging his staff to “really live in the spaces between the boobs, yeah?” whilst pouring monetary oil on troubled waters when legal action threatens.

Royal Court Theatre
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube | Sloane Square
Until 24th November
£10 - £28royalcourttheatre.com

All That Fall

 TNT

Originally written for radio, Samuel Beckett’s bleakly comic 1957 drama has apparently never previously been staged. So it was hardly surprising that, with a cast headed by the all too rarely seen Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon, tickets for the initial run at the tiny Jermyn Street theatre sold out as soon as they went on sale.

Good news, then, that there’s now a chance to catch this septuagenarian duo and a fine supporting cast at the larger but still sufficiently intimate Arts.

Microphones hang from the ceiling, the red light goes on and, from chairs lined up on either side of the stage, scripts in hand and dressed in fifties clothing, the actors come forward to “record” their parts to the accompaniment of a vivid soundtrack of rural noises and passing steam trains.

Setting off to meet her husband from the station when he returns from work, Eileen Atkins’ Mrs Rooney, alert but with the dragging feet of the very old, encounters various locals on her short journey. On the way back, it’s just her and Gambon’s blind Rooney, each step difficult and confusing in a metaphor for the closing stages of life itself.

Both are immensely watchable – Gambon reluctant to tell his wife why his train was delayed, his (admittedly rather fluctuating) Irish lilt exploding into angry frustration with his diminishing powers, and Atkins quirkily observant, her face a mournful map of the past – in Trevor Nunn’s 75 minute production.

Arts Theatre
Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB
Tube | Leicester Square
until 24th November
£20-£39.50artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Blackta

 TNT

No matter what the colour of your skin, trying to make a living as an actor isn’t easy and even glowing reviews are no guarantee of hitting the big time. But according to actor and first time playwright Nathaniel Martello-White’s new play it’s even harder if you’re Black – or (as he calls his characters) Brown or Yellow.

David Lan’s inventive production places the protagonists in a two-tier set with most of their interaction taking place in the ground floor waiting room (where Leo Wringer’s resigned Older Black still hasn’t given up hope after decades of recalls and hanging about) and the endless round of seemingly futile auditions held on the upper level, a bare, light-framed box accessed by conveyor belt and stairs.

Here they compete for the elusive green light (the ultimate ticket out of this hellish, dispiriting limbo) by performing childishly demeaning tasks – from blowing up a latex glove to frantically donning layer upon layer of clothing – and hope that this time their non-white, non “floppy head” face will fit.

There’s much to admire - the snappy banter, the energetic performances (Daniel Francis’s Black who had his chance and probably won’t get another, Anthony Welsh’s angry Brown deciding to do his own thing, Javone Prince’s habitually exaggerating Dull Brown and Howard Charles’ impressive Yellow) and the imaginative staging.Enough in fact, to make one forgive the more self-indulgent lapses (a Star Wars style interlude adds little) and a tendency to unnecessary repetition in this otherwise zappy satire.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Extended to 24th November
£10.00 - £15.00youngvic.org

55 Days

 TNT

Howard Brenton’s fact-based new play looks at a crucial moment in history when, in 1648 after years of civil war, the divine right of kings came under question and the ruling monarch, Charles I, found himself on trial for high treason, facing judgement by those he believed to be his inferiors in every way.

Howard Davies’ austere production highlights the perceived difference between the accused king and his subjects, clothing them in dull grey suits in contrast to the flamboyance of Mark Gatiss’s Charles in his elevated heels, flowing locks and period finery. Even as he is moved from castle prison to castle prison, he believes until the last that he is beyond the scope of the law.

Brenton’s drama takes a while to hit its stride - and it probably helps if you’re familiar with the background history. But an imagined meeting between two men, who both believe god is on their side, (the stubbornly intransigent royal and Douglas Henshall’s conflicted Cromwell, his reservations prompting him to try his utmost to avoid the inevitable execution) proves compelling, as do the parliamentary court proceedings.

And Gatiss, with a Scottish-tinged accent and disdainful demeanour holds the traverse stage with an air of isolated superiority.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU
Tube | Swiss Cottage
Until 24th November
£22-£29hampsteadtheatre.com

The River

 TNT

It’s a “day seats only” policy for every performance so you’ll have to be quick off the mark to grab a ticket for Jez Butterworth’s follow up to his smash hit Jerusalem which stars Dominic West and frustratingly, but atmospherically, is ensconced in the smaller upstairs space.

It proves the perfect setting for this low key, often poetic and far more intimate chamber piece in which the characters are no less fascinating, the elusive story that unfolds no less gripping.

In an isolated wood cabin by the river (meticulously designed by Ultz) an unnamed Man persuades his reluctant new girlfriend (also unnamed) to go fishing with him on a pitch-black moonless night when the wild sea trout are running.

He says he loves her, but all is not as it seems and the past keeps resurfacing in unexpected ways.

It would be criminal to give any more away – the truth of this enigmatic, lovingly written production (directed by Ian Rickson) is as slippery as the fish that elude his lure, as evasive as the commitment he craves.

Beautifully acted - by West (rugged and bearded in check fisherman’s shirt, he hints at underlying emotional insecurity but guts a captured trout with practiced ease) and by down-to-earth Miranda Raison and teasing, candlelit Laura Donnelly as the women he courts - this is a short, tantalising treat.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Tube | Sloane Square
Until 17th November
£20, Mondays £10 royalcourttheatre.com

Red Velvet

 TNT

Adrian Lester gives a superb performance in this new play by his wife Lolita Chakrabarti, a fact-inspired account of the appearance of African American actor Ira Aldridge at the Theatre Royal in 1833.

With a collapsed Edmund Kean unable to continue as Othello – and despite concurrent protests against the Abolition of Slavery Act - Aldridge was drafted in to play the title role.

His Desdemona (Charlotte Lucas’s open-minded Ellen Tree, engaged to Kean’s outraged son) welcomes the opportunity to learn from Aldridge’s less restrained, more passionate style, but resentment and prejudice are rife elsewhere – especially among the critics whose racist reviews ensured that, despite success in Europe, he never played in London again.

Told in flashback, Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural production as artistic director moves smoothly from Poland in 1867 (where an older, ailing Aldridge prepares for Lear) to that fatefully impassioned young man’s interpretation in Covent Garden, before returning to the dressing room in Lodz and an unforgettable transformation.

There’s an occasional awkwardness to the writing, but Lester’s layered performance is mesmerising throughout and his confrontation with theatre manager Pierre Laporte (Eugene O’Hare) is played (by both) with a blazing intensity which is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 24th November
£14.00 - £22.00tricycle.co.uk

Image: Tristram Kenton

Loserville

 TNT

Memorable mainly for its energy and a nastily charismatic West End debut from Stewart Clarke, this geeks vs. jocks musical treads well-worn paths with the added dimension of the school computer nerd trying to beat big business in a race to be the first to make computers communicate with each other.

A collaboration between James Bourne (formerly of boyband Busted) and Elliot Davis, it’s all harmless stuff, set in 1971, as the school nerds, hooked on Star Trek and headed by Aaron Sidwell’s bespectacled computer whiz Michael Dork, finally get the girls of their dreams and successfully send the first e-mail.

It’s as undemanding as High School Musical, the tunes predominantly indistinguishable and the plot – with new girl Holly wanting to be admired for her brainiac credentials rather than her deliberately drabbed-down looks - predictable.

But Francis O’Connor’s jokey spiral notebook design adds a clever touch of wit, the choreography is lively and the performances enthusiastic in a production which will probably appeal mainly to the very young rather than the young at heart.

Garrick, Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0HH
Leicester Square tube
Till 2nd March
£10 - £49.50loservillethemusical.com

Michael Clark Company New Work 2012

 TNT

His dancers rarely smile – it’s only in the final moments of his new double bill that Michael Clark’s androgynous octet, their faces as well-disciplined as their bodies, break into happy grins. 

Now fifty, Clark hasn’t lost his playful streak, though. The classically trained dancer who formed his own contemporary dance company in 1984 makes brief appearances in both sections – semaphoring sharply in the first, hidden in a furry dog costume (a pair of round three-legged stools serving as outsize doggy balls) in the second.

Set to a lilting selection of Scritti Polliti’s songs, and performed against the background of an expanding rectangle of changing light, the almost dreamlike, rather delightful first act highlights the dancers’ poise and balance. One descends from above, still as a statute. Another appears to levitate in a seamless lift.

In their matt black tunics and trousers, they flex their torsos and revisit familiar steps from dance class, bare foot and with no barre for support they extend their limbs and flex their feet with controlled precision in perfect synchrony with the pre-recorded soundtrack.

The second act sees a complete change of mood. Skin-tight unitards shade from burnished gold to red as these rather alien creatures discover the potential of their bodies, testing them as though newly inhabited. Then the stage opens up to reveal Jarvis Cocker fronting Relaxed Muscle. The auditorium vibrates, the dancers reappear in stark costumes of black, silver and white and Cocker, his face painted ghoulish Halloween green, bounds forward, dropping into the stalls and threatening to upstage the dancers in a high energy explosion of movement and music.

Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Tube | Barbican tube
Until 27th October
£16.00-£42.00barbican.org.uk

Cabaret

 TNT

With a lecherous grin and clad in black leather lederhosen, Pop Idol Will Young’s Emcee welcomes us to decadent 1930s Berlin and the tawdry Kit Kat club where Sally Bowles sings for her supper – if she can’t find a man to pay for it for her.

Rufus Sewell’s revival of his 2006 production seems less dangerous than it did originally and Michelle Ryan’s Sally (though she sings well enough and has an engaging stage presence) has a wholesomeness which frequently put me more in mind of Mary Poppins than a good time girl who turns to drugs.

More affecting are Linal Haft’s dignified elderly Jewish fruiterer and Sian Phillips’ ageing landlady, blossoming in the short-lived belief that she’s finally found happiness - until the politics of the period place her in an impossible situation.
Javier de Frutos’s raunchily explicit choreography becomes increasingly athletic, the dancers bodies more disposable, as Hitler’s power waxes. And Young, delivering the chilling Tomorrow Belongs to Me with side-parted hair and a puppeteer’s power, proves that he’s more than capable of taking a leading role in a musical.

Savoy, The Strand, WC2R 0ET
Tube | Charing Cross tube
Until January 19th
£35 - £65 (premium seats £85)atgtickets.com/shows/cabaret/savoy-theatre

Our Boys

TNT

Written in 1993 but set in 1984, Jonathan Lewis’s entertaining and compassionate play is based on his own experiences when a painful medical condition affecting the nether regions disrupted his plans to take up his place at Sandhurst.

He ended up spending time in a military hospital instead, sharing a bay with a handful of squaddies and, as a Potential Officer, very much the outsider.

The shadow of the Northern Ireland conflict looms large - Lewis Reeves’ Ian, drooling and barely able to talk, is confined to a wheelchair after sustaining a head wound; Laurence Fox’s apparently on the mend Joe (referred to as the “Battersea Boner”) is a victim of the IRA bombing in Hyde Park whose anger suddenly explodes.

But there’s also Cian Barry’s frustrated Irish Keith, fobbed off with a psychosomatic diagnosis of the unexplained paralysis creeping up his leg, Matthew Lewis’s Mick suffering the indignity of a late circumcision and Arthur Darvill’s career soldier Parry, petrified of what – if anything – the future holds for him if he’s deemed physically unfit to return to the army.

Lewis has done an excellent job of capturing the camaraderie, the banter, the bravado and the vulnerability – as well as the intermittent rage- of these young men who have served their country.

There are a couple of very funny set pieces – including a game of Russian roulette, Deer Hunter style, involving well-shaken cans of beer illicitly smuggled onto the ward.

And although stronger on character and dialogue than on plot, David Grindley’s richly-deserved revival (with Jolyon Coy as Potential Office Menzies trying but failing to be accepted) proves well worth catching.

Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA
Tube | Covent Garden/ Charing Cross
Until 15th December
£20.00-£45.00nimaxtheatres.com

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

It’s returns and day seats only for Simon Stephens’ first class stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel. Stephens has turned the book into a potential play within a play in which

sympathetic teacher Siobhan (an almost angelic Niamh Cusack) encourages 15 year old Christopher Boone (who, it’s strongly implied, has Asperger’s syndrome) to allow his fellow pupils with behaviour problems to convert his diary of private observations into a participatory stage event.

It’s a clever device which takes us into his head and lets us follow his strictly logical thought processes as he sets out, initially, to discover who killed the neighbour’s dog with a garden fork.

With a mind capable of complex mathematics and logical thought, but unable to deviate from the literal, Christopher can neither lie nor engage emotionally or physically, and the strain and confused pain on the face of his mother (Nicola Walker) is heartwrenchingly sad to witness when she watches the tolerant ease with which Siobhan, the professional, manages to relate to her loved but difficult son.

Luke Treadaway gives a remarkable performance as Christopher – one really feels for him as, alone with his pet rat, he heads for London, confronting the random cacophony and bright lights most of us take for granted. No less affecting is Paul Ritter as his short-tempered but devoted dad.

Bunny Christie’s design and Paule Constable lighting (a flashing grid of lights and numbers) mimic the sensory overload which assaults Christopher’s brain, Frantic Assembly orchestrate the fluid movement and Marianne Elliott (co-director of War Horse) brings it all together with her customary flair.

Cottesloe

The Hotel Plays

 TNT

In addition to his best known full length works (which included A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Tennessee Williams also knocked off over 70 one act plays before he choked to death in a New York hotel in 1983. Defibrillator theatre company has teamed up with the Grange Holborn Hotel to put on three of these more experimental pieces, previously unperformed over here and each taking place in a different suite.

Written in 1970, Green Eyes is the most disturbingly powerful and voyeuristic of the trio. A young bride (Clare Latham) is covered in bruises, and her angry serviceman husband, home on leave, dog tags round his neck, wants to know why. Up close and personal, there’s nowhere for the audience to hide and Matt Milne’s simmering rage – at the new wife he should probably never have married and at the actions he’s been ordered to carry out in uniform - fills their small New Orleans hotel room.

In The Travelling Companion, an aging, drug-dependent, homosexual writer (based on Williams himself) finds that his latest pick-up is reluctant to fulfil the implicit terms of his employment until he manoeuvres a way for the young hustler to share the room’s double bed.

Finally – and most amusingly- Sunburst sees a wealthy old spinster (a former actress unable to walk after a sudden illness) turn the tables on a scheming bellhop (Charlie Hollway) and his rather dim-witted gay lover who have their sights set on her diamond ring. Carol Macready has a glint in her eye as the indomitable Miss Sails who isn’t going to give in easily.

It’s a shame the atmosphere is broken between each playlet as we’re guided up the stairs to the next suite, but staging them in a hotel is a neat idea and these little morsels from the pen of a great American playwright whet the appetite for something more substantial.

Grange Holborn Hotel, Southampton Row, London, WC1B 4AR
Tube | Holborn
Until 27th October
£20.00thehotelplays.com

Let it Be

TNT

More work seems to have gone into the pre-show and interval Q & A’s projected on the mock 60s TV screens flanking the stage than on the construction of this so-called musical.

With barely a dozen lines of spoken dialogue during the course of the whole evening (and that’s probably being generous) this tribute show is basically a more-or-less chronological string of Beatles hits with the Fab Four’s sartorial development charted by changes of costume and wigs (some disastrous – the busby-sporting Paul I saw looked, at one point, as though he’d been recruited from sentry duty at Buckingham Palace and hadn’t had time to remove his headgear).

The songs, though, are ageless, and the cast (five selected each performance from a batch of eleven – the extra one, clad in black, shakes his tambourine stashed away in an upstage corner) does a very decent job of demonstrating the talented versatility of the mop-haired Liverpudlians to the younger members of the audience whilst taking the grey-haired oldies for a trip down memory lane as background projections recall pyschedelia, flower power, anti-Vietnam protests and, earlier, the hysteria of the massive Shea Stadium gig in 1965.

And the cringe-making TV adverts of the period are a hoot. Locked firmly in the past, they make a diverting contrast to the way in which the music of John, Paul George and Ringo developed from the early days of “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love “ to the later, more poignant “Eleanor Rigby,” “Hey Jude” and the eponymous “Let it Be.”

Prince of Wales , Coventry Street, W1D 6AS
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
To 19th January 2013
£20- £60LetItBeLondon.com

Bully Boy

TNT

After 20 years, the space where the former Westminster Theatre used to stand is back in business as the St James, a spanking new venue with a studio as well as a steeply raked main house.

Kicking off the inaugural season is broadcaster Sandi Toksvig’s heartfelt two-hander which brings an inarticulate squaddie accused of gross misconduct face to face with an educated Falklands’ veteran, now a major and confined to a wheelchair.

An eight year old boy has been thrown down a well in an unspecified country in the Middle East, and it’s the major’s job to find out exactly what part Private Eddie Clark from Lancashire played in the fatal event. On the surface, they could hardly be more different - but a sudden explosion changes the dynamic of their relationship, exposing the trauma that combat stress can inflict on servicemen of all ages and backgrounds.

Anthony Andrews (all disciplined stiff upper lip until an extended drinking session reveals the damage beneath the immaculate uniform) and Joshua Miles (edgy, agitated, constantly running his fingers through his hair as though trying to erase memories he cannot forget) give powerfully convincing performances.

Patrick Sandford’s short, thoughtful production is a timely reminder that young men who serve their country overseas often bring an internal conflict back home with them – an emotional scarring emphasised by the inclusion of some unsettling statistics.

St James, 21 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA
Tube | Victoria
Until 27th October
£20.00 - £40.00stjamestheatre.co.uk

Three Sisters

 

TNT

 

It took me quite a while to warm to Aussie Benedict Andrews’ unorthodox adaption of Chekhov’s 1901 classic about three sisters longing for the impossible and a return to their beloved Moscow. But against the odds, this defiantly anachronistic production (which he also directs) proved surprisingly moving, especially in the closing moments which leave the three disillusioned young women (first seen as emotionally and physically distant from each other as Johannes Schütz’s stark, raised, tabletop set allowed) clinging to each other for support, alone and stranded on a mound of earth, preparing to face a new, bleak future.

Vanessa Kirby’s blonde, bored Masha, married to a schoolmaster she’s come to despise, drowns her frustration in drink and falls, heavily, for the new commander, the philosophising Vershin (impressive William Houston) who’s tied to an unseen suicidal wife by familial duty. Irina, the youngest, has, at first, a naïve certainty that hard work will make her happy even though Olga, their oldest sister, is already a worn-out spinster after just a few years as a teacher.
Their brother Andrey (Danny Kirrane) slobs around in tracksuit bottoms and mistakenly believes he’ll find happiness with a heavily tattooed local girl and Michael Feast’s fond, drunken old doctor Chebutykin knows right from the start that his life has been wasted,

Different, challenging but ultimately engrossing, this reworking won’t appeal to purists - but then it’s not every production of Chekhov that boasts a remote-controlled helicopter, a foul-mouthed Masha, and the symbolic dismantling of a set which takes over an entire scene.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Extended to 3rd November
£10.00 - £30.00youngvic.org

Hedda Gabler

TNT

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It’s clear right from the start that this Hedda has made a mistake in marrying kind but prosaic scholar George Tesman.  

In a silent prologue, the general’s daughter stares forlornly out of the huge windows of the lovely (and overly expensive) home he thought she wanted, trapped in a glass cage of boredom where nothing pleases her - not least her inordinately proud and puppyish husband (Adrian Scarborough) who’s still tied by the apron strings to his aging Aunt Juliana.

Sheridan Smith’s Hedda indulges in teasing banter with Darrell D’Silva’s Judge Brack (a sleek, silver-haired predator intent on adding her to his conquests) but there’s also a dangerously manipulative creature at work behind her masklike smile.

It’s no surprise to learn that she was a hair-pulling bully at school who tormented Fenella Woolgar’s nervously defiant Thea, who, it transpires, is now unexpectedly linked to Tesman’s debauched but brilliant academic rival.

Faced with a future of relentless tedium, Hedda’s destructive instincts resurface – initially in spiteful insults, then growing into something far more tragic.

Anna Mackmin’s production does full justice to the unexpected humour in Brian Friel’s lively, frequently anachronistic version of Ibsen’s domestic drama and (having scored an award-winning hit in Legally Blonde) Smith, tiny, dissatisfied and with a fatally malevolent streak, proves that she’s every bit as capable of playing 19th century nasty as 21st century nice.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB
Tube | Waterloo
Until 10th November
£11.00- £50.00oldvictheatre.com

Philadelphia, Here I Come!

This is London

Premiered in 1964, Brian Friel’s acclaimed account of a young Irish lad on the eve of his departure for a new life in the United States reveals both a reluctant fondness for - and frustration with - the country of his birth.

25 year old Gar has lived in the fictional village of Ballybeg with his long-widowed father and their old housemaid Madge (excellent Valerie Lilley) since he was a baby. But instead of the close bond one might have expected between father and son, a numbing cloak of silence and predictably repetitive exchanges typify their daily exchanges both at home and at work in their dry -goods store.

Small surprise, then, that Gar converses instead to the voice inside his head – the private Gar (passionate, magnetic Rory Keenan) with his restless, uncensored thoughts. Cleverly, Friel puts both Gars on stage. It’s a rewarding device which both enlivens the proceedings and turns the outwardly restrained Gar in Public (Paul Reid) into a fully three dimensional character as he says goodbye to his drinking pals with their exaggerated tales of nights on the tiles and to the wealthy local girl he might have married if only he’d listened to Gar in Private spurring him on to ask for her hand.

James Hayes exudes a deep-seated mournfulness as his taciturn da, incapable –even during their final meal together – of expressing the paternal affection he undoubtedly feels, and Lyndsey Turner’s accomplished production, with the Gars dressed like identical twins, allows the humour as well as the sadness to shine through in this touching revival.   

Donmar to 22nd September