The Hothouse

 TNT

Director Jamie Lloyd goes all out for laughs in his snappy revival of Harold Pinter’s prescient, Ortonesque black comedy. But he also ensures that the reality of torture isn’t forgotten with a final image that leaves one in no doubt that misplaced authority can be very dangerous indeed.

Though written in 1958, it only received its first production in 1980, and the weaker moments of this early work benefit enormously from crack casting as the head of an unspecified institution finds himself undermined – and with good reason – by his subordinates.

It’s Christmas and one of the numbered (never named) inmates has been found dead whilst another has just given birth.

The always excellent Simon Russell Beale’s ex-colonel Roote, eyes bulging furiously, extracts every ounce of comedy from the script, squirming one moment, blustering the next, and John Simm’s ambitious Gibbs is the epitome of creepily controlled efficiency, each measured word and movement a calculated step in his plan to supplant him.

John Heffernan’s aptly named Lush gets soused in more senses than one, whilst Indira Varma’s provocative, sexually indiscriminate Miss Cutts lures underling Lamb (Harry Melling) into the sacrificial chair to sample the brutal treatments this so-called “rest home” dishes out to its unseen patients.

Trafalgar Studios
Whitehall, SW1A 2DYTube
Tube | Charing Cross
Until 3rd August £10- £54.50thehothousewestend.com www.atgtickets.com/trafalgarstudios

Public Enemy

 TNT

Moving the action to the 1970s, David Harrower’s updated version of Ibsen’s 1882 drama, usually known as An Enemy of the People, takes a rather unsympathetic approach to all concerned.

Even Nick Fletcher’s longhaired Dr Stockmann (the medical officer of a Norwegian town whose economy is heavily reliant on tourism) is hard to warm to, both despite and because of his determination to place the health of the people above everything else, including the welfare of his own family.

It’s obvious from his wife’s demeanour that she’s been through tough times with him before and now, having fallen on his feet in his current position, his decision to go public about his findings threatens to take everything from them again.

He’s discovered that, far from being healthy, the local baths are in fact contaminated, not least by effluent from his father-in-law’s tannery. Though initially supported by the local newspaper, it doesn’t take much for his older brother, the Mayor (a crafty Darrell D’Silva) to make the editor realise the cost of closing the baths and putting things right.

Stockmann’s garishly orange home looks uncomfortably set for conflict right from the start, but Miriam Buether’s long, stretched design comes into its own when Stockmann deliver his impassioned, principled public speech, making us the townsfolk and complicit in his vilification.

And although Richard Jones’ interval-free production (in spite of its contemporary political resonance) doesn’t always hit the mark, it makes it very clear that self-interest rules and it’s not just the water that’s polluted.

 

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ
Tube | Southwark / Waterloo
Until 8th June, £10 - £32.50youngvic.org

Passion Play

 TNT

The days when a cheating spouse had to jog to the nearest public telephone box with a handful of coins in his pocket are long gone, and text messages rather than love letters have become the currency of illicit affairs, but in most other respects Peter Nichols’ 1981 destruction of an apparently fulfilling 25 year marriage has barely dated.

It’s far from the standard account of a relationship under threat, though. What begins as a conventional triangle - a predatory younger woman with a penchant for men old enough to be her father making a blatant play for picture restorer James right under the nose of his wife Eleanor - expands to include the couple’s alter egos, Jim (Oliver Cotton) and Nell (Samantha Bond).

Their clothes may be almost identical to those of their counterparts, but the interior thoughts they voice as they appear on Hildegard Bechtler’s minimalist stage are at odds with the words coming from the mouths of James and Eleanor.

Light-heartedly amusing at first, with Zoe Wanamaker’s singing teacher Eleanor secure in her marriage and the previously faithful James (Owen Teale) squirming with lust, guilt and adulterous confusion at the unexpected attention, David Leveaux’s strongly cast production turns much darker as Annabel Scholey’s unashamedly vampish Kate really gets her claws into him.

Swelling snatches of choral music accompany the affair, and Wanamaker, betrayed, is almost unbearably touching as she starts to crumble in the face of a force neither James - nor Jim - really wants to resist.

Duke of York’s, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4BG
Tube | Charing Cross / Leicester Square
Until 3rd August
£15.00- £57.50 (plus a few £10 day seats)atgtickets.com

Travels With My Aunt

 TNT

Back in 1989, when an octogenarian Graham Greene was still alive and living in Switzerland, Giles Havergal the then co-director of the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow had the quirky notion of adapting his 1969 novel for the stage – but with just four male actors playing all the parts, including the catalytic role of the morally dubious 75 year-old Aunt Augusta who suddenly re-enters the life of retired bank manager Henry Pulling at his mother’s funeral.

From her flat above the Rose and Crown, to Paris, the Orient Express, Istanbul and Paraguay this dull middle-aged man leaves suburbia behind to accompany her on a series of comic adventures as she smuggles gold, ditches her black lover from Sierra Leone, and is reunited with a former Nazi collaborator.

Dressed in identical suits Jonathan Hyde, David Bamber and Iain Mitchell split the part of Henry between them and slip nimbly in and out of various roles – Hyde clutching delicately at his throat to become the unconventional septuagenarian with her colourful history, Bamber wide-eyed as a couple of teenage girls, Mitchell as Agatha’s love interest past and present. And a hard-working Gregory Gudgeon takes charge of props and fills in the gaps – even (and very effectively, too) playing an Irish wolfhound.

Christopher Luscombe directs with a light comic touch, Colin Falconer provides a fusty railway station set and the actors seem to be having as much fun as the audience as Henry comes to realise there’s more to life than cultivating dahlias.

Menier Chocolate Factory , 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU
Tube | London Bridge
Until 29th June
£29 - £35 (MealDeals £35.50 - £39.00)
menierchocolatefactory.com

The Match Box

 TNT

Leanne Best gives a compelling solo performance as Sal, a bereaved single mother living alone on an island off the coast of County Kerry in Frank McGuinness’s demanding 100 minute monologue.

Life hasn’t turned out how this Liverpudlian woman intended. An unplanned teenage pregnancy, unexpected support from her Irish Catholic mother - and a precious little life snuffed out in a random incident when Mary, her 12 year old daughter, is caught in the crossfire of feuding brothers who never admitted what they had done.

Right from the start, there’s something not quite right about Sal’s confidential smile and there’s a gradual emotional unravelling as she plays with a box of matches, lighting one after another and discarding each one with a swift, angry, decisive movement as definitive as the bullet which killed her child as she made her way home from school.

Lia Williams (herself an actress of great subtlety) directs with intense sympathy as Sal, torn between incompatible desires for revenge and forgiveness, inhales the resulting smell of sulphur, isolated in her own private hell of grief in the bleak, barrenness of the empty cottage she now calls home.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR
Tube | Kilburn
Until 1st June
£14.00 - £22.00tricycle.co.uk

Merrily We Roll Along

 TNT

Bittersweet, hauntingly melodic, touching and witty, Maria Friedman’s finely judged production of Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 Broadway flop is unmissable for anyone who wants more from a musical than a cobbled together selection extracted from a band’s back catalogue.

Perfectly cast, gorgeously sung and deftly constructed, this welcome transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory is a joy from beginning to end - or perhaps that should be “ending to beginning” as its downward spiral of a 19 year friendship is told backwards, starting in1976 at a glam LA party hosted by producer of the moment Franklin Shepard and travelling back through the years to his first meeting on a New York rooftop with collaborator Charley Kringos and new neighbour Mary Flynn.

Along their journey there’s acrimonious divorce, selling out of youthful ideals in pursuit of material wealth, a happy marriage and, unforgettably, a clutch of glorious songs which belie Sondheim’s reputation for tuneless melodies.

The plangent opening chords of Not a Day Goes By never fail to send a shiver down my spine and I’m still humming Old Friends and the title number several days later.

Friedman (herself an experienced interpreter of Sondheim’s work) ensures her entire spot-on cast hardly puts a foot wrong – and there’s particularly impressive work from the core trio - Mark Umbers’ good-looking composer Franklin seduced by Broadway diva Gussie and the lure of commercial success, Damian Humbley’s faithfully principled lyricist Charley, and Jenna Russell’s cynical critic Mary, in love with a man she’ll never have and seeking comfort at the bottom of the bottle.

Harold Pinter, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Until July 27
£10.00 -£59.50merrilywestend.com

Ballo

 TNT

Okay, it’s not great art, but having snatched a Best New Opera Olivier Award for La Boheme a couple of years back, Aussie-born director Adam Spreadbury-Maher continues making opera accessible with his latest adaptation for OperaUpClose, an irreverent take on Verdi’s A Masked Ball.

Originally composed in 1858/59 and inspired by the assassination of a Swedish monarch several decades earlier, this primarily comedic version relocates events to the premises of a store called Ballo, an IKEA clone specialising in flatpack furniture.

Manager Riccardo is in love with checkout operator Amelia, who’s married to his best friend, assistant store manager Renato. Grudge-bearing cleaner Tom hates his boss and wants him dead, complaints advisor Ulrica has a side-line in fortune-telling and, instead of the original page, we get male PA Oscar (a “mincing fairy” with a penchant for gold spandex party wear) singing soprano.

Accompanied by a solo pianist, the voices are predominantly clear and confident (though in this small space the singer closest to you sometimes threatens to drown out the rest) and although the adaptation doesn’t always quite fit, this is a fun way to enjoy opera free from the formality (and expense) of conventional interpretations.

Kings Head Theatre, Upper Street, N1 1QN
Tube | Angel
Till May 25
£10- £25.00kingsheadtheatre.com

Rooms- A Rock Romance

 TNT

As well as a touch of folk, a bit of ballad and a dollop of punk Andrew Keates’ production of husband and wife team Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon’s two-handed musical (dating from 2005) also crams a four piece band and a host of instruments onto the Finborough’s tiny stage for its European premiere.

This unlikely Seventies love story between a go-getting middleclass Jewish Glaswegian song-writing singer, with Barbra Streisand ambitions, and a reclusive working class Catholic composer (who prefers to hide away in his bedroom with only his guitar and booze for company) moves between Glasgow, London and New York as it tells, in flashback, the course of their troubled romance and careers over a lively 85 minutes.

Cassidy Janson (with frequent changes of clothes) and Alexis Gerred (who only seems to have one outfit) sing strongly and give their all to this semi-autobiographical offering, and although it won’t win any prizes for originality (it’s very much in the style of Jonathan Larson’s Rent) or depth of characterisation, it’s enjoyable enough whilst it lasts.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED
Tube | Earl’s Court
Until 18thh May
£16 - £18finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Beautiful Thing

 TNT

Although it's twenty years old and gay relationships are now far more open, in many ways former teacher turned playwright Jonathan Harvey’s touching love story has dated hardly at all.

Set on a Thamesmead council estate where the neighbours seem to know everyone else’s business and money is tight, it’s a tender tale of first love between two young boys trying to deal not only with the usual teenage angst but also the risk of discovery and disapproval.

Fifteen year old Jamie (Jake Davies) regularly skives off games, much to the annoyance of his sharp-tongued barmaid mother (Suranne Jones’s single mum Sandra with her well-meaning hippyish boyfriend), but sporty neighbour Ste (Danny-Boy Hatchard) is more of a conventional hunk whose feelings only develop when he ends up sharing Jamie’s bed after the latest in a string of beatings by his abusive father.

The production still needs to relax a little, but director Nikolai Foster’s likeable revival sensitively captures the hesitant tenderness between the two boys.

And the sunny Mama Cass soundtrack promises future happiness for both them and their school-excluded neighbour Leah as they all look forward to finding their place in the world.

Arts Theatre,Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB
Until 25th May, £20- £35.00
Tube | Leicester Squareartstheatrewestend.co.uk

#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Wei Wei

 TNT

On April 3rd 2011, as he was about to board a plane to Hong Kong, Chinese conceptual artist and political activist Ai Weiwei (he of the millions of porcelain Sunflower Seeds exhibited at Tate Modern) was detained at the airport and placed under arrest. For 81 days he was held prisoner, with his captors seemingly as confused as he was as to the precise nature of his crime.

Director James Macdonald stages Howard Brenton’s new play (based on Barnaby Martin’s interviews and apparently sanctioned by the artist himself) into something resembling an art installation – the sides of a large container crate at the centre of a vast whitewashed space crash down to reveal first one, then the second, of the rooms within which Ai Weiwei was incarcerated.

As he sits, cuffed to a chair, closely flanked by pairs of intimidating guards who bellow orders and watch and regulate his every move (even toilet breaks afford no privacy), the repetitive tedium of his enforced confinement oozes out to infect the audience. Effective perhaps, though not always dramatically involving.

But Benedict Wong’s Ai Weiwei convincingly conveys the fear of being beaten by interrogators more used to dealing with murder cases, and the frustration of being accused of being both a swindler and a conman who subverts state power with overpriced symbolic art.

And there are moments of humour, too (in an exchange about the best way to cook noodles and, surprisingly, in the army guards’ complicity in outwitting the surveillance cameras which monitor them too) until Ai Weiwei, released at last, makes a final act of defiant demolition.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU
Tube | Swiss Cottage
Until 18th May
£22-£29
hampsteadtheatre.com

Doktor Glas

 TNT

A one man show delivered in Swedish may not seem a particularly enticing proposition but star of Wallander Krister Henriksson holds the stage with his gripping 90 minute rendition of Hjalmar Soderberg’s epistolary novel which caused a scandal when it was first published in 1905.

Dressed in a plain brown suit, Henriksson is the eponymous physician – as well as, with a shift in voice and posture, the repellent Pastor Gregorius, the latter’s beautiful young wife Helga and a scattering of other minor characters too.

Played out on an almost bare consulting room set (beautifully lit by Linus Fellbom) it’s a tale of lonely infatuation which begins with the altruistic provision of a medical excuse to enable the unhappy (but already adulterous) woman to avoid her husband’s demands for his marital rights and ends in murder.

It’s a pity Henriksson has chosen to be so obviously miked (especially since the vast majority of the audience will no doubt be relying on the surtitles) as he’s a skilled and compelling storyteller, intense, anxious and not without a dash of humour to lighten this sorry, psychologically troubled tale of misguided medical practice.

Wyndhams, Charing Cross Road WC2H 0DA
Tube | Leicester Square
Until 11th May
£15.00- £49.50 (premium seats £65.00) www.drglas.com

The Weir

This Is London

Irish pubs seem to be taking over theatreland at the moment with this finely honed revival of Conor McPherson’s award-winning drama (first seen in 1997) following hard on the heels of the stage version of the Dublin based indie film Once.

This time, though, we’re in a rural bar (a convincingly detailed set by designer Tom Scutt) where the locals are intrigued by the arrival of a new neighbour, an attractive single woman in her thirties who’s being given the guided tour by property developer Finbar (Risteard Cooper), the one who got away, married and made some money, leaving behind his rather resentful old drinking companions.

In the course of 100 or so interval free minutes, these lonely men without women drink too much, try to impress with unnervingly spooky tales of the supernatural and, when it’s time to go home, are reluctant to let her go as though she too, like the ghostly subjects of their stories, will disappear into the night without trace.

Perfectly cast – Brian Cox compelling as aging garage owner Jack who’s never stopped regretting letting a long-ago chance of happiness slip from his grasp, Ardal O’Hanlon painfully awkward as middle-aged Jim who still lives with his ailing mother, Peter McDonald as indecisive publican Brendan, pouring half pints of warm white wine for Dervla Kirwan’s touchingly understated Valerie who has her own devastating story to tell – Josie Rourke’s atmospheric production confirms this lyrical, haunting play as a modern classic and whets the appetite for McPherson’s new work which opens here in June.

Donmar