Louise's Theatre Reviews

The Changeling

2012-02-09T02:34:00.000-08:00

TNT

Pity the poor wardrobe mistress and stage hands left to clear up the mess created by the citizens of Alicante in Joe Hill-Gibbins’ modern dress revival of Middleton and Rowley’s parallel-plotted 1622 tragedy

The wedding vittles are flung, smeared and smothered all over cast and set, nuptials are celebrated in an orgy of jelly and custard, and an unwanted fiancé is drowned in the punchbowl when his betrothed meets someone more to her taste.

Jessica Raine (currently the demure lead in Call the Midwife on TV) gives Beatrice-Joanna a hard-hearted determination – first in the cruel insults she heaps on infatuated manservant De Flores (Daniel Cerqueira) with his red, flaking skin she finds so repulsive, then in her decision to employ him to despatch the suitor chosen for her by her father. What she doesn’t anticipate, however, is that it’s her body, not her money he’ll claim as his reward.

Either meshed in above (in a nod to the subplot set in the local lunatic asylum) or seated in enclosed pews at ground level, we watch as this Jacobean tragedy unfolds – not with restraint, but with more than a touch of black humour as blood flows, virginity is tested and characters emerge from cupboards.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZTube: Southwark / Waterloountil 25th February (£17.50) youngvic.org

Travelling Light

2012-02-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

TNT

Antony Sher relishes every syllable he utters as Jacob, the Jewish timber merchant with a passion to see his family on film in Nicholas Wright’s sentimental, fictionalised account of the birth of motion pictures.

In flashback, Paul Jesson’s immigrant LA mogul (now Maurice Montgomery, then Motl Mendl) relives the moments when, at the dawn of the 20th century, he returned to his Eastern European shtetl, inherited a cinematograph and fell in love with both the possibilities of images that moved and his photogenic assistant.

Events are tied up a little too tidily - and the characters tend to the stereotypic. But Wright comes up with some entertaining explanations of the origins of continuity, cutting and close-ups, and, as black and white images are projected overhead, it’s hard to resist the frustrated enthusiasm of young Motl (Damien Molony) as he discovers the possibilities of an emergent art form and, in true Hollywood fashion, clashes with his backer, Jacob.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX Tube: Waterloo in rep until 2nd June (£12 - £45) nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Trial of Ubu

2012-02-09T02:23:00.000-08:00

TNT

Director Katie Mitchell’s frequently admirable work often feels more like an indulgent experiment than a production - and this latest work is a case in point There are elements to admire in her interpretation of Simon Stephens’ new satire on the inadequacies of the legal system, but it severely strains one’s patience – especially in the opening section, a mercifully abbreviated version of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 Ubu Roi, enacted by foul-mouthed puppets, in which the tyrant despatches judges, bankers and the landed gentry with all the crudity of a seaside Punch and Judy show.

It sets the scene for what is to follow as Lizzie Clachan’s curved set opens out to a booth at an international tribunal where, decades later, a crumbling and briefly seen Ubu is on trial for crimes against humanity. Kate Duchêne and Nikki Amuka-Bird are remarkable as the simultaneous interpreters translating over 400 days of gruelling evidence in near monotones, their faces and movements subtly registering their reactions to the despot’s cruelty. But despite its short running time, this proves an uninvolving evening with little dramatic impact.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU Tube: Swiss Cottage until 25th February ( £22-£29) hampsteadtheatre.com

Constellations

2012-02-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

TNT

Aspects of quantum mechanics and string theory are distilled into an often amusing, increasingly touching sparring match lasting just over an hour in Nick Payne’s playfully clever two-hander. White balloons float above the bare, raised square on which beekeeper Roland and cosmologist Marianne bump into each other, like random molecules.

Every encounter yields a different outcome as their relationship develops – or doesn’t. Some consequences are determined by changing circumstance, others by decisions made in a universe (or parallel universe) where “several outcomes can co-exist simultaneously.” But although many choices can be made along the way, some things remain inevitable.

With its numerous, subtly altered replays Michael Longhurst’s in-the-round production makes considerable demands on the actors and Rafe Spall (down to earth, gentle, straightforward) and Sally Hawkins (nervy, needy, bright) negotiate every nuanced repetition to perfection.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (020 7565 5000) Tube: Sloane Square Until 11th Feb (£20, Mondays £10) royalcourttheatre.com

The Madness of George III

2012-02-06T06:11:00.000-08:00

TNT

David Haig is, quite simply, superb in Christopher Luscombe’s unmissable revival of Alan Bennett’s witty, well-informed 1991 account of a king out of his wits and plagued by a bewildering array of symptoms.

The monarch’s burning skin, blurred vision and extreme logorrhoea confounded the leading physicians of the day and led to a raft of futile treatments (from brutal blistering to violent purges and detailed inspection of the resulting royal stool) as they attempted to restore him to the physical and mental health necessary to maintain political stability.

There’s strong support from Beatie Edney’s devoted Queen Charlotte (his beloved “Mrs King” before illness takes over), Clive Francis’s no-nonsense Lincolnshire clergyman turned doctor, Nicholas Rowe’s sombre Prime Minister Pitt in denial about the king’s condition, and Christopher Keegan’s rotund Prince of Wales with his eye on the throne.

But this is Haig’s evening. Jovially likeable when well, immensely moving in undignified suffering, his is a performance which has “award-winning” written all over it.

Apollo Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7EZ (0844 412 4658) Tube: Piccadilly Circus Until 31st March (£20.00 - £65.00) nimaxtheatres.com

The Sea Plays

2012-02-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

TNT

The damp murkiness of this dank subterranean venue under Waterloo station is perfectly suited to Eugene O’Neill’s trio of early one act plays, (1914-1917) which drew on his own experiences at sea.

Stokers, stripped to the waist, shovel furiously to feed the ship’s red-hot furnace as the audience takes its seats in the main playing area where, in Bound East for Cardiff, a young merchant seaman lies dying, well before his time, after falling during a storm. Then, in In the Zone, a package hidden under a mattress casts wartime suspicion on a member of the crew of the ammunition-carrying S.S. Glencairn. Finally, we’re back on land for The Long Voyage Home in which a Swedish sailor’s good intentions to remain sober are scuppered by a drugged drink forced on him in a squalid dive. His money, his dreams of buying a farm - and possibly his life too -are all at risk as he’s dragged off to serve an unsolicited stint aboard an infamous vessel.

American Kenneth Hoyt’s production is strong on atmosphere, thanks in no small measure to Van Santvoord’s striking design, and O’Neill’s depiction of the miserable limitations of a seafaring existence – physically exhausting and far from family for years at a time – reveals the roots of inspiration for several of his later plays.

The Old Vic Tunnels, Station Approach Rd, SE1 8SW 0844 871 7628 Tube: Waterloo Until 18th February £20 (under 25’s £12) oldvictunnels.com

Execution of Justice

2012-01-24T02:52:00.000-08:00

TNT

Almost thirty years after its original conception, Emily Mann’s verbatim dramatization of the trial of "All American" ex-soldier Dan White finally makes it over here in Joss Bennathan’s involving, deftly orchestrated production.

Aside from being a solder, White was a former fireman and disgruntled city supervisor who shot both Harvey Milk (the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US) and George Moscone, (the liberal mayor of California).

Telling quotes taken from interviews, the media and the street are interwoven with sections of the 1978 trial transcript to paint a picture of a San Francisco establishment – and a police force - more pro the murderer than the innocent victims. A committed cast of twenty (several of whom take on various roles) brings the tense atmosphere in the courtroom to life as Ben Mars’ increasingly frustrated prosecutor goes head to head with a defence lawyer who pleads for a lesser conviction of manslaughter - on the grounds of his client’s depression, diminished responsibility and, infamously, uncharacteristic binge on Twinkies and sugary junk food.

Southwark Playhouse, Shipwright Yard, SE1 2TF (020 7407 0234) Tube: London Bridge Until February 4 (£10-£18.00) southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Our New Girl

2012-01-24T02:48:00.000-08:00

TNT

We’re back in the kitchen again for the second full length production in the Bush’s new space – but this time, in Nancy Harris’s sometimes tense, sometimes funny new play, the family is affluent and middle class. Whilst everything is sparklingly pristine, however, unconditional affection is in short supply.

Previously a high-flying lawyer, heavily pregnant Hazel is now trying to make a go of selling Sicilian olive oil (the house is littered with the stuff) so that she can stay home and look after her 8 year old son Daniel. Meanwhile husband Richard is away much of the time – volunteering his plastic surgery skills in disaster zones overseas when he isn’t catering for the demands of his well-heeled London clientele.

On the surface, everything is perfect. But as Annie, the new nanny from rural Sligo soon realises, this is a deeply unhappy household, with Hazel at her wits end trying to cope with a sullen child and Richard’s lengthy absences.

Charlotte Gwinner’s disconcerting production lays bare the tensions of a modern marriage in which only one of the partners (Mark Bazeley’s hypocritical Richard) is still able to do just what he wants, even if it’s at the expense of the psychological well-being of their troubled son (Jude Willoughby, perfect, shares the role). Denise Gough brings a practical sympathy to the role of the nanny (who isn’t quite as straightforward or well-intentioned as she makes out) and, as Hazel, Kate Fleetwood charts, superbly, the frustrations of a perfectionist who isn’t cut out for domesticity and has lost control of her life.

Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ (020 8743 5050) Tube: Shepherds Bush tubeUntil February 11 (£15-£20) bushtheatre.co.uk

Lovesong

2012-01-24T02:45:00.000-08:00

TNT

Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Shame, The Hour) joins forces with physical theatre company Frantic Assembly to create a tender evocation of the start and end of a fifty year relationship. For half a century Billy and Maggie have lived in the same house, gathering fruit from the peach tree in their garden and watching the starlings flock overhead.

We see them both as their older selves (when Maggie is suffering from a painful illness both know to be terminal) and – sometimes simultaneously, sometimes separately, sometimes overlapping – as their younger counterparts, William and Margaret, in the first decade of a partnership which promised so much. Like their names, their relationship changes subtly with the years. The children she longs for never materialise, the dental practice he sets up so expectantly fails to provide the fulfilment he anticipated, extra marital temptations threaten their fundamentally loving domesticity.

Yet they remain, essentially, the same people and the stylised choreography of directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett melts old (Sam Cox and Siân Phillips) into young (Edward Bennett and Leann Rowe) in a poignant production in which the fluidly expressive body language says every bit as much as the spoken word.

Lyric Hammersmith, King Street, W6 0QL (0871 221 1726) Tube: HammersmithUntil February 4(£12.50-£35) lyric.co.uk

Fog

2012-01-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

TNT

This short, powerfully acted play began life as a drama school audition piece for Toby Wharton, written in collaboration with Tash Fairbanks, a veteran of feminist lesbian theatre and 36 years his senior. Expanded to 80 minutes, and with Wharton convincing as troubled white teenager Fog, it paints a depressing picture of kids in care, and how institutionalised life – be it as an adult in the armed forces or as a fostered child – fails to support its “graduates” in the outside world.

Ten years after leaving his children in care after the death of his wife, Fog’s dad (Victor Gardener’s muscular ex-sergeant, all pent up frustration at the lack of opportunity) is out of the army and hoping to make a new life for himself and his children.

But they’re all damaged goods and it’s too late to make up for the legacy of past neglect.Despite his initial hopes and good intentions, their prospects seem as bleak as their tower block flat and only Fog’s black friend Michael and his protective, aspirational sister look set for a bright future in Ché Walker’s disturbing, street smart production.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) Until January 28 (£11- £15) finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Huis Clos

2012-01-19T05:47:00.000-08:00

TNT

The Donmar’s second season showcasing the work of its Resident Assistant Directors concludes with Paul Hart’s intentionally claustrophobic, in-the-round revival of John Paul Sartre’s existential depiction of hell, written during the Second World War.

Ushered into the stifling atmosphere of a dilapidated and windowless Second Empire drawing room where sleep is impossible, the three main protagonists (all recently deceased) are forced to face up to the uncomfortable truths about the behaviour which has brought them here – not by the conventional instruments of torture they anticipate but by their relentless (and occasionally repetitive) probing of each other’s past actions.

Will Keen’s edgy pacifist journalist, Michelle Fairley’s gruff lesbian postal clerk and Fiona Glascott’s flirtatious socialite reluctantly reveal their secrets, ultimately becoming their own gaolers in this hell of other people from which there is no way out.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632)Tube: Charing CrossUntil January 28 (£17.50-£22) donmarwarehouse.com

The Art of Concealment

2012-01-14T02:23:00.000-08:00

TNT

Told in flashback, Giles Cole’s interesting new play sees an ailing Terence Rattigan (just before his death in 1977) looking back on a life of constant privilege but critical acclaim cut short in the mid 50's when the Angry Young Men erupted onto the Royal Court Stage.

Covertly gay at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, and once referred to as “the prettiest playwright in London”, he is portrayed as extravagant but determinedly aloof, a man who put work first and reputation above the chance of love and happiness.

Dominic Tighe is well cast as the elegant, arrogant younger Rattigan, wallowing in the closet company of his sycophantic coterie but sending his lovers home before morning, and Graham Pountney camps it up as a bitchy director.

And although Cole can’t match Rattigan’s masterly skill as a writer, he does a more than adequate job of probing below the surface of the public face of the self-assured Harrow schoolboy, World War II airman, apparently eligible bachelor and toast of the town who became a disgruntled older man when his looks and success faded.

Jermyn Street Theatre SW1Y 6ST (020 7287 2875) Tube: Piccadilly Circus Untill January 28 (£17) jermynstreettheatre.co.uk

Stones in his Pockets

2012-01-11T05:01:00.000-08:00

TNT

It takes just two actors and some extremely deft switching in tone and posture to populate the rural Irish village where a Hollywood crew is on location filming the latest romantic blockbuster.

Marie Jones’ 1996 hit combines the comic with the tragic as 80 euro a day extras Charlie and Jake are temporarily caught up in the multimillion dollar world of glamorous make-believe before being brought back to earth to face the bleak economic reality of a countryside existence under threat.

Under Indhu Rubasingham’s assured direction Jamie Beamish and Owen McDonnell do an impressive job bringing to life not only the two locals whose lives haven’t gone according to plan, but also (among others) a flirtatious American superstar, an English director, his bossy young assistant and a stooped old-timer who claims he was an extra in The Quiet Man back in the early 50’s.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR. Tube: Kilburn Until Feb 4. (£14-£24) tricycle.co.uk

Joking Apart

2012-01-11T04:57:00.000-08:00

TNT

Everything is perfectly peachy for happily unmarried hosts Richard and Anthea, but their well-meaning attempts to improve the lives of those around them consistently backfire in Alan Ayckbourn’s 1978 social comedy.

Over twelve years and four parties held in their spacious garden, he traces their fortunes (always on the up) and those of their less blessed guests – their next-door neighbours (new vicar Hugh and his mousey, neurotic spouse), Richard’s less able business partner (Finnish Sven with an answer to everything until illness strikes) and his wife Olive, plus lovesick employee Brian who brings along a succession of girlfriends he’s not the least bit interested in.

Holly Best’s realistic set even manages to include a hint of unseen tennis court in this intimate venue, and although the performances could be subtler and deeper, they’re more than adequate to convey the underlying sadness which surrounds the untouchable golden couple as the years take their toll on everyone else.

Union Theatre, Union Street, SE1 0LX Tube: Southwark Until Jan 14 (£16) uniontheatre.biz

Noises Off

2012-01-02T03:53:00.000-08:00

TNT

The laughs just keep on coming in Michael Frayn’s ingeniously constructed comedy which leaves you wondering just how the excellent cast will manage to maintain the frenetic pace – and spot on timing – throughout the run of this 1982 multi-award-winner.

From the disastrous final dress rehearsal of a fictional touring farce “Nothing On” (sabotaged by Celia Imrie’s Dotty fluffing her lines and mislaying her plate of sardines), the set revolves to reveal the calamities unfolding backstage during the same scenes at a matinee a month later.

Finally, they’re repeated, the “right” way round, on closing night - by which time just about everything is going wrong.

Trousers drop, doors jam and the pace of pandemonium rarely slackens in Lindsay Posner’s precisely orchestrated revival.

Karl Johnson’s hard-of-hearing thesp disappears in search of whisky, Jonathan Coy drives the director (Robert Glenister) to distraction fretting about motivation, Jamie Glover, his laces vindictively tied together, bunny hops up - and tumbles down - the stairs, and Janie Dee’s calm, glamorous Belinda stirs up trouble whilst pouring oil on turbulent waters. Great fun.

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

Slava's Showshow

2012-01-02T03:51:00.000-08:00

TNT

This gentle, often magical, show has been around for years, but still succeeds in doing just what creator Slava Polunin set out to do back in 1993 - to turn us all, briefly, into wide-eyed children.

He and his fellow clowns are tender, doleful creations, their bodies hidden in shapeless bright yellow or dull green, their eyes dark sockets, and their outsize shoes perfect for penguin-like shuffles across the stage.

The routines are sometimes tantalisingly brief (a shiny blue ball twirled momentarily on a huge upturned nose), sometimes extended (a touching station farewell with a half-clothed coat stand). Barely a word is spoken.

But what makes this show unforgettable is the way it involves children and adults alike as an enormous gossamer web stretches overhead and seemingly disintegrates to nothing, flurries of snow coat us in white, and young and not so young join in the playful finale as the performers clamber over the seats to the exit.

Royal Festival Hall South Bank Centre Belvedere Road SE1 8XX (0844 847 9910) Tube: Waterloo Until 8th January (£20 - £47.50) slavasnowshow.co.uk

Cheap Flights - Fascinating Aida

2011-12-26T05:52:00.000-08:00

TNT

They’ve said goodbye several times since they were formed in 1983, but Fascinating Aida are back in London and packing in the punters -

thanks not only to the loyal following they’ve built up over the decades but also to their current YouTube sensation which gives the show its name.

With around 8 million hits to date, they’re on to a winner and along with the fans who’ve grown grey over the years, they’re also attracting an appreciative younger audience ready to relish their particular brand of satirical musical cabaret.

Founder member Dillie Keane and Adele Anderson (who joined a year later) will both be 60 next year, but there’s no sign of them mellowing or slowing down. The considerably younger soprano Sarah-Louise Young now completes the anarchic trio and adds a new song of her own praising the benefits of one-night stands.

But Keane and Anderson remain the prime creators and nothing is sacred. From Dignitas to dogging, and from Tesco to surrogate pregnancy (thanks to an obliging orang-utan), their witty lyrics continue to amuse.

Keane still gets into uncomfortable contortions when playing the piano, and the trio go a cappella for the string of short, sharp verses which make up a mock Bulgarian song cycle.

They saved the sparkly gowns for after the interval, but this is intelligent, laugh-out-loud entertainment (with the occasional poignant touch) which is worth seeing no matter what the outfits.

Charing Cross Theatre The Arches Villiers Street WC2N 6NL (020 7907 7075) Until January 7 (£24.50-£29.50) charingcrosstheatre.co.uk

Nutcracker!

2011-12-26T05:49:00.000-08:00

TNT

Classical ballet not for you? Then give Matthew Bourne’s inventive reworking of the seasonal favourite a whirl.

Instead of the usual lavish house party he gives us a grim Dickensian orphanage where the meagre Christmas tree is whisked away – along with the hand-me-down presents – as soon as the visiting governors have departed.

All is not doom and gloom however, as, at midnight, orphan Clara’s Nutcracker doll turns into a handsome (if fickle) bare-chested youth who breaks down the walls and sweeps her off to the white winter wonderland of a frozen lake and the heady pink colour burst of Sweetieland.

Here a trio of athletic gobstoppers, a lascivious cherry-topped knickerbocker glory and a quintet of marshmallow girls make dance – and Tchaikovsky’s music – as fun and as accessible as a Busby Berkeley musical, but with added bite.

Sadler’s Wells Rosebery Avenue EC1R 4TN (0844 412 4300) Tube: Angel Until January 22 (£10 - £60) sadlerswells.com

The Ladykillers

2011-12-23T02:52:00.000-08:00

TNT

An elderly, law-abiding widow threatens to scupper the getaway plans of a gang of small time crooks in Graham Linehan’s stage reworking of the classic 1955 Ealing comedy film.

Masquerading as a string quintet lead by Peter Capaldi’s incompetent mastermind, Ben Miller’s knife-wielding gangster with a pathological fear of old ladies, Stephen Wight’s pill-popping spiv with a furniture polishing fetish, Clive Rowe’s several sandwiches short of a picnic ex-boxer, and (best of all) James Fleet’s cross-dressing conman plot a robbery whilst pretending to practise.

There are some clever touches (model cars carry out the heist climbing up the walls of the revolving set) and a handful of running gags (involving a swivelling blackboard, a ridiculously long scarf, and the sheer incompetence of the criminals) which make for an enjoyable evening’s entertainment of slapstick and farce, in which you never for one moment believe that Marcia Warren’s fanciful Mrs Wilberforce will come to any harm in her lopsided house overlooking Kings Cross.

Gielgud Shaftesbury Avenue W1D 6AR (0844 482 5130) Tube: Piccadilly Circus Until April 14 (£12.50-£55) TheLadyKillers.co.uk

Richard II

2011-12-21T05:31:00.000-08:00

This is London

Artistic director Michael Grandage ends his critically acclaimed reign at the Donmar with Shakespeare’s history play about a king who relinquishes his crown. Both their successors may be worthy, but there the similarity ends. After almost a decade, Grandage leaves with a deservedly enhanced reputation and a string of high profile successes, whilst Richard II is a once powerful monarch who is ultimately left with no choice but to hand over the symbols of his royal office.
Initially seated contemplatively on his throne, framed by the tarnished gilded arches of Richard Kent’s Gothic, incense filled set, Eddie Redmayne’s slight but apparently assured Richard is soon revealed as too twitchy, too fragile and insecure a sovereign to rest easy on the throne. From his position of absolute power, a series of misjudged decision render him vulnerable to the growing strength of his cousin – and future King Henry IV – (Andrew Buchan’s contrastingly solid, misleadingly straightforward Bolingbroke).
Pippa Bennett-Warner is both touching and dignified as his devoted Queen, and, in Grandage’s swift, atmospheric production, there’s strong support from Ron Cook’s Duke of York, putting duty to his country before filial affection, and Michael Hadley’s dying Gaunt delivering the famous ‘sceptred isle’ speech with an intensity which pleads for England.

Donmar

A Christmas Carol

2011-12-21T05:25:00.000-08:00

TNT

At the end of a hectic week of theatregoing, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing yet another adaptation of Charles Dickens’ famous novella, but an evening in the company of Simon Callow proved to be a real pleasure.

With his rich voice, persuasive physical presence and, most of all, his love of Dickens’ work, Callow proves the perfect narrator of this cautionary Christmas tale.

There’s some unnecessarily distracting business with a pile of chairs but, that apart, Tom Cairns’ simple staging (inspired by Dickens’ own performing version) effectively conjures the joyful festivities of the Fezziwigs’ party, the grimy gloom of London streets and the cheerless abode where super stingy Ebenezer Scrooge encounters the ghost of Jacob Marley, his long dead business partner and fellow skinflint.

Callow brings each character to life – not just a curmudgeonly Scrooge begrudgingly granting Bob Cratchit a single day off, but also those who make the briefest of appearances: his kindly sister, the young woman who ditched him in his youth as his love of money grew greater than his affection for her, the little lad sent to buy a massive turkey when, transformed, he grabs his chance for a better future, and cheerful Tiny Tim whose life hangs precariously in the balance until Scrooge sees the error of his penny-pinching ways.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB (020 7907 7092) artstheatrewestend.com Tube: Leicester Square Until 14th Jan (£15-£37.50)

Haunted Child

2011-12-19T02:58:00.000-08:00

TNT

It’s not a ghost that’s upsetting young Thomas in Joe Penhall’s superbly acted three-hander, but the unannounced reappearance of his father, an engineer who vanished without trace.

Now Douglas is back – but he’s a changed man, wild-haired, dishevelled and seduced by a bizarre esoteric cult which (as well as advocating downing a bucketful of salt water to “align the brain waves”) is after his money.

Sophie Okonedo imbues Julie with a troubled warmth as she tries to protect her little boy and win back her husband, a raw Ben Daniels invests Douglas’s extreme mid-life crisis with an evangelical intensity as he loses touch with reality, and Jack Boulter more than holds his own as their vulnerable son fascinated by his dad’s new ways.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS Tube: Sloane Square until 14th Jan (£10-£28) royalcourttheatre.com

Dublin Carol

2011-12-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

TNT

Although it's set on Christmas Eve, Conor McPherson’s short, emotionally intense three-hander (the second offering in the Donmar’s current season showcasing the work of its Resident Assistant Directors) is far from festive.

Meagre decorations and an advent calendar barely soften the soullessness of the undertakers’ parlour where, in a trio of alcohol-fuelled encounters, middle-aged John is forced to confront the damage that his drinking and irresponsible behaviour have wrought over the years. Even now, between slugs of neat whisky, he refuses to admit that he’s still as drink dependent as he was, many years ago, when he cheated on his wife and abandoned his family.

His long estranged daughter (Pauline Hutton’s saddened but hopeful Mary) turns up, like Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past, begging him to visit her terminally ill mother before she dies. In the two framing scenes, John delivers advice and near monologues to his temporary assistant Mark (Rory Keenan), an aimless young man who might just end up going the same way.

In this intimate space, Abbey Wright’s revival captures the gloomy limitations of a life which, but for the kindness of Mark’s mortician uncle, could easily have ended in the gutter and Gary Lydon’s John - rumpled, sweaty and scared of the dying - makes one hope that, for him, the final glimmer of possible redemption proves more than a seasonal illusion.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross till 31st Dec (£17.50 - £22)
donmarwarehouse.com

Pippin

2011-12-19T02:53:00.000-08:00

TNT

Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) and Roger O Hirson’s 1972 musical portrayal of Pippin (son of the Emperor Charlemagne) and his search for an extraordinary life originally ran for years on Broadway, but just a few weeks over here.

In an attempt to make it appeal to a modern London audience, Mitch Sebastian’s revival yanks it into the 21st century and the world of video gaming where Matt Rawle’s charismatic Leading Player guides Harry Hepple’s attractively-voiced, if somewhat anaemic Pippin through the various levels of his journey.

But although it’s blasted by laser lighting and CGI, punctuated by recreations of Bob Fosse’s original sinuously angular choreography, and dressed in Lycra, the production fails to generate much interest in the fate of its laptop-addicted Pippin. Ironically, the highlight of this high concept reworking turns out to be his happy clappy granny (Louise Gold) dishing out words of wisdom and encouraging the audience to sing along in traditional seasonal style.

Menier Chocolate Factory , 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU Tube: London Bridge Until 25th February (£33.50 & Meal Deals available £40.00) menierchocolatefactory.com

The Comedy of Errors

2011-12-12T02:17:00.000-08:00

It’s more a case of “Two Men, Two Guvnors” in this busy interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedy of doubly muddled identity.

Lenny Henry may have been a late starter when it comes to the Bard, but he’s on great form as the increasingly irate and perplexed Antipholus of Syracuse who (despite a West African accent) is continually mistaken for his long lost twin brother when he arrives in Ephesus.

Lucian Msamati is equally good value as his beleaguered and superstitious servant Dromio (who also lost his twin in the same shipwreck) whilst Claudie Blakley and Michelle Terry turn the wife and sister-in-law of Antipholus of Ephesus into teetering, miniskirted Essex girls.

Bunny Christie’s impressive design twists and rotates to conjure a multifaceted and often sleazy city as well as an airborne sea rescue, and Dominic Cooke’s lively production rarely blows off course.

Olivier at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX (020 7452 3000) Tube: Waterloo Until April 1 2012 (£12-£45) nationaltheatre.org.uk

Burlesque

2011-12-12T02:14:00.000-08:00

Blacklisted Johnny Reno may have talent but his career isn’t going anywhere unless he names names in Adam Meggido and Roy Smiles’ new musical, set in early 50’s America during the McCarthyite era.

Whether Jon-Paul Hevey’s Johnny will opt to preserve his moral integrity or to clear his name for the sake of his pregnant fiancée and the future of his comic double act (with Chris Hollands' alcoholic Rags Ryan) is potentially the stuff of serious drama, counterpointed here by its burlesque setting in the failing Palace Theatre.

The plot takes a while to find focus, but with pastiche vaudeville numbers, a lecherous theatre owner, and stripping showgirls filling the tiny stage (plus nifty lyrics which combine entertainment with political comment) this enjoyable show – with just a bit of trimming- deserves a longer life.

Jermyn Street Theatre SW1Y 6ST (020 7287 2875)Tube: Piccadilly Circus Until December 18 (£20)ticketweb.co.uk

Yerma

2011-12-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

TNT

Poor innocent Yerma. Newly wed and isolated in a rural community far from home, she’s eager to consummate her marriage to Juan and anticipating the patter of tiny feet a few months down the line.

But days turn into weeks, weeks to seasons and seasons to years and still hubbie spends more time sleeping with his sheep than he does with his wife, hiding the shameful secret of a youthful unspoken passion for the hunky butcher (Ross Anderson).

Played out on Ruth Sutcliffe’s appropriately arid set of rusty sand and corrugated walls, Anthony Weigh’s new version strips down Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 tragedy to half a dozen characters, cutting out the chorus and leaving it to Alison O’Donnell’s Maria (an earth mother in the making who pees in a bucket and adds a delightfully natural comic note) to convey the social pressure to reproduce.

And as Ty Glaser’s wide-eyed Yerma – not much more than a child herself – becomes increasingly desperate for the baby that would transform her into a woman, Natalie Abrahami’s atmospheric production demands sympathy for this unfulfilled young wife, baffled by her husband’s behaviour and, tragically, unable to change his callous indifference to her emotional needs.

Gate, Pembridge Road W11 3HQ (020 7229 0706) Tube: Notting Hill Gate Until December 17 (£20, matinees £10) gatetheatre.co.uk

Matilda

2011-12-09T06:57:00.000-08:00

TNT

Deliciously adapted from Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s story, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s irresistible production (directed by Matthew Warchus) is a treat for any time of year.

Cleo Demetriou’s Matilda (one of four youngsters sharing the title role) is a cheeky, book-loving, moral-minded prankster who, aged five, reads Dostoevsky for fun and pits her wits and telekinetic powers against Bertie Carvel’s sadistic headmistress (all puffed up pouter pigeon bosom and hairy legs) and her vulgar family (ballroom fanatic mum and Paul Kaye’s dodgy car salesman dad).

Tim Minchin’s music and witty lyrics, Dennis Kelly’s astute script and Peter Darling’s inventively athletic choreography combine with a touch of magic and a clutch of talented kids to ensure a happy ending and a great night out.

Cambridge Theatre, Earlham Street, London, WC2H 9HU
Tube: Covent Garden
Until October 21 2012
£20-£59.50

matildathemusical.com

Orpheus in the Underworld

2011-12-09T06:55:00.001-08:00

Offenbach gets an appropriately disrespectful update from impressionist and recent Strictly Come Dancing competitor Rory Bremner.

He relocates the satirical 1858 operetta from Napoleon III’s Paris to the present day to mock the celebrity life style of the rich, famous and politically powerful. His Eurydice is a brazen WAG, married to a wealthy violinist whose star - and financial fortunes - are on the wane. In an unashamedly ludicrous plot, god of Hades Pluto (in the guise of a personal trainer) tricks her into joining him in hell and reluctant spouse Orpheus (who’s actually very glad to be rid of her) is persuaded by the character of Public Opinion (kitted out in a tabloid newsprint suit) to claim her back and save his reputation.

Simon Holdsworth’s clever set then whisks us to a swanky champagne bar where the gods are hanging out and hung-over and looking for a bit of excitement. Cue a trip to Hades where Brendan Collins’ adulterous Jupiter turns into a fly in fetish gear.

There’s nothing subtle about this co-production between Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera, and some of the dialogue is woefully unfunny. But the lyrics are often witty and, with little more to accompany them than a single piano, an enthusiastic cast certainly makes opera both accessible and fun, with Daire Halpin’s flush-faced, fox-hunting Diana and Ross McInroy’s gross, disgraced banker particularly impressive.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ Tube Southwark / Waterloo Until December 10 (£22.50) youngvic.org

The Kitchen Sink

2011-12-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

TNT

Staged in the round, with the sandy shale of the Withernsea beach encroaching on the kitchen, Tom Wells’ touching new play is the first full length production at the Bush’s new home.

This is a gentle domestic comedy of an ordinary, if quirky, family going about everyday life with all the joys and frustrations that involves.

Mum’s a positive-thinking dinnerlady who likes to experiment with her cooking (courgette muffins, anyone?), dad’s a milkman with a milk float that’s falling apart and a business which (thanks to the local supermarket) is rapidly going the same way. Meanwhile daughter Sophie is working towards her black belt in ju-jitsu and their gay son Billy, an avid Dolly Parton fan, is desperate (or at least he thinks he is) to get into a London art school.

Funds may be limited, and dreams can be dashed at any age, yet there’s a lot of love circulating through this Yorkshire household – and gawky trainee plumber Pete (Andy Rush) adds a touch more. Nothing earth-shattering happens, but Tamara Harvey’s affectionate production is well-acted, often very funny and manages to spring an unexpectedly watery surprise.

Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ Tube Shepherds Bush Until December 17 (£15-£20)
bushtheatre.co.uk

Juno and the Paycock

2011-12-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

TNT

Fortune smiles, briefly, on the impoverished Boyle household in Sean O’Casey’s 1924 tragicomedy of working class life, set during the Irish Civil War when young men are dying for conflicting causes and principles fail to put food on the table.

Designer Bob Crowley’s capacious, rather too elegant Dublin tenement threatens to dwarf the drunken antics of Ciarán Hinds’ strutting, workshy paterfamilias and his feckless sidekick Joxer as his wife (Sinéad Cusack’s worn down Juno) battles to keep her family together. But, in this solid co-production with Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, it’s impossible not to feel for Ronan Raftery’s Johnny, their twice-injured son who’s lost both a limb and his peace of mind.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX Tube: Waterloo Until February 26 (£12-£45)
nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Riots

2011-12-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

TNT

Quick off the mark as ever, the Tricycle continues its tradition of analysing problematic topical issues with a swift two hour investigation into the how and why of the riots which briefly blitzed London and other areas in August.

Triggered by the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, North London, what started as a peaceful vigil of friends and family exploded into a free-for-all of arson and theft.

Footage of the fires and looting form the backdrop against which one father tells how he and his two young sons managed to escape from his flat above CarpetRight before the building was scorched to an empty shell. Comparisons are drawn between MPs who fiddled their expenses and the rampaging opportunists who walked away with televisions and designer trainers.

From the spoken evidence of politicians and policemen, community leaders and culprits, victims and bystanders, writer Gillian Slovo has put together a forceful, even-handed verbatim account of the events leading up to those four days of rampage and unrest, which also gives voice to the various explanations offered by authority figures and those involved.

Anger, frustration, racial and social injustice, cuts and grievances are all mentioned – as is the failure of the police to contain an escalating situation.

There are no definitive answers, but what comes across loud and clear in Nicolas Kent’s fluent production is that the underlying issues need to be addressed before the simmering disaffection kicks off into violence once again.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR Tube: Kilburn Until December 10 (£13) www.tricycle.co.uk

Hamlet

2011-12-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

TNT

You’d think the title role was enough for anyone to tackle, but Michael Sheen, all wild hair and scruffy stubble, steals his father’s greatcoat from the grave and is possessed by his ghost in Ian Rickson’s high-concept production.

Elsinore is a secure psychiatric institution (a prison of buzzers and clanging metal doors, entered via convoluted corridors) where Sally Dexter’s nervy, clingy Gertrude fusses round the man in charge (James Clyde’s sharp-suited Claudius) as he slips her her medication.

Vinette Robinson’s touching Ophelia dispenses pills, not herbs, as she, too, loses track of reality and, although not all the directorial innovations pay off, Sheen’s volatile Hamlet is mesmerizing in his madness.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (Tube: Southwark / Waterloo) Until January 21 (£10 - £29.50) youngvic.org

13

2011-11-22T02:32:00.000-08:00

After a fast-paced first half, Mike Bartlett’s timely and topical new play side-lines most of the characters he’s created in favour of a tripartite debate which leaves them stranded till the closing scenes.

Set in a dystopian London of shared nightmares and widespread dissatisfaction, where Geraldine James’ tough Conservative PM is deciding whether to go to war against Iran, it questions the alternative power of social networking as Trystan Gravelle’s scruffy John, missing presumed dead, returns Christ-like to unite thousands of demonstrators in the belief of belief itself.

Played out on a bleak, black set, Thea Sharrock’s well-acted production (with particularly strong performances from Adam James as a brash lawyer and Danny Webb as an influential atheist academic) ably orchestrates the overlapping early scenes, but ultimately Bartlett’s ambition outstrips his final achievement.

Olivier at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX (020 7452 3000) Tube: Waterloo Until January 8
£12 - £30 as part of the Travelex season nationaltheatre.org.uk

Three Days in May

2011-11-22T02:27:00.000-08:00

TNT

Ben Brown’s historically-based new play goes behind the scenes at Downing Street.

There in May 1940, the coalition War Cabinet (headed by a newly elected Winston Churchill) weighs up the pros and cons of involving Mussolini in brokering a peace settlement with Germany.

France is on the verge of surrender, British troops are stranded at Dunkirk and though both Labour leader (Clement Atlee) and deputy back Churchill’s proposal to fight on alone, his fellow Conservatives (Robert Demeger’s sombre ex-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax) are in favour of appeasement.

The deliberations of these politicians - just five elder statesmen seated round a table and holding the fate of millions in their hands– makes for static theatre, especially as the outcome is history.

But it’s engrossing nonetheless, thanks in no small measure to Warren Clarke’s convincing portrayal of the stubborn, cigar-smoking Churchill, all too aware of the enormous responsibility resting on his shoulders as he subtly out-manoeuvres Jeremy Clyde’s elegant Halifax to decide the future of Europe.

Trafalgar Studios 1, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632) Tube: Charing Cross Until March 3 2012 (£22.50-£45) atgtickets.com/trafalgarstudios

Salt, Root and Roe

2011-11-22T02:24:00.000-08:00

TNT

The Donmar’s second season showcasing the work of its Resident Assistant Directors gets off to a touching start with Tim Price’s sympathetic account of family ties on the coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales.

Iola and Anest are septuagenarian twins, born seconds apart (or, as their long dead father would have it, found in a lobster pot) and, it seems, determined to die together now that Iola’s dementia has reached the point where she no longer wants to live.

In a mix of the poetic and the mundane,whimsical family folklore is interspersed with scenes of the messy practicalities of dealing with a loved one who is losing her mind.

Hamish Pirie’s sensitive, often funny production shows the complex emotions surrounding an all too common situation, here given added poignancy by the closeness of the twins, umbilically bound till the end.

Anna Calder-Marshall (Iola) and Anna Carteret (Anest) shine lovingly as the devoted old ladies, the former delightful on a good day, violently aggressive when things get bad, the latter starting to show occasional ominous signs of deterioration, too.

Imogen Stubbs is also affecting as Anest’s daughter, arriving on a mercy dash from Bristol but beset by problems of her own (including an unseen phobic husband whose neuroses feed her own obsessive compulsive disorder) even before Iola brews her mobile in the teapot.

There’s nice work, too, from Roger Evans as Gareth, local policeman and old friend trying to bring some supportive sanity into a household where things are going from bad to worse.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632) Until December 3 Tube: Charing Cross (£17.50 - £22) atgtickets.com

Inadmissible Evidence

2011-11-17T04:28:00.000-08:00

This is London

If you've ever wondered what might have happened to John Osborne's angry young man, Jimmy Porter, when he reached middle age, look no further than his 1964 portrait of Bill Maitland, a dyspeptic solicitor in meltdown who has no respect for anyone, least of all himself, and relies on a diet of booze, pills and insults to get him through the working day.
It's a monster gift of a part and Douglas Hodge is superb. Raddled, rude, yet still, somehow, able to pull the much younger birds who work at his office (its depressing clutter realistically captured in Soutra Gilmour’s murky design) he relentlessly picks on his junior (Al Weaver), has, with the knowledge of his wife, a devoted longterm mistress and treats the divorcing women he represents with a curt crassness which surely heralds the imminent collapse of his firm.
Osborne sometimes seems to have forgotten that he was writing a play as Maitland's rants become longer and more disconnected. But, as his mediocre life implodes in a nightmare of his own making, and colleagues, family and clients desert him, Hodge's tormented performance holds Jamie Lloyd's well acted production together with a mix of self-loathing, self-pity and vicious wit.
Donmar to 26th Nov

Backbeat

2011-11-14T03:51:00.000-08:00

TNT

There’s much more to Stephen Jeffrey and Iain Softley’s adaptation (of the latter’s 1994 film) than just a string of cover songs.

Set in the early 60’s – when Pete Best was on drums and the Fab Four were still five, rock’n’rolling in a sleazy Hamburg nightclub whilst bedding down in a local cinema.

The play centres on the conflicting triangular relationship between Andrew Knott’s acerbically witty and jealous John Lennon, his art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe (a talented artist but limited bass player) and Astrid Kirchherr, the young German photographer whose love seduced Stu away from the world of music.

Played out against a background of grainy projections, David Leveaux’s production proves unexpectedly involving, with Nick Blood torn and troubled as the Beatle who didn’t live long enough to witness the global phenomenon his Liverpudlian bandmates were destined to become.

Duke of York’s, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4BG (0844 871 7623) Tube: Charing Cross / Leicester Square Until March 24 (£15-£57.50) backbeatlondon.com

Death and the Maiden

2011-11-14T03:48:00.000-08:00

TNT

Thandie Newton’s transfer from screen to stage is reasonably competent rather than revelatory in Argentine-Chilean Ariel Dorfman’s tense, post-Pinochet three-hander from 1991.

Convinced that a random visitor is the Schubert-loving doctor who raped and tortured her 15 years earlier, her damaged, fragile Paulina is determined to extort her own personal revenge.

There’s decent support from Tom Goodman-Hill as her devoted husband (a human rights lawyer desperately trying to persuade her to seek a confession through official channels) and from Anthony Calf’s trussed up Roberto who, even at gunpoint, denies being her former tormentor.

But although Dorfman’s psychological thriller raises important and pertinent issues about the nature and possibility of justice, Jeremy Herrin’s revival, despite being engrossingly ambiguous, rarely plumbs its emotional potential.

Harold Pinter, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN (0844 871 7622) Tube: Piccadilly Circus Until January 21 (£10-£49.50) deathandthemaidentheplay.com

A British Subject

2011-11-14T03:45:00.000-08:00

TNT

Nichola McAuliffe is surprisingly coy about the identity of the protagonists in her well-intentioned docu-drama.

Even the programme doesn’t make clear the extent of her involvement in the campaign to free a British man held on death row in Pakistan. We’re well into her short play before it becomes clear that the Daily Mirror journalist pursuing a story is, in fact, her real life husband Don MacKay and that she’s actually playing herself, his actress wife, on stage.

In 1988, then then 18 year old Mirza Tahir Hussain was accused of killing a taxi driver shortly after he arrived in Pakistan on a visit. His plea of self-defence was over-ruled and, by the time MacKay was sent to interview him, he had spent 18 long years in jail and, not for the first time, the date for his execution under Sharia law had been set.

McAuliffe paints a bleak picture of a young man growing old in prison, contrasting his polite, accepting demeanour with scenes back home between her and her husband. A loving, bickering couple (neither of whose careers are where they want them to be) their day to day concerns are thrown into trivial relief compared with their frustration with tabloid preference for celebrity stories and the reality of Hussain’s situation in Rawalpindi.

With its mix of comic scenes and serious concerns, the changes in tone occasionally jar, but their campaign for justice – which even involved Prince Charles – makes for involving theatre, and McAuliffe (who also plays a range of minor characters), David Rintoul (as a determined MacKay posing as an English teacher from Leeds to gain access) and Kulvinder Ghir’s condemned Hussain (his deliberate movements a result of half a life spent behind bars) act out this now resolved drama with conviction.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB (020 7907 7092) Tube: Leicester Square Until November 26 (£20-£37.50) artstheatrewestend.com

Fanta Orange

2011-11-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

TNT

What might have been an unlikely no-strings fling turns into something much more far-reaching in Sally Woodcock’s first full length play, set in present day Kenya and inspired by a real-life Amnesty International report.

Twenty something researcher Ronnie (Jessica Ellerby) is English, brainy, blonde, beautiful and idealistic, with a private income to boot. Yet for some inexplicable reason she swiftly submits to the persistent chat-up lines of Jay Villiers’ Roger, a 45 year-old white farmer whose attentions she initially repels. No sooner have they fallen into bed together than she’s planning to move in with him and there’s talk of marriage.

But both of them are being somewhat economical with the truth, especially Roger who sees no need to clarify that the baby his house girl, Regina, is expecting is his – not the result of the brutal gang rape by British soldiers which left her HIV-Positive.

The plot twists don’t always convince, but the writing, which raises issues of hypocrisy, prejudice and misguided good intentions, is both lively and sympathetic. The performances are always watchable – with Kehinde Fadipe’s displaced Regina, keeper of secrets and condemned through no fault of her own, speaking to us with dignity from beyond the grave.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED (0844 847 1652) Tube: Earl’s Court Until November 26 (£11- £15) ticketweb.co.uk

The Last of the Duchess

2011-11-07T03:56:00.000-08:00

TNT

Nicholas Wright’s new drama with a genteel bite is the sort of well-written play which sends you rushing to Wikipedia to get the dirt on just about everyone involved.

The belatedly published book on which it’s based was written (in 1980) by Lady Caroline Blackwood, a wealthy alcoholic aristocrat who was married first to the painter Lucian Freud, then to a composer and finally to a poet.

Socialite, muse and author in her own right, she attempted to interview the by then reclusive and widowed Wallis Simpson for a Sunday paper profile. Finding her attempts consistently foiled, Blackwood (Anna Chancellor) then turned her attention to the steely lawyer, Maître Suzanne Blum (herself not much younger than the ailing octogenarian Duchess) who guarded her client with a protective ferocity and viewed the woman responsible for the abdication through decidedly blinkered, rose-tinted glasses.

The play could do with a bit more substance, but to compensate Wright drops in snippets of tantalising biographical detail and Richard Eyre’s elegant production boasts performances to relish.

Sheila Hancock’s snobbish, controlling Blum (who, Blackwood believes, is selling off the Duchess’s jewels for her own gain), John Heffernan’s Michael Bloch (her fey and rather charming assistant) and Angela Thorne’s Diana Mosley – neighbour, former intimate of the exiled royals, and here a hard-of-hearing hoot, despite her obnoxious pro-Nazi sympathies.

Until November 26 Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU ( 020 7722 9301 ) Tube: Swiss Cottage
(£22 - £29) hampsteadtheatre.com

The Pitmen Painters

2011-11-07T03:49:00.000-08:00

TNT

Don’t miss Lee Hall’s much praised, fact-based play about a group of Northumberland miners – later known as the Ashington Group – who, encouraged by their hired academic tutor, discovered unexpected skills at their adult educational classes in the 1930s.

Max Roberts’ delightfully witty and entertaining production (which retains a handful of the original cast members from 2007) is clever, informative and sympathetic to these working men whose lack of formal knowledge proves no barrier to their ability to produce impressive works of art, many of which are simply projected on stage as testament to their talent.

Until January 21 Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA (020 7452 3000) Tube: Covent Garden/ Charing Cross (£20 - £45) nationaltheatre.org.uk

Some Like It Hip Hop

2011-11-07T03:45:00.000-08:00

TNT

Following on from the success of ZooNation’s Into the Hoods, director Kate Prince apparently found initial inspiration in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the Billy Wilder film Some Like it Hot.

But you don’t need to know a thing about either to enjoy her latest offering which departs so drastically from them both that I’m hard pushed to see many similarities.

It’s a bit too long, with a surfeit of minor characters whose moves are more interesting than their roles. And the narrator’s lyrics are often swallowed by the sound.

But who cares when she and co-writer Felix Harrison have come up with an athletic, fast-paced production, complete with original music (by DJ Walde and Josh Cohen) and a mix of contemporary ballet and street choreography which had the entire audience on its feet and dancing by the end of the show?

We get women dressing as men, an estranged daughter, and a city where books are banned along with the sun which the grieving Governor (Duwane Taylor) has hidden away for 15 years since the death of his beloved wife. Women are relegated to the role of drudges subservient to the men and, if they break the macho rules, they’re banished.

Limber-limbed Tommy Franzen’s book-loving nerd Simeon steals the limelight along with Teneisha Bonner and Lizzie Gough as the rebellious females in fake moustaches. But with its flips, spins and body-popping verve, everyone gets a chance to shine in this vibrant, well-drilled dance piece.

Until November 19 Peacock Theatre, Portugal Street WC2A 2HT (0844 412 4322) Tube: Holborn (£12 - £38) sadlerswells.com

Jumpy

2011-11-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

TNT

With a stroppy 15 year old daughter (Bel Powley’s micro-skirted Tilly) and the threat of losing her job, being 50 isn’t proving easy for Tamsin Greig’s affectionately, habitually married Hilary who once protested at Greenham Common.

Playwright April De Angelis captures the contrast between the teens of today and of 30+ years ago, and the different ways in which menopausal women deal with becoming invisible.

Her comic strokes are often broad, but there’s heart as well as humour in Nina Raine’s zappy production in which, surprisingly, the young male characters show themselves to be surprisingly thoughtful when it really counts.

Until November 19 Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (020 7565 5000) Tube: Sloane Square (£12 - £28, Mondays £10) royalcourttheatre.com

A Walk in the Woods

2011-11-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

TNT

Inspired by a real life private walk taken by a pair of Soviet and American arms negotiators in Geneva in 1982, Lee Blessing’s neatly structured two-hander analyses the actual (as opposed to the perceived) function of these Cold War diplomats.

Steven Crossley’s seasoned Botvinnik wears his responsibility lightly, much to the annoyance of his newly promoted US counterpart (a male character in the 80’s premiere, but here played with impatient idealism by Myriam Cyr).

She’s determined to get results whilst he has long acknowledged the inbuilt obsolescence of any agreement their countries might reach in their tactical dance of political game-playing.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR Tube: Kilburn (020 7328 1000) www.tricycle.co.uk Until 12th November (£12 - £22)

Third Floor

2011-11-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

TNT

Even if you’re not sharing the inside of your flat with anyone else, neighbours’ habits can drive you quietly mad – so I had more than a little sympathy with the unnamed first-time buyers in flats 11 and 12 when the unseen occupant of no. 10 repeatedly dumps bin-bags in the communal area of their new canal-side block.

Then there’s the problem of either (a) trying to avoid or (b) catch the eye of the singleton living across the corridor. Just because you’re living in the same building doesn’t automatically mean he/she is going to be your new best friend.

Jason Hall’s slickly directed two-hander neatly catches the frustrations of having total strangers living just a few yards away, but then makes the mistake of taking a slight, but enjoyable, comedy into the realms of a thriller. That said, Craig Gazey (as the persistent and slightly unhinged Hitchcock fan in no.11) and Emily Head (the sleek, rather reserved young professional in no. 12) work well together in a series of short, swift scenes of escalating frustration with the whiffy rubbish cluttering up the hallway.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632) Tube: Charing Cross www.ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until 5th November (£25)

Saved

2011-11-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

TNT

Banned from public performance in the UK in 1965, Edward Bond’s portrayal of aimless social alienation went on to become an international success. In Sean Holmes’ respectful, unfussy but effective revival the infamous baby-stoning scene now unsettles rather than shocks, but the bleak, detached limitation of his working class characters still retains all its power to disturb as Pam (Lia Saville) and her discarded pick-up (Morgan Watkins’ well-meaning but ineffectual Len) head towards the same desolate emotional waste ground which her parents have occupied for years.

Lyric Hammersmith, King Street, W6 0QL (0871 221 1726) www.lyric.co.uk Tube: Hammersmith Until 5th November (£12.50- £30)

Driving Miss Daisy

2011-10-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-25T05:05:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T03:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T03:34:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

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)

The Kitchen

2011-09-29T03:02:00.000-07:00

Based on his own experience, Arnold Wesker's 1959 work place play boasts a cast of 30, a clash of nationalities and a faltering romance as the Tivoli restaurant's staff slave away feeding the diners and lining the boss's pockets.

Tempers blaze, the temperature rises, and although pans sizzle and gas rings flare, Bijan Sheibani's busy, carefully choreographed production captures the repetitive drudgery without quite achieving the sweaty, frenetic frazzle the dialogue demands.

Olivier at The National, South Bank, SE1 9PX Tube: Waterloo nationaltheatre.org.uk Until Nov 9 (£12-£30)

Street Scene

2011-09-29T02:59:00.000-07:00

There are just a few days left to catch the London return of the Opera Group/Young Vic’s revival of this powerful production which garnered an Evening Standard Best Musical Award in 2008.

A fruitful collaboration between German-Jewish immigrant Kurt Weill (music), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Elmer Rice (book) and the black writer and social activist Langston Hughes (lyrics), this gritty 1947 American Opera is structured more like a Broadway musical than conventional opera, with spoken dialogue and sung lyrics given more or less equal weight.

With the temperature soaring and the gossips out in force, this slice of urban life boasts musical styles – arias, jazz, blues - as varied as the ethnicity of the occupants of the brownstone East Side tenement where it is set.

Unhappily married, middle-aged Anna Maurrant sets tongues wagging by seeking the affection from the milkman which her heavy-drinking stagehand husband will not supply. Her daughter, Rose, is pursued by her married boss (who wants to set her up in a place of her own) but is in love with bookish, Jewish Sam (excellent Paul Curievici with a voice I want to hear more of). A single-parent family lives under the constant threat of eviction, a jovial Italian music teacher (his German wife regretfully childless) buys ice-creams all round, and an expectant dad eagerly awaits the birth of his first baby.

The orchestra occupies street level of designer Dick Bird’s multistorey set, whilst good time girl Emma (Charlotte Page) and her latest conquest (John Moabi) kick up their drunken dancing heels on the walkway which crisscrosses the playing area.

Frustratingly, the lyrics aren’t always clear, but with a massive cast of 80 (including a chorus of locals and a batch of enthusiastically playful school kids) and its dramatic climax, this ambitious staging is well worth catching before it sets off on tour.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (0207 922 2922) youngvic.org Tube: Southwark / Waterloo Until: 1st October then on tour until 15th October (£10 - £29.50)

The Absence of Women

2011-09-29T02:57:00.000-07:00

In just 70 minutes Irish playwright Owen McCafferty sums up a lifetime’s regrets as two elderly, alcoholic labourers from Belfast are nudged into private reminiscence by thoughts of mortality and the route to East Finchley’s cemetery.

Exiles in London –and temporarily on the wagon – they each recall, in flashback, how things might have turned out had it not been for a single misjudged choice.

Peter Gowen and Ciaran McIntyre convince completely as this battered, bickering, blustering yet interdependent pair who owe a debt to Beckett but have a vulnerability all their own in Rachel O’Riordan’s poignant production.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR (020 7328 1000) tricycle.co.uk Tube: Kilburn Until: 8th October (£12 - £22)

Decade

2011-09-29T02:49:00.000-07:00

Marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Headlong’s director Rupert Gould integrates contributions from 19 writers in a site-specific commemoration, set in a recreation of the ill-fated Windows on the World and accessed via air-port style security.

Scott Ambler’s urgent choreography and the annual meetings of three widows, their black dresses mantled with ash, link the diverse narratives – some with a strong factual element, some fiction - relating to the legacy of the blue-sky morning when the twin towers crumbled.

A swapped day off and an eyewitness account, widespread suspicion of anyone Muslim and a brick through a shop window, a gift shop employee with a 20 per cent score rate with the emotional young women touring Ground Zero are just some of the vignettes (most of them successful) in an engrossing but respectful memorial.

Commodity Quay, St Katharine Docks, E1W 1AZ (020 7452 3000) Tube: Tower Hill (decadeheadlong.com) Until October 15 (£35)

The Wild Bride

2011-09-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

After a rather disappointing foray into the West End with their adaptation of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, artistic director Emma Rice and her Cornwall based Kneehigh company are happily back on wickedly enchanting form with a characteristically quirky version of the Grimms’ fairytale The Handless Maiden.

A seemingly harmless pact has disastrous consequences for a young girl when her impoverished father promises the Devil that, in exchange for countless riches, he can take whatever he wants from his backyard– realising too late that that’s where his only valuable possession, his beloved daughter, happens to be at the time.

Repelled by her purity, Stuart McLoughlin’s lanky Devil (who towers over his petrified intended) forces her reluctant father to cover her in dirt, then to chop off her hands. But he still can’t overcome the virtue of her soul, and returns again and again to try and claim his prize.

Rice has drawn talent from the world of dance (Etta Murfitt of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures choreographs now with a gentle synchronicity, then with a wild abandon) and circus (Audrey Brisson, who plays the youngest and most bewildered of three versions of the Bride, has worked with Cirque du Soleil as both performer and vocalist) and the result is beguiling and gruesome, desperately sad and upliftingly joyful.

The cast sings, dances and plays Stu Barker’s bluesy music on a host of musical instruments, whilst Stuart Goodwin is on fine comic form as both the distraught dad and a kilt-clad Scottish prince who rescues the wild and handless girl when she steals pears (lightbulbs!) from his orchard. And a special mention, too, for Patrycja Kujawska who lost her feet in Kneehigh’s recently revived The Red Shoes and returns to the company to lose her hands, but (until the Devil intervenes once again) still finds true love.

Lyric Hammersmith, King Street, W6 0QL (0871 221 1726) lyric.co.uk Tube: Hammersmith Until: September 24 (£12.50- £30)

The Tempest

2011-09-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

Ralph Fiennes makes a commandingly resonant and troubled Prospero at the heart of Trevor Nunn’s slowly unfolding, traditional production of Shakespeare’s late play.

Paul Pyant’s atmospheric lighting adds an otherworldly glow to the exiled Duke’s island kingdom where an androgynous, airborne Ariel executes his master’s magic and ethereal music fills the air as Miranda and her schoolboyish Ferdinand fall in love, Nicholas Lyndhurst’s lanky Trinculo gets walloped by Clive Wood’s equally inebriated Stephano, past wrongs are pardoned and even Giles Terera’s raging Caliban (here a black slave) is reconciled.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, SW1Y 4HT (0845 481 1870) Tube: Piccadilly Circus (trh.co.uk) Until October 29 (£11.00-£60.00)

Anna Christie

2011-09-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

The dialogue is often overblown, and the accents are as strong as the central performances, but Rob Ashford's powerful production succeeds in making the melodramatic ring almost true in this rarely revived 1921 Pulitzer prize-winner by Eugene O'Neill.
Set in a dingy waterfront saloon and a sea-going coal barge (convincingly realised in Paul Wills' planked design which tilts and rises steeply to the accompaniment of Adam Cork's evocative shanty soundscape) it features, like several of O'Neill's works, a ‘fallen’ woman, a virile, rough-mannered man and a troubled history. It's been 15 years since Swedish seafarer Chris Christopherson last saw his daughter. Benign but wrong-thinking, he convinced himself that the then 5 year old Anna would be safer staying with her farming Minnesota cousins, blaming that old devil sea (rather than himself) for his failure even to visit.
And Anna, too, has maintained her own fiction – her letters failing to mention that she long ago exchanged the countryside for the whorehouse.
Tough, but with an underlying vulnerability, Ruth Wilson's damaged Anna feels almost healed by the sea when she finally joins her father on his barge, but the tension between David Hayman's weather-beaten Christopherson and shipwrecked Irish stoker Mat Burke forces her to reveal a past which is likely to sabotage the unexpected chance of redemption she so longs for.
All beard and rippling muscle, Jude Law's Burke is compelling from the moment he hauls himself aboard. Drenched, glistening, fearless, he's first enthralled by the unexpected blonde vision, then driven to explosive anger by Anna's revelations. One can understand his disillusioned rage – and her father's refusal to believe that his little girl has strayed from the straight and narrow – but, as O'Neill makes abundantly clear, their own behaviour has been far from virtuous.
Donmar (This is London)

The Faith Machine

2011-09-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Though admirable in several respects, award-winning Alexi Kaye Campbell’s intelligent and witty new play addresses too many heartfelt topics to completely satisfy.

American adman Tom (Kyle Soller – definitely a name to watch) chooses career over conscience and reaps the financial rewards, whilst his idealistic English lover (Hayley Atwell) follows in the footsteps of her principled father (excellent Ian McDiarmid) an Anglican bishop whose championing of gay rights costs him dear before his sardonic ripostes are cruelly curtailed by a series of strokes.

It’s an ambitious, well-acted and thoughtful production – but a little more discipline and a little less contrivance would strengthen this exploration of the relationship between faith and capitalism.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (020 7565 5000) Tube: Sloane Square royalcourttheatre.com Until October 1 (£10-£28)

truth and reconciliation

2011-09-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Despite the large cast of over 20, a sense of emptiness and loss pervades debbie tucker green’s short, powerful and hauntingly poignant new play which she also directs. Seated on hard wooden chairs (some inscribed, tombstone like, with the names of casualties) the audience surrounds the gravel-strewn oval playing space to hear fragmented testimony and the anguish behind it.

Inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in South Africa at the end of Apartheid, it casts its net further afield – embracing Rwanda in 2005, Northern Ireland in 1999, Bosnia in 1996 and Zimbabwe in 2007 as, accompanied by friends and family, the victims come to confront their former aggressors.

A South African woman has spent 22 years wondering what happened to her teenage daughter. No matter how painful, a Tutsi widow desperately needs to know details about her husband’s death at the hands of a Hutu killer. A pair of Serbian ex-soldiers comes face to face with the Bosnian woman one of them impregnated. An antagonistic Northern Irish mother shows no regret for the actions of her son.

Committed performances and sparse, fragmentary writing highlight the emotional complexity inherent in these attempts at restorative justice, leaving questions and stories hanging in the air, and, in the space of 60 minutes, add to the sense of hurt and damage which time has not yet healed.

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (020 7565 5000) Tube: Sloane Square royalcourttheatre.com Until September 24 (£20, Mondays £10)

Bussey Building, 133 Rye Lane, SE15 4ST (020 7565 5000) Rail: Peckham Rye thebusseybuilding.com September 29 - October 15 (Pay what you like on the door or £10 in advance)

Wittenberg

2011-09-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

With more than a nod to Tom Stoppard, American David Davalos’s knowingly entertaining comedy takes us back to Germany in 1517 where, as an already indecisive student, Hamlet (quoting freely from Shakespeare’s text) comes under the conflicting influences of Sean Campion’s charismatic, hedonistic Dr. Faustus, lecturer in philosophy, and his unlikely friend, academic colleague and ideological sparring partner, the ascetic (and constipated) theologian Martin Luther (Andrew Frame).

Davalos’s wittily playful rearrangement of fact, fiction, literature and history is bloated with allusions and references, but its sheer inventiveness – and Christopher Haydon’s lively direction – keep the cleverness buoyantly afloat.

Gate Theatre, Pembridge Road W11 3HQ (020 7229 0706) Tube: Notting Hill Gate gatetheatre.co.uk Until October 1 (£20, matinees £10)

A Dish of Tea With Dr Johnson

2011-09-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

I’d have loved to have seen this likeable Out of Joint production when it was staged earlier this year in the garret of Johnson’s House, the very place where this literary colossus spent 9 years compiling his famous dictionary.

Since then, it’s been on tour and to Edinburgh before settling in for the current short season at the small (though not as cosy) Arts theatre.

There have been more changes since that opening night as, unfortunately, Russell Barr ( who not only co-wrote the script with director Max Stafford-Clark and fellow performer Ian Redford, but also took on the parts of his friend and biographer James Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George III and a host of others) has had to withdraw due to illness, taking with him the (sadly unreplaced) Katie, his rescued Jack Russell who suffered the canine indignity of playing Johnson’s beloved oyster-eating cat, Hodge.

Never mind, there’s still much to enjoy in the current staging (seen at the final preview) in which Luke Griffin bravely steps into Barr’s shoes, donning a wig and period costume - and a pinny, too – and, at short notice, copes admirably with the variety of characters who featured in Johnson’s life.

Adapted from Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson” and “The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, this 80 minute show portrays a man of great intelligence and wit, prone to fits of “melancholy,” kindly, yet with a quick temper.

Redford relishes the role, delivering the lexicographer’s aphorisms in a Staffordshire accent.

At some performances, Trudie Styler, dolled up to the nines in her 18th century dress, makes a late appearance as his last unrequited love, but the addition of a third actor feels somewhat superfluous as Griffin takes on all the other female roles - including Johnson’s blind housekeeper, an intelligent but increasingly tetchy Welshwoman who served as both intellectual companion and tea-maker for this distinguished man of letters.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB (020 7907 7092) Tube: Leicester Square artstheatrewestend.com Until September 24 (£20-£37.50)

South Pacific

2011-09-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

Though unquestionably enjoyable, Bartlett Sher’s substantially recast hit Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical of miscegenation and war time manoeuvres seems to have lost a touch of magic on its transatlantic journey.

There’s seriousness as well as larking about, and praise to Samantha Womack’s engaging Nurse Nellie Forbush, defying a broken toe to “Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.”

But it’s the gorgeous melodies – some eminently hummable (like “Happy Talk” delivered with calculating persuasiveness by Loretta Ables Sayre’s Tonkinese Bloody Mary), others (including “Younger than Springtime”) lush and heartfelt – which, along with the thrilling baritone of Paulo Szot as an exiled French planter with two mixed race children, really make this show.

Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS (020 7638 8891) Tube: Barbican barbican.org.uk Untill October 1 (£15.00 - £85.00)

Bernarda Alba

2011-09-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

Garcia Lorca’s 1936 classic gets a musical makeover from Michael John LaChiusa whose off-Broadway version manages to both substantially cut the running time of the original and adds songs to this hothouse drama.

Confined within the walls of their all-female household (a rampant stallion, virile farm labourers and a faithless lover are spoken of but never seen) the five, black-clad daughters of twice-widowed Bernarda Alba ooze frustration and repressed sexual desire.

Beverley Klein plays the tyrannical matriarch with a bitter force, whilst folk tunes and the stamp and swirl of flamenco intensify the brooding sensation of a tragedy waiting to happen.

Union Theatre, Union Street, SE1 0LX (020 7261 9876) Tube: Southwark uniontheatre.biz Until September 17 (£16)

Lullabies of Broadmoor - A Broadmoor Quartet

2011-09-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

These four hour-long plays set in England’s first criminal lunatic asylum have taken playwright Steven Hennessy almost a decade to compile. With a background working in mental health, dipping into Broadmoor’s historic archive must have proved as irresistible to him as were the strychnine-laced chocolate creams which resulted in the death of a 4 year old boy in 1871.

Christiana Edmunds, the young Brighton woman responsible, is the focus of Venus at Broadmoor (the first of the quartet, though the most recently written) and whilst never condoning her crime, Hennessy sets out the background to her ultimately fatal poisoning spree – an affair with a married doctor – with compassion.

The Demon Box constructs an imaginary meeting between patricidal painter Richard Dadd and former American Civil War surgeon William Chester Minor, whilst The Murder Club brings together the two least sympathetic characters – a jealous actor who stabbed his more successful former benefactor and a conman who killed a prostitute in this very road.

Finally and most intriguingly, Wilderness (the original play, dating from 2002) returns to the case of Chester Minor – the childhood and wartime experiences which shaped him, his repentant relationship with his victim’s widow and, unexpectedly, his substantial contribution to the Oxford English Dictionary during his years spent incarcerated in the comparative comfort of the “Gentleman’s Wing” of the hospital.

Four actors do a sterling job tackling all the roles, with Violet Ryder particularly convincing. And although the writing sometimes tends to the overblown, Hennessy makes it clear that the criminally insane can, on occasion, be victims as well as perpetrators.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED (0844 847 1652) Tube: Earl’s Court ticketweb.co.uk Until October 1 (£10 - £14 for each pair of plays)

Crazy for You

2011-08-31T05:03:00.000-07:00

The gorgeous finale adds a touch of night-time magic to Timothy Sheader’s classy revival of the Gershwin brothers’ 1930 escapist musical froth about NY banker and aspiring hoofer Bobby who falls for a gal (Clare Foster) in a Nevada backwater.

American Sean Palmer exudes easy charm as he sets out to save her theatre by impersonating David Burke’s badger-coiffed impresario, and, with a host of hits – including Someone to Watch Over Me and an irresistibly choreographed I Got Rhythm - this big-hearted show is guaranteed to please.

Open Air Theatre, Inner Circle, Regents Park, NW1 4NR (0844 826 4242) Tube: Baker Street openairtheatre.org Until September 10 (£22.50 - £49.50)

Top Girls

2011-08-31T05:01:00.000-07:00

Nearly 3 decades since he directed its premiere, Max Stafford-Clark successfully revisits Caryl Churchill’s seminal and unconventionally structured play in which Suranne Jones’ career orientated Marlene hosts a surreal dinner party for half a dozen historical women (including a Victorian traveller, a 13th century Japanese concubine turned nun, and a female Pope) all of whom paid a price in a man’s world.

More realistically, we then see her at the employment agency where her tough Thatcherite creed and shoulder pads have propelled her to the top.

And finally, in a confrontation with the sister (Stella Gonet’s disgruntled Joyce) left behind in rural Suffolk to pick up the domestic pieces and raise a backward child, Churchill makes it clear that for many, the power-obsessed 80’s still held little prospect of fulfilment.

Trafalgar Studios 1, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY(0844 871 7632) Tube: Charing Cross ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until October 29 (£35- £45)

Don Giovanni

2011-08-31T04:58:00.000-07:00

Last year, OperaUpClose scooped the Olivier award for Best New Opera from under the noses of the Royal Opera House and English National Opera with Robin Norton-Hale’s small scale, vigorously updated version of Puccini’s La Bohème which briefly moved action and audience into the downstairs bar area for an added touch of realism, affording those who hadn’t managed to get a ticket a tantalising glimpse through the street level window.

Now she’s turned her attention to Mozart’s popular tale of a serial philanderer, changing the immoral 18th century lothario into a ruthless city trader, Johnny, in the cash-rich noughties.

His address book (assiduously updated by his increasingly worried intern) boasts 1003 conquests in London alone, he’s got more money than he knows what to do with and he’s not afraid to kill to get himself out of a tight spot.

Sung in colloquial English and given a lively contemporary slant, in some ways it’s the perfect way to get a handle on a not always accessible (and often pricey) medium.

That said, there are limitations to the strength of the comparatively young voices, and a single piano – even with the addition of a live electronic score incorporating R & B and dubstep – can’t match the emotional power of an orchestra.

But it’s definitely entertaining and decently sung by rotating casts, with (on the night I went) Martin Nelson particularly imposing as a murdered barrister come back from the dead and Paul Carey Jones giving Johnny an arrogant insouciance as he parties from Sloane Square to Soho, seducing as he goes.

Soho Theatre, Dean Street, W1D 3NE (020 7478 0100) Tube: Tottenham Court Road sohotheatre.com Until September 17 (£10.00 - £29.50)

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

2011-08-27T03:40:00.000-07:00

Darkly comic, deeply poignant and acted to perfection, Joe Hill-Gibbins’ knockout revival of Martin McDonagh’s 1996 portrayal of rural Irish stagnation returns (predominantly recast) for another well-deserved season.

Rosaleen Linehan reprises her role as the malevolent mother from hell – emptying her chamber pot down the kitchen sink and doing her utmost to scupper the last chance of her 40 year old daughter Maureen (Derbhle Crotty) to find happiness with Frank Laverty’s gentle Pato, whilst his bored younger brother Ray (Johnny Ward) stomps around in frustration at the limitations of Connemara life.

Cruel, black, bitterly funny – and not to be missed.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (0207 922 2922) Tube: Southwark/Waterloo youngvic.org Untill September 3
(£10 - £29.50)

Ghost the Musical

2011-08-27T03:37:00.000-07:00

Though unlikely to tug at the heartstrings, Bruce Joel Rubin’s musical stage version of his 1990 cinematic tearjerker is well worth seeing - not because of the fairly forgettable songs from Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, but for the juddering choreography and video projections which conjure up the anonymous bustle of New York, for the ingenious body-evaporating illusions and for an outsize performance by Sharon D Clarke as the phoney psychic who turns out to have real powers.

Reluctantly cajoled by the ghost of murdered Wall Street trader Sam into protecting his sculptor girlfriend Molly (and yes, she does throw a pot on stage) Clarke’s a larger than life force and impossible to resist.

Piccadilly Theatre, Denman Street, W1D 7DY (0844 871 7618) Tube: Piccadilly Circus ambassadortickets.com/ghost (£25-£67.50) Until October 13

Parade

2011-08-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

If you like your musicals with a bit of bite, head straight for the Southwark Playhouse to catch Thom Southerland’s revival of this engrossing 1998 award winner by Americans Jason Robert Brown (music and lyrics) and Alfred Uhry (book). Set in Atlanta almost a century ago, it’s based on the real-life case of a 13-year-old factory worker, Mary Phagan, who was found raped and murdered on the premises.

Suspicion fell initially on the black night-watchman, Newt Lee, and then on Leo Frank, the well-educated superintendent. Despite having married a well-connected Southern girl, Jewish New Yorker Frank still remained something of an outsider and the ensuing public reaction to the killing exposed deep seams of anti-Semitism and racism still rife in the Deep South five decades after the end of the Civil War.

The prejudice, the politics and, centrally, the personal relationship between Frank and his loyal wife are all exposed as the case goes to court and beyond.

The production sometimes veers towards the over-busy and the sound balance needs drastic attention (does the traverse staging really necessitate mics?) but the dramatic story and lead performances more than compensate. Alastair Brookshaw’s Frank is all quivering nervousness as he insists on his innocence, whilst Laura Pitt-Pulford raises the emotional stakes as his loyal wife Lucille.

There’s smooth politicking from Mark Inscoe’s prosecutor (who isn’t above a bit of witness coaching to get the result he wants) and David Haydn’s Governor turns out to have a strong moral streak as well as an easy charm.

But once again it’s Terry Doe (just a year out of drama school) who takes the production to another level. Grizzled as the original suspect Newt, show-stopping as the ex-con janitor Jim Conley – he steals an already compelling show every time he appears.

Southwark Playhouse, Shipwright Yard, SE1 2TF (020 7407 0234) Tube: London Bridge southwarkplayhouse.co.uk Until September 17 (£10-£22.50)

A Woman Killed With Kindness

2011-08-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

Updating Thomas Heywood’s 1603 domestic tragedy to 1919, director Katie Mitchell’s visually mesmerising production (the text substantially cut) plays out main and sub plot side by side on a vertically split stage.

Scurrying servants signify the contrasting changes in fortune of adulterous Anne (banished for her infidelity) and virtuous Susan (pimped by her debt-ridden brother) in a stylised interpretation which, with the exception of Gawn Grainger’s tale-telling retainer, places more emphasis on movement than dialogue.

The result is intriguing but sacrifices emotional involvement for artistic concept.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX (020 7452 3000) Tube: Waterloo nationaltheatre.org.uk Until September 11 (£12 - £30.00)

Journey's End

2011-08-16T02:09:00.000-07:00

The atmosphere builds slowly, but the ultimate message of R.C.Sherriff’s 1928 World War 1 drama (which drew on his own experience in the trenches) retains all its power to shock in its depiction of soldiers at the front line served up as cannon fodder by the bigwigs in control.

Too enthusiastically raw to realise what they are about to face, nerves either shot to pieces or (as in the case of James Norton’s Captain Hardy) controlled by numbing whisky, these men – both young and, like Dominic Mafham’s married teacher “Uncle”, not so young – prepare to meet their fate in the service of king and country. David Grindley’s production does them proud.

Duke of York’s, St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4BG (0844 871 7623) Tube: Charing Cross /Leicester Square dukeofyorkstheatre.co.uk Until September 3 (£15.00 - £49.50)

Blue Surge

2011-08-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hooker meets cop and something clicks in the UK premiere of American playwright Rebecca Gilman’s layered, sympathetic 2001 play.

It’s a touching – and often very funny – observation of damaged lives in a small Midwest town, its characters coping the best way they can, but not always living up to the expectations of others who think they could – and should – do better in a supposedly upwardly mobile society.

Teenage masseuse Sandy, with her troubled background, has done the maths and reckons turning tricks beats stacking shelves or working in retail. Policeman Curt has, despite his working class background, snagged a classy artist girlfriend, Beth (whose parents have money, even if she hasn’t). At 38, he still hasn’t made lieutenant - partly because he’s too decent a guy to land his mess-up of a partner Doug (Alexander Guiney) in the shit in order to advance his own career.

Beth wants more from Curt, and he, in turn, wants to help Sandy get off the game. In contrast, Doug’s desires are far more basic when he gets together with her more brazen colleague (Kelly Burke).

Director Ché Walker quietly draws you into the complex relationship which develops between James Hillier’s Curt and Clare Latham’s Sandy. Honourable intentions don’t necessarily lead to happiness and, by continually subverting expectations, Gilman holds one’s attention throughout in yet another fine production at the Finborough.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED (0844 847 1652) Tube: Earl’s Court ticketweb.co.uk Until August 27 (£15 - £18)

Dames at Sea

2011-08-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

Niftily choreographed, confidently sung and altogether rather charming, Kirk Jameson’s sparky revival of Haimsohn, Miller & Wise’s 1966 spoof on lavish 30’s Hollywood musicals works a treat in this tiny space, filling it with hoofing chorines, tap-dancing sailors and a trio of romances.

Add Rosemary Ashe’s temperamental ageing star with a performance as outré as her wig, Gemma Sutton’s small town Ruby with big Broadway ambitions and Catriana Sandison’s worldly Joan – not to mention a bulldozed theatre - and you’re in for a small scale summer treat.

Union Theatre, 204 Union Street, City of London, SE1 0LX (020 7261 9876) Tube: Southwark uniontheatre.biz Until August 20 (£15)

£15

Road Show

2011-08-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

You may never have heard of Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner and his smooth-talking entrepreneur brother Wilson, but Stephen Sondheim has turned their early 20th century rollercoaster rags to riches story into a clever vaudevillian musical which satirises the American Dream.

Michael Jibson (hardworking, gay) and David Bedella (shifty, womanising) shine as the contrasting siblings and, although this isn’t vintage Sondheim, John Doyle’s wittily staged European premiere definitely delivers as the traverse stage is showered with $100 bills as suspect as Wilson’s promises.

Menier Chocolate Factory, 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU (020 7907 7060) Tube: London Bridge menierchocolatefactory.com Until September 17 (£33.50 / Meal Deals £40.00)

Betwixt!

2011-08-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Billed as “a funny musical” Ian McFarlane’s daft bit of escapism takes place in present day New York and an enchanted kingdom which exists in a parallel dimension.

Don’t expect to find anything deep or philosophical, though, in a ludicrous plot which sees blocked writer Bailey embark on a totally ridiculous adventure with camp resting actor Cooper who turns up uninvited and wants to be his new roomie.

With just three days to go before the deadline to deliver his second novel – a fairy tale fantasy for adults – Bailey hasn’t written a word. But there’s more than enough inspiration to be found the other side of a locked door which, Narnia-like, takes him and Cooper into another world.

Steven Webb delivers Cooper’s throwaway lines with aplomb and perfect comic timing, whilst Ashleigh Gray has fun as Miranda – a disembodied head with a heavy Teutonic accent. The rest of the cast throw themselves into various roles - from Mexican musicians to reporters – with gusto.

But despite valiant efforts from Peter Duncan (as a swaggering star in one world and a travelling player and a prince in another) it all wears rather thin and wearisome, its efforts to please as obvious as the writhings of American Ellen Greene’s nymphomaniac Nymph Queen as she tries to seduce both Bailey and the completely disinterested Copper who, in a nice touch, is far more interested in her costume than its contents.

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until September 10 (£25.00)

Lay Me Down Softly

2011-08-07T04:46:00.000-07:00

TNT

Once you’ve adjusted to the accents in Billy Roche’s well-acted, bittersweet, but low-key piece, the interactions between the members of a struggling travelling roadshow in 60’s rural Ireland reveal the dissatisfaction of wrong choices made and past opportunities missed.

Roche, who also directs, creates an insular, dying world in which sparring doesn’t just take place in the boxing ring and from which the young would be well advised to escape.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR (020 7328 1000) Tube: Kilburn tricycle.co.uk Until August 6 (£12 - £22)

Richard III

2011-08-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

With humped back and leg callipered from ankle to groin, Kevin Spacey’s disgruntled Richard holds the audience in the palm of his withered hand in Shakespeare’s depiction of murderous ambition run riot.

His confiding determination is mesmerising as he persuades Haydn Gwynne’s widowed Queen Elizabeth to let him marry her daughter and is cursed by Gemma Jones ragged Queen Margaret in Sam Mendes’ climactic production for the transatlantic Bridge Project.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB (0844 871 7628) Tube: Waterloo Oldvictheatre.com Until September 11 (£10 - £52.50)

Park Avenue Cat

2011-08-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Billed as “a slinky, sexy new comedy to make you purr”, this short attempt at a rom-com from Los Angeles based Frank Strausser is more likely to make you stretch, yawn and long to slink away in search of tastier morsels.

Set in the offices of $200 an hour psychotherapist Nancy (a brisk Tessa Peake-Jones), it begins conventionally enough with 41 year old former model-turned-art-dealer Lily arriving for a couples therapy session – without her other half, Philip.

She says she wants to rescue her relationship, but when her idle, super-rich old flame Dorian turns up instead, she can’t resist the temptation of his luxurious lifestyle.

A well-cast Josefina Gabrielle does a decent job of conveying Lily’s insecurities and uncertainties, but Daniel Weyman and Gray O’Brien overact in an unsuccessful attempt to bring one-dimensional, unsympathetic characters to life.

Awkwardly staged, neither particularly funny nor sufficiently insightful, this has all the hallmarks of a potentially promising but fatally underdeveloped idea.

A programme note says that Strausser is developing it as a feature film – he’s got a helluva of a lot of work to do.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB (020 7907 7092) Tube: Leicester Square lovetheatre.com Until August 20 (£15-£37)

Loyalty

2011-08-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

TNT

As you’d expect from an established journalist, Sarah Helm’s debut play is well written and precisely crafted. What it isn’t, however, is dramatically dynamic - which is a shame as she also just happens to be the wife of Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

So although her “fictionalised memoir” is obviously significantly informed by the knowledge she gleaned during that controversial period, the main thrust of her drama is the relationship between her fictional self, Laura (Maxine Peake, excellent) and partner Nick who (whilst kept busy supporting and advising Patrick Baladi’s preening P.M. Tony) refuses to confirm whether or not he, like her, personally disapproves of the leader’s chosen course of action.

Helm catches well the conflict between the demands of the domestic and the political (red ministerial boxes cover the bed, their unseen children are a constant presence). And it’s rather worrying that Nick (Lloyd Owen) not only allows Laura to listen in and make notes on supposedly secure conversations but is also prone to leaving sensitive documents lying around for the au pair to read. But Helm doesn’t really go far enough and her mix of fact and unspecified fiction frustrates and entertains in equal measure.

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) Tube:Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com Until August 13 (£22-£29)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

2011-08-01T04:10:00.000-07:00

This play, which made Tom Stoppard’s name in the 60’s, could just as easily be entitled “two characters in search of a plot” – and of the meaning of life - as the courtiers, minor players from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, take centre stage.

Whilst the real action unfolds mainly unseen, they wait, Godot-like, for their entrances and exits, passing the time with existential musings and witty word games.

Reuniting two original “History Boys” (Samuel Barnett, an anxious, unworldly Rosencrantz and Jamie Parker’s more solid Guildenstern) Trevor Nunn’s respectful production still impresses, though at times Stoppard’s clever conceit now seems over-contrived and under-edited.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, SW1Y 4HT (0845 481 1870) Tube: Piccadilly Circus trh.co.uk Until August 20 (£17.00-£50.00)

Mirror Teeth

2011-08-01T04:07:00.000-07:00

Nick Gill’s abrasive, absurdist satire sets out to show that you can take bigots out of their own country but the bigotry goes with them wherever they go.

Played without an interval, it follows the Caucasian Jones family – dad James (a smug David Verrey) is an arms dealer, mum Jane a housewife - as they literally move their house from “one of the largest cities of Our Country” to “one of the largest cities of A Middle Eastern Country” where riots prove to be just around the corner.

Life, they agree, is good – though Jane feels threatened every time she sees a non-white face. Then their “eighteen year old sexually active schoolgirl” daughter, Jenny, brings the perceived threat right into their home – Kwesi, her new boyfriend, is black.

At least undergraduate John (Jamie Baughan) tries to show some moral fibre when his sister (Louise Collins’ provocative Jenny) attempts to seduce him, but it’s Kwesi (polite in the face of parental prejudice, rejecting premarital sex on religious grounds) who is actually the most civilized.

The deliberately cartoonish behaviour and mannered speech of the Jones family wears thin, though, and, having made his point, Gill rather loses his way in a production in which style comes to override content.

Finborough Theatre, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED (0844 847 1652) Tube: Earl’s Court finboroughtheatre.co.uk Until July 30 (£11-£15)

The Flying Karamazov Brothers

2011-08-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

As they freely admit, the 4 kilted performers in this likeable but over-stretched show don’t fly, aren’t related and not one is really a Karamazov.

These Americans do, however, have a nifty line in synchronised juggling, a relaxed manner with their audience and a childish enthusiasm for what founder member Paul Magid has been doing since 1973 as they dance in tutus, play musical instruments and, sometimes, drop their Indian clubs.

Vaudeville, Strand WC2R 0NH (0844 412 4663) Tube: Charing Cross fkb.com Until September 10 (£22.50 -£39.50)

Shrek the Musical

2011-07-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

Nigel Lindsay’s portly, green-faced ogre and Amanda Holden’s pretty as a picture Princess Fiona are amiable enough as they bond over a bout of flatulence in this likeable musical stage adaptation of the DreamWorks animation film.
The colourful fairy tale characters and tap-dancing rats are fun, too, though Richard Blackwood’s Donkey misses a trick.
But the real highlights of this entertaining, family-friendly show are the lovesick dragon which flies over the audience with fluttering eye-lashes and a knock-em-dead voice (courtesy of Landi Oshinowo) and Nigel Harman’s vertically challenged Lord Farquaad. Underhand, desperate to wed, and barely half the height of his intended, he gives what must be one of the best comic performances of the year, scuttling furiously across the stage on his knees with fake yellow puppet legs flapping.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Catherine Street, WC2B 5JF (0844 871 7615) Tube: Charing Cross/Covent Garden
ambassadortickets.com Until October 21 (£20.00- £65.00)

For Once

2011-07-20T03:44:00.000-07:00

Slipping into the smaller downstairs space for a regrettably short run, visiting company Pentabus has come up with a poignant little gem in the immaculately crafted shape of Tim Price’s 80 minute three-hander.
Something serious has happened to disturb the equilibrium in the household of forty something Gordon, his schoolteacher wife April and their 17 year old son Sid. Price introduces us to his characters with a humorous touch which makes them instantly likeable. And, for them, personally, it could have been so much worse – Sid has lost an eye in a car accident, but his three closest friends lost their lives.
Addressed directly to the audience, their overlapping monologues reveal their current thoughts as well as recalling the events which preceded the crash. It soon becomes clear that, despite surface appearances, fracture lines were already forming before the tragic incident pushed them into a temporary unity.
Geraldine Alexander is extraordinary as April, sipping wine from a large glass as she goes about the mundane business of ironing her husband’s shirts, her face a myriad of expressions, whilst Patrick Driver is no less convincing as Gordon, a fundamentally decent man who finds himself irresistibly pulled elsewhere. And, completing the impressive trio (all trapped in different ways by the limitations of their small rural town) is Jonathan Smith’s Sid, as protective of his mother as she is of him, and trying to make sense of what has happened to him, his family and to the pointlessly bereaved parents of three teenage lads.

Michael Frayn Space at Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) Tube: Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com Until July 30 (£12)

In the Penal Colony

2011-07-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

Palestinian theatre company ShiberHur returns to the Young Vic with an intense version (lasting just over an hour) of Kafka’s disconcerting short story, written in 1914 but only published, in revised form, 5 years later. It’s a piece which creates all sorts of staging difficulties, focussing as it does on an elaborate execution machine which, over a period of hours and to the accompaniment of sepulchral music, inscribes the condemned man’s offense on his naked body. Designer Ashraf Hanna flanks his (not always convincing) three tier device with sunflowers on one side and chairs stacked high on the other - under the auspices of the previous unseen commander of this unspecified military zone, the execution of a prisoner used to draw crowds of spectators, there to observe the consequences of misdemeanour.

Now, under a new regime, only the Executioner wants to maintain this system. As he prepares to carry out the sentence that he himself has imposed on Taher Najib’s shackled, emaciated Prisoner, a Visitor arrives to watch and assess.

Performed in Arabic, with English surtitles, Amir Nizar Zuabi’s production raises questions about justice, torture and the situation in Palestine itself. And the acting is faultless, with Amer Hlehel fanatically proud of the elaborate instrument of torture he is about to use on a man who did nothing more serious than fall asleep on duty, and Makram Khoury calm but troubled as the Visitor who finds himself drawn into a barbaric procedure.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ (0207 922 2922) Tube: Southwark/Waterloo youngvic.org Until July 23 (£10)

Betrayal

2011-07-16T03:46:00.000-07:00

****

Harold Pinter’s 1978 account of a faded adulterous affair, told more or less backwards, is both touching and intimate in Ian Rickson’s sensitive production.

At its heart is Kristin Scott Thomas, growing younger gracefully as Emma, gallery-running wife of publisher Robert (Ben Miles, conveying the pent-up potential for violence beneath a cultured exterior) and, for seven years, mistress of literary agent Jerry, her husband’s oldest – and married – friend.

Douglas Henshall’s Jerry struggles to convey the subtleties of his character, but this detracts only marginally from an emotionally acute 90 minutes (based on Pinter’s own adulterous liaison) which travels back through layers of deception – from stilted small talk to the first portentous kiss nine years earlier.

Comedy, Panton Street, SW1Y 4DN (0844 871 7622) Tube: Piccadilly Circus betrayaltheplay.com Until August 20 (£20 - £49.50)

Being Shakespeare

2011-07-16T03:40:00.000-07:00

***

Simon Callow has a personality big enough to fill any stage. He’s been acting for almost four decades, directed plays and a movie, written several books and already performed one man shows about Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens.

But this often most flamboyant of actors is in comparatively subdued, though still enthusiastic, form as he tackles William Shakespeare, following him from cradle to grave in Shakespearian scholar Jonathan Bate’s well-structured combination of biographical detail, speculation and extracts from the Bard’s works.

Keeping to the timeline of the famous Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It, Callow entertains us with snippets of information about Shakespeare’s parents (his father was a glovemaker), his childhood, early marriage, career and death, interspersed with illustrative examples from his texts.

Slipping in and out of character, Callow gives us not only a schoolboy William but also an ageing Falstaff, not only Romeo but Juliet too. Callow is a fine actor and a well-informed guide with obvious fondness for his subject, and although it can’t - and doesn’t - penetrate too deeply into the psyche of the famous playwright himself, this simply staged evening has something to offer both the Shakespeare aficionado and the tentative novice.

Trafalgar Studios 1, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0844 871 7632) Tube: Charing Cross ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios beingshakespeare.com Until 23rd July (£20- £45)

Danger: Memory!

2011-07-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

****

Running at well under an hour each, these two short one act plays from the pen of master playwright Arthur Miller are immaculately performed and infused with poignancy.

In the first - “I Can’t Remember Anything” - real-life husband and wife David Burke and Anna-Calder Marshall are retired, arthritic engineer Leo (his brain struggling to complete the calculations he used to find so simple) and sad, whisky-downing, widowed Leonora, whose failing memory is even more wayward.

They’re the last survivors of what was once an extensive group of partying, politically principled New England friends. Now even their shared memories are at variance, their tempers short and their bodies weak. Yet when they dance together, briefly, one glimpses momentarily the essence of their former vibrant selves.

“Clara” focuses on the immediate aftermath of the murder of a young woman as a time-conscious detective (Roger Sloman) tries to prise details of her ex-offender boyfriend from her traumatised father. The bereaved parent (a compelling Rolf Saxon) either cannot or will not divulge his identity to the increasingly impatient policeman, fearful, at some deep level, that by doing so he will compromise his own liberal principles.

Written in 1987 when Miller was already in his 70’s, both plays demonstrate all the sensitivity of an older man’s experience of the tricks memory plays on us, and Ed Viney’s absorbing production proves another feather in the cap of this intimate theatre

Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST (020 7287 2875) Tube: Piccadilly Circus jermynstreettheatre.co.uk Until 23rd July £18