The Faith Machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)