Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Trafalgar Studios on 29 December 2016

This stripped down version of Hamlet, adapted and directed by Kelly Hunter, emphasises the Ibsen-like domestic turmoil of the play in an intense 90-minute focus on the disasters falling on the Danish Royal house and the family of Polonius. It features Mark Arends as Hamlet, Finlay Cormack as Laertes, Francesca Zoutewelle as Ophelia, Tom Mannion as Claudius, Katy Stephens as Gertrude and David Fielder as Polonius and the Gravedigger.

All sorts of drastic decisions have to be made to create such a short version of what can be an extremely long play while ensuring that it will still make sense and not appear as an evisceration. In this, Kelly Hunter is almost entirely successful, dispensing with all the minor characters but retaining, with sometimes breathtaking aplomb, the major strands of the story so far as they relate to the two families under observation. 

The Red Barn

by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 20 December 2016

This play is based on a novel called La Main by Georges Simenon. Set in the eastern US, it concerns Donald Dodd (Mark Strong) and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis), and their encounter with his friend Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey) and his wife Mona (Elizabeth Debicki). It is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Paule Constable.

The play opens with a snowstorm in which the four characters are attempting to reach the Dodds' home after a party, their car having broken down. By the time three of them are safely inside, Ray has been lost in the storm; later his body is found even though Donald went out again to look for him. It transpires that he may not have spent long looking, though he was gone for hours, as Ingrid discovers many cigarette butts in the barn, which Donald burns - he had sat there for some hours.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar King's Cross Theatre on 15 December 2016

Harriet Walter plays Prospero in this production directed by Phyllida Lloyd and designed by Chloe Lamford. It forms the third of a trilogy (the first two being Julius Caesar and Henry IV, a conflation of Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays) with all-female casts, purported to be performed by the inmates of a women's prison. The first two plays were performed in the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 and 2015, and have been revived at the temporary King's Cross site in conjunction with The Tempest. I have not revisited the two earlier productions, although it would have been instructive to see them all as there are intriguing correspondences between the Shakespearean parts played and the characters of the prisoners that the actors have developed in consultation with the Prison Partnership Project.

Mary Stuart

by Friedrich Schiller adapted by Robert Icke

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 14 December 2016

This production is directed by Robert Ice with set and costume designs by Hildegard Bechtler. Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams take the parts of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England, selecting which part to play in each performance on the toss of a coin. (On days with matinee performances, the matinee allocation is reversed for the evening performance). Vincent Franklin is Burleigh (Elizabeth's wily political adviser), John Light is Leicester (his emotional allegiance apparently torn between the two queens), and Rudi Dharmalingam is Mortimer (a convert to Catholicism and Mary's cause).

The play is not historically accurate - it famously includes a personal confrontation between Mary and Elizabeth which never took place - but it embodies serious political and philosophical themes in intensely powerful and bitterly opposed personalities. Can the agents of one state imprison the head of another state? Can the prisoner, a queen, be justly tried by a court which by definition cannot be 'of her peers'? How much is the sovereignty of a governing queen constrained by the wishes of her people and her councillors? How do the courtiers survive the minefield of their queen's imperious will? All this and more is on display here.

One Night in Miami ...

by Kemp Powers

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 17 November 2016

The play, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and designed by Robert Jones, features Sope Dirisu as Cassius Clay, David Ajala as Jim Brown, Arinzé Kene as Sam Cooke, Francois Battiste as Malcom X, Dwane Walcott as Kareem and Josh Williams as Jamaal. It takes place in a hotel in Miami on the evening after Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight title from Sonny Liston and on the eve of his announcement that he would henceforth be known as Muhammed Ali.

The hotel room is bland and anonymous, and rendered more austere though needing to accommodate the teetotal and rather prim Malcolm X; it is clearly far from the celebrations associated with the fight and Clay's victory - but as Malcolm points out Clay would not be welcome as a guest in the more upmarket Miami hotels no matter what he had just achieved. 

No Man's Land

by Harold Pinter

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 16 November 2016

Sean Matthias directs this revival of Pinter's 1975 play with Ian McKellan as Spooner, Patrick Stewart as Hirst, Owen Teale as Briggs and Damien Molony as Foster; the set is designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis.

Hirst has invited Spooner - a shambling down-at-heels writer - back to his house in Hampstead, an eerily grand affair featuring a room with a curved wall of rather cold blue panels, with a well-stocked bar. Hirst, also apparently a writer, seems bemused by Spooner's meandering speeches, though some of his responses are extremely sharp, even if only by way of a look of mock alarm or distaste. Each drinks heavily as Spooner attempts to discover the nature of the household and Hirst gives little away; suddenly two retainers appear, the brutish Briggs and the cocky and almost camp Foster. They might be dangerous for Spooner - they might even have some hold over Hirst: they are blankly watchful when Hirst collapses and crawls out of the room.

Blue Heart

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 14 November 2016

Blue Heart, directed by David Mercatali, consists of two short plays, Heart's Desire and Blue Kettle. Each is daringly experimental, yet each reveals the tensions and deceptions lurking behind ordinary and plausible situations.

In Heart's Desire Brian (Andy de la Tour), his wife Alice (Amelda Brown), his (or her) sister Maisie (Amanda Boxer) and his son Lewis (Alex Beckett) are awaiting the return of his daughter Susy (Mona Goodwin) from Australia. The scene plays out the final few minutes before the door rings to herald Susy's arrival, but disconcertingly the dialogue begins again and again with variations that reveal often wildly divergent outcomes. Sometimes there are outbursts of anger and rage, sometimes not, but the calmer versions are only gradually developed after the outbursts cause a blackout and a return to the beginning, or perhaps to the last point at which civility was apparent. It is a terrific ensemble piece as the three older adults in particular have to repeat themselves meticulously over twenty times. Occasionally, to add further technical difficulty, the familiar parts of the scene are speeded up as if fast-forwarding a tape (the play dates from 1997) - movements are jerky and the dialogue is reduced to odd words.

Travesties

by Tom Stoppard

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 12 November 2016

This revival of Stoppard's coruscating 1974 play inspired by the coincidental presence of James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Zurich in 1917 is directed by Patrick Marber and features Tom Hollander as Henry Carr, Amy Morgan as his sister Gwendolen, Tim Wallers as his servant Bennett, Peter McDonald as Joyce, Clare Foster as his amanuensis Cecily, Forbes Masson as Lenin, Sarah Quist as his wife Nadya, and Freddie Fox as Tzara.

Joyce really was the business manager of an amateur theatrical group which presented The Importance of Being Earnest; Carr (a member of the British diplomatic staff in Zurich) really did take part in the play and there was a squabble between them about finances. From this situation, together with the fact that Lenin departed from Zurich in late 1917 with the connivance of Germany to make his way to the Russia to instigate the Bolshevik revolution, and the fact that Tristan Tzara, the notorious Dadaist, was also in the city, Stoppard constructed a play in which Carr reminisces about his interactions with all three men - though it is clear that his memories are highly questionable.

The Drover's Wife

by Leah Purcell

seen at the Belvoir Theatre (Sydney) on 5 October 2016

Taking Henry Lawson's classic short story The Drover's Wife as a starting point, Leah Purcell has fashioned a powerful and moving story set in the Australian bush - "an Australian western for the stage" as she puts it. She plays the wife herself, with Mark Coles Smith as Yadaka,Will McDonald as Danny, and Benedict Hardie and Tony Cogin taking other parts. The production is directed by Leticia Caceres.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 21 September 2016

Shakespeare's Globe and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse have collaborated on this production, which is directed by Nick Bagnall (from Liverpool E&P) and designed by Katie Sykes. The play, one of Shakespeare's earliest, has been imaginatively re-set in the 1960s, with many clever musical pastiches and a great deal of energetic climbing of ladders.

The traditional house style of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse has been subverted here, understandably so as the production is to go on tour to venues both inside and out. Though the candles remain lit, there is plenty of electric light as well, not least because there is also a stage within the stage that is crammed with the musical instruments required by a pop band; this is brightly lit and could easily belong in an edition of Top of the Pops. Characters ascend and descend on either side of this box, and the Playhouse's own balcony gives on to its top, constantly tempting the cast to leap over the railing which usually protects the musicians from falling.

The 60s setting works well with the general tone of the play, in which young people are finding their way often quite selfishly, and certainly kicking against the restraints of the older generation. The uneasy tone (uneasy at least for modern sensibilities), in which male friendship is at first betrayed and at the end appears to trump romantic longings, is somewhat mitigated by the heady sense of experiment and possibility associated with the swinging sixties. This is exemplified in the clever device whereby the band of outlaws which Valentine joins when he is exiled from Milan becomes The Outlaws, a raucous rock band.

The whole concept is ably supported by the cast, many of whom are both strong actors and proficient musicians. Though the juxtaposition of modern music and Shakespearean verse can be a woeful mistake, in this case there is no problem: the verse speaking is fine and the sentiments of the songs complement the action. The two gentlemen Valentine (Guy Hughes) and Proteus (Dharmesh Patel) are passionate young men, though the former is rather proper and the latter suddenly unscrupulous.

The only false note came from Garry Cooper playing the older parts (the two disobliging fathers). His exaggerated style of villainy, full of strange tics and jerks, seemed out of place amid the more natural exuberance of the younger players. Amber James had the rather thankless task of playing Thurio, the spurned suitor of Sylvia - a shallow character made more flat by being cross-dressed. She was far more impressive as Julia's maid Lucetta in an early scene of the play.

Leah Brotherhood (Julia) and Aruhan Galieva (Sylvia) were the objects of affection, all too often seen as little more than that. However each character has a mind of her own, leading to a touching scene in which Sylvia speaks of her pity for Julia all unaware that the young messenger she addresses is actually Julia in disguise.

Comedy is provided by the two servants Speed and Launce. The director Nick Bagnall stood in for Speed capably with script in hand where necessary. Launce was excellently played by Charlotte Mills pulling off the very difficult trick of talking to a dog much of the time, represented by the otherwise non-speaking musician in the band (Fred Thomas). This dextrous patter is of the sort that most dates Shakespeare's clowns, but here it was very well managed.

It is fascinating how many themes in this play are developed in later plays with more power and subtlety. They are, of course, the stock themes of romantic comedy - disguise, thwarted love, mistaken identity, and so forth - but even here the darker side is revealed in some of the twists. It is something of a shock when Valentine offers to give up Sylvia to cement his friendship with Proteus, even though Sylvia clearly prefers Valentine. Proteus just as abruptly dismisses the offer and turns back to Julia whom he has moments before felled with a blow (admittedly thinking 'him' to be Sebastian). In fact, in the final scene both young women are merely observers of the spectacle of the men (including Sylvia's father) arranging matters to suit themselves. In the play they have no comment to make, but in this production the pardoning of the outlaws is replaced by a song of angry pain by Julia and Sylvia who rail at their loneliness. The play hardly suffers from this reminder that all may not be well. 

Jess and Joe Forever

by Zoe Cooper

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 19 September 2016

Short new plays are evidently in vogue, and this lasts only about 75 minutes. However, the sense of unfolding lives, and of a privileged immersion in the characters' experiences, shines through this work, thanks to its intriguing structure and to the skill of the two young actors playing Jess (Nicola Coughlan) and Joe (Rhys Isaac-Jones). Directed by Derek Bond in a set designed by James Perkins, they guide us through the developing friendship of the two youngsters who first meet when they are nine, and continue meeting each summer when Jess comes to Norfolk on holiday; Joe meanwhile works on his father's farm.

Zoe Cooper has taken what could have been another cliched coming of age story and imbued it with unexpected and delightful perkiness, while cleverly wrong-footing the audience at a number of points. We are not only seeing the story of these meetings, but also, it turns out, seeing Joe and Jess in the process of telling their story, and at times disagreeing on how it should be told. There are mysteries involved, and occasionally scenes with other characters impersonated by one or other of the friends as needed. Details claimed to be extraneous to what Jess and Joe want to tell us do 'seep in' as Jess remarks; some of these details are very funny (especially Jess's smart explanations of why she has to have a holiday in Norfolk before getting to the real holiday in Italy where she can have quality time with her parents). Other developments are more troubling; there is a deep reserve about Joe which is far more poignant than just the easy stereotype of a slow talking farmer's boy.

Where Jess talks brightly (sometimes too brightly and too quickly), with all the self assurance of the articulate, well-off, but essentially rather lonely child, Joe evokes quiet humour from his sharp observations even as he is aware that he is more plain-spoken. But Rhys Isaac-Jones also shows us the moodiness of a boy at the bottom of his local pecking order, and the ease with which he can be hurt by a stray comment. It is a marvellous performance acting as a measured counterpoint to the usually more ebullient Nicola Coughlan. She is rarely at a loss for words. so that when they do fail her, it is all the more significant.

This is a promising start to the careers of the playwright and the cast who have embodied her work so successfully.

The Plough and the Stars

by Sean O'Casey

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 25 August 2016

Jeremy Herrin and Howard Davies have co-directed this revival of Sean O'Casey's play set in 1915 and 1916, marking the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. The set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, shows us a crumbling tenement in Dublin - first the Clitheroe's flat, then a nearby pub, then the outside of the tenement, and finally the attic flat. A clever use of the revolve reveals the general seediness of the area, and, later, the dangers arising from the street fighting of the uprising.

The Deep Blue Sea

by Terrence Rattigan

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 15 August 2016

Carrie Cracknell directs Helen McCrory as Hester Collyer, Tom Burke as Freddie Page and Peter Sullivan as William Collyer in this fine revival of Rattigan's 1952 play. 

Tom Scutt's stage design reveals both the living room and the kitchen of the flat where 'Mr and Mrs Page' live, with the bedroom hinted at when necessary through a gauze screen. Behind the door to the flat we can glimpse the common stairway to other flats, and indeed the main walls of the storey above are also revealed instead of implying an implausibly high ceiling. This clever use of the space allows other residents to come and go (mainly one presumes leaving for work in the morning and returning in the evening), reminding us that we are being shown just one crisis in one flat amongst thousands.

Young Chekhov

Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull reversioned by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 13 August 2016

Anton Chekhov's three early plays - the first of which was not performed in his lifetime - were presented last year at the Chichester Festival as a unified insight into the dramatist's development. Most of the original cast have been reassembled to present the plays in London this summer. The three plays were directed by Jonathan Kent and the sets - variations on Russian country estates - were designed by Tom Pye.

In many ways the best way to appreciate this ambitious undertaking is to see all three plays on the same day. Patterns and themes emerge - there are references to Hamlet in each play; there is a significant part for a doctor in each play, though the three doctors are utterly different in style and personality; there is an idealistic but frustrated young man in each, colliding with an idealistic and frustrated young woman with painful consequences; surrounding the main characters are an assortment of hangers-on, older but not necessarily wiser relatives who are part of a wider and often stifling society. But the fascination of all this is that though the situations may appear similar in bald summary, the tone of each play, and the way the characters interact (or fail to interact) in each, makes for a wide and rich spectrum of human behaviour. Chekhov is revealed to be the master of social comedy and romantic melodrama just as much as his more well-known bittersweet examination of thwarted idealism and crippling ennui. 

Faith Healer

by Brian Friel

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 1 August 2016

Directed by Lyndsey Turner and designed by Es Devlin, this production features Stephen Dillane as Frank, the faith healer, Gina McKee as his partner Grace and Ron Cook as Teddy his manager.

The play consists of four monologues given by Frank, Grace, Freddy then Frank again, each actor alone on the stage in a different setting, each recounting directly to the audience some episodes from Frank's itinerant journeys around Wales, Scotland and Ireland as a faith healer who occasionally (but not often) effects cures.

It is an extraordinary theatrical device, removing the usual situation in which characters on stage can interact with one another, and instead relying on extended reminiscence to reveal both character and narrative. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the accounts of the three speakers differ so markedly in some details that it is impossible to know exactly what happened; or rather, it becomes necessary for the audience to include these contradictions in its assessment of the characters and their experiences. Although the general shape of the 'story' seems relatively clear, the different accounts of it are impossible to reconcile with absolute finality.

Richard III

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the Almeida Theatre on 21 July 2016

Rupert Goold directs Ralph Fiennes as the eponymous king, with Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Margaret, Finbar Lynch as Buckingham and Aislín McGuckin as Queen Elizabeth. The set is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

The play opens with a forensic excavation of a pit or grave, taking place while the audience enters. This is, it transpires, the famous exhumation of King Richard's remains from under a car park in Leicester in 2012. As the news broadcast of the DNA confirmation of the skeleton's identity fades, the play begins. The grave remains constantly visible, usually through a perspex floor; but it is occasionally used as the receptacle for executed or murdered victims of the king, before he himself is finally killed in it during the battle at Bosworth Field.

The Threepenny Opera

by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 24 June 2016

The production is a new adaptation by Simon Stephens directed by Rufus Norris and designed by Vicki Mortimer. It features Rory Kinnear as Macheath, Nick Holder as Peachum, Haydn Gwynne as Mrs Peachum, Rosalie Craig as Polly Peachum and Sharon Small as Jenny Driver.

Brecht's technique of alienating the audience from their conventional expectations of 'an evening at the theatre' is marvellously emphasised in this production, with the vast Olivier stage exposed in all its glory, flats and flights of stairs wheeled about by the cast, the flats often faced away from the front of the stage (showing all their struts) and just as frequently revealed to be utterly flimsy as various characters burst through them to enter a scene. Occasionally the revolve is cranked onto service by means of a giant lever wheeled to the front of the stage and laboriously 'worked' by an actor; on only one occasion is the drum used to bring a pre-constructed set up to stage level.

This is Living

by Liam Borrett

seen at the Trafalgar Studios Two on 6 June 2016

Yet another short intense play, although this production is lengthened by having an interval. Liam Borrett directs Michael Socha as Michael and Tamia Kari as Alice in his own play about coming to terms with devastating loss. Sarah Beaton designed the extraordinary set; the acting space is a sheet of black plastic raised on a small dais, and covered with a thin film of water.

Michael is cradling Alice at the beginning, water seeping into their clothes. Alice is totally unresponsive at first, then chokes out a mouthful of water and behaves as if awaking after a party binge. Flashbacks show the couple's courtship and the strain of Alice's miscarriage, then their delight in having a little girl. But all the while, the question is pressing - is Michael dreaming all this? How will he allow himself to let Alice go? Or are we also witnessing Alice's gradual acceptance of the situation she must confront?

The Fantasticks

book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt

seen at the Jerry Orbach Theater, New York, on 29 May 2016

This musical, famously performed continuously off-Broadway for 42 years from 1960, has recently been revived, directed by the author Tom Jones with Shavey Brown as the Narrator (El Gallo), Andrew Polec as the Boy (Matt), Madison Claire Parks as the Girl (Luisa), Peter Cormican as the Boy's Father (Huckabee), Dale Hensley as the Girl's Father (Bellomy), MacIntyre Dixon as the Old Actor (Henry), Michael Nostrand as the Man who Dies (Mortimer) and Drew Seigla as the Mute.

It is a very self-conscious play, with the Narrator introducing the characters, setting the scene, and periodically commenting on the action. The characters are to some extent stereotypes - hence their personal names appear in brackets in the programme and are only casually used by the Narrator. The situation appears to be a blend of Romeo and Juliet (quarrelling families against young love) and Pyramus and Thisbe (there is a wall between the families' adjoining gardens). There are many other Shakespearean allusions in the spoken text, including a running joke that the Old Actor cannot remember the second line of Mark Antony's famous funeral oration in Julius Caesar, and some truly atrocious puns.

Incognito

by Nick Payne

seen at the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, on 28 May 2016

Doug Hughes directs Geneva Carr, Charlie Cox, Heather Lind and Morgan Spector in a production designed by Scott Pask and lit by Ben Stanton.

The actors take multiple roles in a play in which several story lines are developed contrapuntally, with only sudden changes of lighting indicating a scene change on a black stage with four black chairs. We follow the story of the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein and 'stole' his brain for further research (which is never published); the story of an epileptic whose most severe fit left him with a memory window of only a few minutes; the story of a psychologist embarking on a lesbian affair but hesitant to admit that she has been married and has a grown up son; and some of her interviews with clients.

Blackbird

by David Harrower

seen at the Belasco Theatre, New York, on 27 May 2016

Joe Mantello directs this short but extremely intense play starring Michelle Williams as Una and Jeff Daniels as Ray, with set design by Scott Pask and lighting by Brian MacDevitt.

As the play begins, the office space we have been looking at is transformed by moving walls into an untidy office canteen, into which Ray propels Una. He is hunched with misery and fearful unease; she, unwilling to be touched or controlled, seems more in command of herself. There is clearly something clandestine about the meeting, as Ray feels he has been tracked down while Una seems determined on an important confrontation. She is very sceptical that Ray is now evidently known to everyone in the office as Pete.

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

seen at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York, on 25 May 2016

Directed by Ivo van Hove, with an original score by Philip Glass, the production features Ben Whishaw as John Proctor, Sophie Okonedo as Elizabeth Proctor, Saoirse Ronan as Abigail Williams, Bill Camp as Reverend John Hale and Ciarán Hinds as Deputy Governor Danforth.

The play, a presentation of the 17th century Salem witch trials widely seen as a criticism of the McCarthy-era prosecutions of communists, is here set in a fairly modern schoolroom with neon lights, which serves for all the settings specified by Miller's text (set and lights by Jan Versweyweld). The actors are dressed in old-fashioned but recognisably contemporary clothes, which interestingly serves to underscore the early modern formality of their speech patterns.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

by Christopher Durang

seen at the Gladstone Theatre, Ottawa, on 22 May 2016

The play takes themes from several plays by Anton Chekhov and blends them into a pastiche set in New England. This production by Plosive Productions was directed and designed by David Whiteley and featured Chris Ralph as Vanya, Mary Ellis as Sonia, Beverley Wolfe as Cassandra, Teri Loretto-Valentik as Masha, Drew Moore as Spike and Sarah Finn as Nina.

Here Sonia is the adoptive sister of Vanya and Masha; she and Vanya run the estate on behalf of their absent sister Masha, who claims to be earning all the necessary finds by being a Hollywood celebrity. Nina is a stage-struck neighbour, Cassandra the doom-laden house-help, and Spike is Masha's toy-boy.

Elegy

by Nick Payne

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 30 April 2016

Nick Payne seems to delight in concentrated short plays - like his earlier Constellations (reviewed in June 2015) his new Elegy is only 70 minutes long. Directed by Josie Rourke and designed by Tom Scutt, it features Zoe Wanamaker as  Lorna, Barbara Flynn as Carrie and Nina Sosanya as Miriam.

In Elegy Lorna has had surgery for an undefined mental illness, which circumstances suggest is a form of dementia. The surgery involves replacing damaged neurons with synthetic ones, but the consequence is total loss of the memories which the original neurons carried. In Lorna's case this stretches back over twenty years of her life, which in turn means eliminating all her memories of having been married to Carrie.

Kings of War

adapted from William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 29 April 2016

Bart Van Den Eynde and Peter van Kraaij have fashioned a long (4.5 hour) play from Henry V, the three parts of Henry VI (mainly parts 2 and 3), and Richard III. Ivan van Hove directs members of the Toneelgroep Amsterdam; the production is in Dutch with English surtitles.

The undertaking is ambitious and really striking; it is especially fascinating to have familiar speeches adapted and spoken in a foreign language. The setting was modern - for the scenes relating to Henry V, there were computer screens with military displays, and large maps to chart the progress of the French campaign; in effect we were in a modern military headquarters. Later we were in a sort of public reception room (for the reign of Edward IV) and finally in an empty but somehow rather claustrophobic space (yet still the whole expanse of the Barbican stage) for Richard III. Video cameras, both positioned around the stage, and a hand-held camera wielded by a technician, were liberally used with the image projected on a large screen suspended above the back wall of the set. This allowed the se of a number of corridors backstage, where various confrontations and deahs occurred.

The Herbal Bed

by Peter Whelan

seen at the RoseTheatre, Kingston upon Thames, on 28 April 2016

This play, subtitled The secret life of Shakespeare's daughter, was written in 1996 and originally produced by the RSC. It sees its first major revival here, directed by James Dacre and featuring Emma Lowndes as Susannah Hall, Jonathan Guy Lewis as John Hall, Philip Correia as Rafe Smith, and Matt Whitchurch as Jack Lane, with Patrick Driver as the Bishop of Worcester, Charlotte Wakefield as Hester Fletcher and Michael Mears as Barnaby Goche the Vicar-General of the diocese of Worcester.

The play derives from the records in the Worcestoer consistory court of a defamation case brought by Susannah Hall (Shakespeare's daughter) against Jack Lane, who had publicly alleged that she had illicit dealings with Rafe Smith. Here, Susannah and Rafe are indeed passionately attracted to one another, but no adultery takes place. Jack's allegations are founded on supposition, jealousy and drunkenness. Although he has not actually seen the pair together, it is known by the Hall's servant Hester that Rafe left the garden precipitously one night as she was coming to warn Susannah of Lane's approach.

Doctor Faustus

by Christopher Marlowe

seen at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 6 April 2016

Maria Aberg directs Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan, who choose the parts of Mephistopheles and Doctor Faustus by lot at the beginning of each performance, and a company of actors in the minor parts (many of them also taking part in the concurrent production of Don Quixote). The choice depends on which match struck at the same time by the two actors is extinguished first: that actor plays Mephistopheles. (I understand that this choice is overridden on days when there is both a matinee and an evening performance, to ensure that each actor plays each part on that day.)

The costumes are modern - the two leads in white suits to begin with, though when the play itself starts, Mephistopheles provocatively wears no shirt - and the acting space of the Swan is a black floor on which Faust soon paints a pentagram in white, and a wall of plastic bubble wrap which is ripped to shreds as the magical incantations of the first scene begin to take effect. The Seven Deadly Sins are presented by Lucifer as a grotesque fashion parade; the characters at the papal court wear elaborate and exaggerated clerical garb as if they too are fantastical elements of Faustus's imagination.

Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 5 April 2016

Simon Godwin directs the RSC's first 'black' Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet, Tanya Moodie as Gertrude, Clarence Smith as Claudius, Cyril Nri as Polonius, Natalie Simpson as Ophelia and Hiran Abeysekera as Horatio. Only Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, even more out of their element than usual, were played by white actors as callow and tactless European visitors to Denmark re-imagined as an unspecific African state.

Don Quixote

by James Fenton based on the novel by Miguel Cervantes

seen at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 4 April 2016

This new adaptation of the famous Spanish novel commemorates the quartercentenary of Cervantes's death (in the same month as Shakespeare's death). Director Angus Jackson has assembled an excellent ensemble cast led by David Threlfall as Don Quixote and Rufus Hound as his squire Sancho Panza. James Fenton's text, and his lyrics to the songs composed by Grant Olding, capture both the whimsical absurdity of the Don's obsession with chivalry, and the pathos of his response to the 'real' world as he constantly re-interprets it under the delusion that he is a knight-errant facing sorcery and evil.

Welcome Home, Captain Fox!

by Anthony Weigh based on Jean Anouilh's Le Voyageur sans Bagage

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 26 March 2016

The play, directed by Blanche McIntyre, is an adaptation of Jean Anouilh's 1937 play concerning a returned soldier with amnesia. Anthony Weigh has reset it in the USA in the 1950s so that 'Gene' (Rory Keenan) has returned from the Second rather than the First World War. His blank state allows the people around him to reveal all sorts of secrets, prejudices and idiosyncrasies; in the end he manages to deploy some native cunning to escape from a less than ideal predicament.

Pericles

by William Shakespeare (and George Wilkins)

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 24 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs James Garnon (Pericles), Jessica Baglow (Marina), Dorothea Myer-Bennett (Thaisa and Dionyza), Simon Armstrong (Antiochus and Simonides), Fergal McElherron (Helicanus and the Pander), Dennis Herdman (Bolt), Kirsty Woodward (Lychorida and the Bawd), Steffan Donnelly (Lysimachus) and Shiela Reid (Gower) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

Pericles, the only play commonly attributed to Shakespeare but not included in the First Folio edition of his plays, is actually a collaboration, and the text is thought to be woefully defective in certain places. However, despite its episodic and even disjointed plot, and its reliance on fantastical coincidences and unlikely turns of events, it can be a very satisfactory theatrical experience.

The Merry Wives

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames on 23 March 2016

The usual title The Merry Wives of Windsor has been abbreviated in this production from Northern Broadside and the New Vic (Stoke on Trent) as the action has not only been moved forward in time to the 1920s but also moved geographically to the north of England. Local references have been altered accordingly - 'the fat woman of Ilkley' rather than of Brainford; Slender to marry Ann Page in Skipton rather than Eton, and so forth.

Barrie Rutter plays Falstaff and directs the production, which is firmly in the British farce tradition, broad brushed and raucous. The characters are close to stock figures of fun - the women wise, the husbands foolishly lax or foolishly jealous, Falstaff incorrigibly self-confident, the others various sorts of hangers on, and the young couple romantic but almost without personality. All this is emphasised by the acting style, which is direct and noisy.

Unfortunately the performance did not immediately engage the audience; perhaps the theatre itself, though inspired by 16th century architecture, is not a sympathetic space when the house is not full. At any rate, in the first half it seemed that the cast were at times straining for effect; and of course the language is old-fashioned in a way that can make it laborious to set up the jokes. In the second half laughter came more easily, though the cross-language obscene punning of the Latin lesson was not really effective (despite coaching in the progamme notes).

A further consideration is that there might really still be a faultline between northern and southern styles of humour. The whole play was given in thick northern accents (apart from Doctor Caius' deliberately ludicrous French accent and Parson Evans's Welsh). This made the verbal fireworks at times hard to follow, but also encouraged the almost slapstick style of delivery. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford laughed uproariously at their own cleverness, but it was something of a spectacle rather than an invitation to share the joke.

Good fun as a knockabout farce, but strained at times.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 15 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs Tim McMullan (Prospero), Phoebe Pryce (Miranda), Dharmesh Patel (Ferdinand), Pippa Nixon (Ariel) Fisayo Akinade (Caliban), Trevor Fox (Stephano) and Dominic Rowan (Trinculo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

A play which starts on a boat engulfed by a terrifying storm, and continues entirely with scenes on an island, might seem a tall order for an intimate candle-lit space with a highly decorated  wooden screen at the back of the stage and no sense of the natural world about it. However, the storm was brilliantly staged in semi-darkness, with crew and passengers careering across the stage in unison as if the whole edifice were tilting with the waves. The only questionable gambits were to have a large stylised picture of a storm displayed, with Prospero in front of it with his staff, before the action began, and to have Ariel swinging on a lantern above during the storm itself. This weakened the important revelation in the second scene that the storm, so realistically presented, is in fact only a concoction of Prospero's art.

Cymbeline

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 March 2016

Sam Yates directs Emily Barber (Imogen - or Innogen as the Globe researchers have preferred to call her), Jonjo O'Neill (Posthumus), Calum Callaghan (Cloten), Joseph Marcell (King Cymbeline), Pauline McLynn (his Queen) and Eugene O'Hare (Iachimo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

The plot of Cymbeline is over-complex, with princes kidnapped at birth, a loving couple separated and subjected to mischievous misinformation, a king besotted with an evil queen, a fraught political situation, and a final scene in which all is straightened out in a manner that always threatens to fall into sheer absurdity as one character after another comes forward with a variation of 'oh, but that means .... ' The unlikelihoods and coincidences pile up in what ought to be a fatally damaging mess, but given the right direction, it can all prove both entertaining and curiously satisfactory.

This production proves the point. The several strands of the plot are played out seriously, which means that many of them could prove disastrous for the characters - and indeed Cloten the hapless son of the queen is decapitated. The final resolutions, though inevitably comic in their pell-mell succession, transform what could have been tragedy into benevolent reconciliation. The unreasonable jealousy of Posthumus leads not to murder as Othello's does, but into timely remorse. The murderous plots of the queen do not engender the slaughter of Macbeth's career; the intransigence of Cymbeline does not lead to Lear's catastrophe even though he is quite as angry at his daughter to begin with.

The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 9 March 2016

Michael Longhurst directs John Light (Leontes), Rachel Stirling (Hermione), Niamh Cusack (Paulina), Tia Bannon (Perdita), Steffan Donnelly (Florizel), David Yelland (Antigonus) and James Garnon (Autolycus) as part of a season of Shakespeare' four 'romance' plays.

It is interesting to compare this production with Kenneth Branagh's (reviewed in November 2015). The size and the ambience of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse make for a very different experience - the opening scenes seemed more intense, less stately, with Leontes prwoling in his jealousy far closer to this wife and friend. Meanwhile in the second half, Autolycus could interact far more directly with the audience, even purloining a pair of spectacles at one point to facilitate his 'disguise' as a courtier.

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 March 2016

Chekhov's play has been adapted by the director Robert Icke so that its setting is less obviously Russian (Vanya is 'Uncle Johnnie') and also later than the nineteenth century (there is a telephone, and electric light in the house). It features Paul Rhys as John (Vanya), Jessica Brown Findlay as Sonya, Tobias Menzies as Michael (Astrov, the doctor), and Susan Wooldridge as Maria (John's mother and Sonya's grandmother), with Hilton McRae as Alexander (the professor) and Vanessa Kirby as his second wife Elena, Richard Lumsden as Cartwright (Telyeghin) and Ann Queensberry as the nanny. The production is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

On a raised platform of wooden boards, with posts at each corner supporting a black roof or canopy, there are a few props, and an old nanny and a visiting doctor. Conversation is desultory, the old woman offering tea and complaining about the disruption to the routines of the household, the doctor absorbed with signs of his slow disintegration into mediocrity. Slowly, the whole platform revolves, while a neighbour and the members of an ill-assorted family appear and disappear. The management of the estate, which normally occupies Sonya and her uncle Johnnie, has lapsed during the visit of Sonya's father and stepmother who seem to have exerted a fatal lassitude simply by being there, city folk ill at ease in the country. But John is attracted to Elena, his brother-in-law's new wife (Sonya's mother was his sister), and this adds to the simmering tensions.

Waste

by Harley Granville Barker

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 27 February

This production is directed by Roger Michell and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, and features Charles Edwards as Henry Trebell, Sylvestra le Touzel as Frances Trebell and Olivia Williams as Amy O'Connell.

The play, banned on its initial publication in 1907, was revised in the 1920s though its subject matter was still controversial. This production uses the later version of the play, in which, among other things, the character of Amy O'Connell is portrayed as more active in creating the brief but catastrophic liaison between herself and Henry Trebell. The consequences - an unwanted child and a fatal illegal abortion - lead to all manner of waste: the child and mother dead, the promising career of the father in ruins (causing his own suicide), the political establishment seen to be immovably patrician, self-serving and misogynistic. But, crucially, everyone is complicit and no-one spotless.

Battlefield

based on The Mahabharata and the play by Jean-Claude Carrière

seen at the Young Vic on 17 February 2016

The play is adapted and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne with lighting by Philippe Vialatte, costumes by Oria Puppo and music by Toshi Tsuchitori. Sean O'Callaghan plays the blind king Dritarashtra, Jared McNeill the new king Yudishtira, Carole Karemera his mother, and Ery Nzaramba takes other parts (as do the rest of the cast).

Famously in the 1980s Peter Brook prepared a nine-hour production of The Marabharata which was performed outdoors so that its conclusion coincided with dawn. This new play lasts only 70 minutes and focuses on the aftermath of the crucial battle which occurs towards the end of the epic. Millions lie dead, including all the sons of the blind king (on one side) and all the brothers of the new king (on the other). Yet after all this mayhem we see only four actors and a musician on a bare stage with a few cloths and sticks for props, in an extraordinarily concentrated piece of staging.

wonder.land

by Damon Albarn, Moira Buffini and Rufus Norris

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 31 January 2016

This musical, inspired loosely by Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' books, is directed by Rufus Norris and designed by Rae Smith, and it features Lois Chimimba as Aly, Hal Fowler as the MC (and Cheshire Cat and Caterpillar), Carly Bawden as Alice, Enyi Okoronkwo as Luke Laprel and Anna Francolini as Ms Manxome.

Making full use of digital technology, both as a plot device and as a theatrical resource, this exuberant piece makes its presence felt even before one has reached the auditorium of the Olivier Theatre. There is an installation in the cloakroom foyer featuring virtual displays, smartphones and i-pads inspired by elements of the set, all stirring a great deal of interest among the younger members of the audience.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Christopher Hampton

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 30 January 2016

This revival of the play, based on the epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos, is directed by Josie Rourke and designed by Tom Scutt. It features Janet McTeer as la Marquise de Merteuil and Dominic West as le Comte de Valmont, with Elaine Cassidy as Madame de Tourvel, Edward Holcroft as le Chevalier de Danceny and Una Stubbs as Madame de Rosemonde, Morfydd Clark as Cécile de Volanges and Adjoa Andoh as Madame de Volanges.

In late eighteenth-century but pre-Revolutionary France the Marquise and the Comte,once lovers but now sexual adventurers, engage in various plots of seduction to amuse themselves ; but the Marquise is playing for higher stakes than the Comte, who (as is perhaps the way with over-confident men) has under-estimated the woman whom he had thought of as an equal. The Comte at first unwillingly fulfils the Marquise's proposal that he seduce an innocent young girl (Cécile de Volonges), while at the same time he finds that the virtuous Madame de Tourvel stirs deeper feelings in him than he bargained for. In turn Madame de Tourvel succumbs to passion, but they are both destroyed by the Marquise's resentment.

Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 21 January 2016

The great actress Ellen Terry began touring with a series of lectures on Shakespeare in the latter part of her career. She drew her material from her vast experience of acting many of the major female parts. 

Eileen Atkins has selected and arranged excerpts from these lectures both to show the sorts of things that Ellen Terry discussed, and to showcase her own considerable acting talent. Thus we see Atkins's impression of Terry's analysis and performance of a number of celebrated roles - Beatrice, Rosalind (a part she regretted that she had never actually played), Desdemona, Viola, Juliet. No matter that Terry was in her sixties when she began lecturing, and that Eileen Atkins is now over eighty - the delivery is sharp, the verse speaking assured, and the revelation of character through the recitation of mere excerpts of speeches is fascinating and rewarding.

As a tribute from one great actress to another, looking back over a century, and as a tribute by Ellen Terry to her beloved Shakespeare, this was a marvellous use of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Henry V

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 14 January 2016 (evening) as part four of 'King & Country'

This new production from the RSC is directed by Gregory Doran and designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis, with music by Paul Englishby. It features Alex Hassell as King Henry and Oliver Ford Davies as the Chorus, with Sarah Parks as Mistress Quickly, Joshua Richards as Bardolph and Fluellen, and Martin Bassindale as the Boy. As part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it is being presented with Richard II and the two parts of Henry IV as a sequence entitled 'King & Country'.

The programme note helpfully suggests that this is not really a 'pro-war' play, nor an 'anti-war' play (it has been seen as both in response to contemporary crises) but rather a 'going-to-war' play. This production was neither gung-ho nor overtly critical of war, and the king was neither thoughtlessly militaristic nor unwilling to fight.

Henry IV Part Two

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 14 January 2016 (afternoon) as part three of 'King & Country'

This revival of the RSC's 2014 production is directed by Gregory Doran and designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis with music by Paul Englishby. It features Jasper Britton as King Henry IV, Alex Hassell as Prince Hal, Anthony Sher as Falstaff, Sam Marks as Ned Poins, and Oliver Ford Davies as Justice Shallow. As part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it is being presented with Richard II, Henry IV Part One and Henry V as a sequence entitled 'King & Country'.

Considering that the play has a very similar structural pattern to that of Henry IV Part One it is striking how different the tone is. The prolonged 'Eastsheap' scene with Doll Tearsheet (Emma King) and Mistress Quickly (Sarah Parks, played with a distractingly broad accent) seems more hectic, and Falstaff here even more selfish, while the king is far weaker physically, and the scenes between Falstaff and Justice Shallow, the erstwhile companion of his youth, are tinged with a melancholy regret for the passage of time (these have no direct parallel in the earlier play). In the meantime Prince Hal is brought to realise that slumming it with the likes of Ned Poins is by no means a meeting of equals, while his relationship with his father barely survives a deathbed misunderstanding. 

Henry IV Part One

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 13 January 2016 as part two of 'King & Country'

This revival of the RSC's 2014 production is directed by Gregory Doran and designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis with music by Paul Englishby. It features Jasper Britton as King Henry IV, Alex Hassell as Prince Hal, Anthony Sher as Falstaff, Sam Marks as Ned Poins, Sean Chapman as the Duke of Northumberland and Matthew Needham as Hotspur. As part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it is being presented with Richard II, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V as a sequence entitled 'King & Country'.

In this production, the play begins as if exactly where Richard II left off - Henry's protestation of innocence and vow to go to the Holy Land at the end of the former play leading quite naturally into the opening speech of this play. Here, the continuity is further emphasised by the ghostly figure of the murdered king who turns away and vanishes as the play begins.

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Barbican on 12 January 2016 as part one of 'King & Country'

This revival of the RSC's 2013 production is directed by Gregory Doran and designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis with music by Paul Englishby. It features David Tennant as King Richard, Jasper Britton as Bolingbroke, Oliver Ford Davies as the Duke of York and Julian Glover as John of Gaunt. As part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it is being presented with the two Henry IV plays and Henry V as a sequence entitled 'King & Country'.

The play opens with a scene in which the king attempts to arbitrate in the quarrel between his cousin Bolingbroke and another courtier Thomas Mowbray. But his authority does not extend so far as to compel these adversaries to a reconciliation and soon the king concedes that a trial by combat must take place. In just a few altercations the fatal gap between assumed authority and personal weakness is laid bare and the train of events leading to Richard's deposition and murder is begun.