Coming Clean

by Kevin Elyot

seen at Trafalgar Studios Two on 24 January 2019

Kevin Elyot, perhaps most well-known for his landmark play My Night with Reg (1994), wrote Coming Clean in 1982 but this, a transfer from the King's Head Theatre, is the first time the play has been seen in the West End. Adam Spreadbury-Maher directs Lee Knight as Tony, Stanton Plummer-Cambridge as Greg, Tom Lambert as Robert and Elliot Hadley as William and Jurgen, and the production is designed by Amanda Mascarenhas.

Tony, an aspiring writer, and Greg, a published author and academic, live in a somewhat scruffy flat in Tufnell Park (north London), and William, a very camp friend, lives nearby. He is far more friendly with Tony than with Greg, who, when he appears, is clearly ill-at-ease with all the badinage William revels in. But the immediate source of interest is Tony's decision to hire an out-of-work actor named Robert to clean the flat, as he is sick of being the default housekeeper.

The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 23 January 2019

Joe Hill-Gibbins directs Simon Russell Beale as King Richard with Leo Bill as Bolingbroke, Natalie Klamar as Carlisle, John Mackay as York, Robin Weaver as Northumberland, and Martins Imhangbe, Joseph Mydell and Saskia Reeves taking all the other parts.

The production uses a stripped down text, at less than two hours without an interval, in an oppressive box of felt walls and a perspex ceiling allowing for varying lighting effects, the design by ULTZ. All the actors are on the stage throughout, there being no obvious exit, and the only props are a golden crown modelled on the sort of crown found in a Christmas cracker; and two buckets each of helpfully labelled 'water', 'blood', and 'soil'. The costumes are anonymously modern tee-shirts and trousers.

Antony and Cleopatra

by William Shakespeare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 2nd January 2019

Simon Godwin directs Ralph Fiennes as Antony, Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra, Tunji Kasim as Octavius Caesar and Tim McMullan as Enobarbus in a production sumptuously designed by Hildegard Bechtler making inspired use of the famed Olivier drum revolve to resolve the difficult task of transferring quickly the scene of action across various sites in the Mediterranean world (though the programme informs us that the play is set in 'an imagined present').

Boldly, the play here opens with the final tableau of the text, Caesar pronouncing (most of) the final eulogy, and then Agrippa taking parts of Philo's opening speech as if commenting on the denouement rather than setting the scene. At this point the revolve reveals the Egyptian scene and the body of Cleopatra becomes the Queen lazily awaiting the arrival of her lover.